Camden People’s Theatre’s SPRINT Festival returns with a packed programme throughout March. London’s “best-established carnival of new and unusual theatre” features artists with bold ideas, artists who don’t play by the rules, and artists, in many instances, making their first professional work.
This is the thirteenth of a series of interviews highlighting artists and work within the Festival, as I chat with the artistic director of The Fever Kinetic, Tristen ZiJuin about his show, Bayangkan Bayang.
Drawing inspiration from Handke’s Self-Accusation and real testimonies – like Wong Kueng Hui’s decades-long limbo or Nurul’s fight for her children’s papers – Bayangkan Bayang (Imagine a Shadow) fuses verbatim theatre with poetic provocation. Through migrant voices and fragmented narratives, we ask: Who bears guilt when borders erase lives?
Where: Camden People’s Theatre
When: 24 Mar, 7.15pm
Ticket link: https://cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Bayangkan-Bayang-Imagine-a-Shadow
Your show Bayangkan Bayang aka (Imagine a Shadow) is coming to SPRINT – what can you tell us about it?
Bayangkan Bayang [Imagine a Shadow] is a both an intercultural and multidisciplinary mediation on statelessness, migration and belonging. It blends physical theatre, shadow play, original music, and spoken word across seven languages to ask: What does it mean to belong when no country claims you?
The title is Malay for “Imagine a Shadow” which speaks to the experience of being present yet unseen. The work draws on real testimonies from our research, with a nod to Handke’s Self Accusation and the cast’s own migration stories, including one cast member whose brother has experienced statelessness firsthand in Malaysia.
It is an invitation to sit with stories rarely given space on British stages and to feel the weight of what I consider to be a crisis that is often overlooked in global affairs. We’re honoured to be part of SPRINT Festival at Camden People’s Theatre that champions urgent, artist-led work. For one night only on 24 March, we’re turning the theatre into a meeting place for stories that demand to be heard.
Did you always plan for the show to be verbatim or did that evolve as you developed the play?
When I first developed the show sometime around a year ago, the verbatim aspect was done from research, collating testimonies from interviews and documentaries about statelessness that was available in the public domain. The initial spark was a fascination with the question of “invisibility” – how do you represent absence and erasure on stage?
But as I began working with the ensemble developing the play into a full length piece, it naturally evolved to the form it is today, as it became clearer as we developed the play that the most powerful material was already in the room.
We have a team of artists who carry their own relationships to migration – from Malaysia, Poland, and more. That became a gravitational centre for the work. We started gathering testimonies as acts of trust within the ensemble.
It’s not pure verbatim in the traditional sense (we’ve woven testimonies together with poetic text, movement, and imagery inspired by traditional Malaysian Wayang Kulit) but the heartbeat of the piece is undeniably real.
How did you make your start in the business?
I started as an actor in Malaysia, with my professional debut being the play of PohLiThik where I played the lead, Danny Gan. I then started to branch into dance as well and was fortunate to become one of the country’s youngest choreographers to work with National Theatre Malaysia, contributing to the acclaimed production RatuKuning Langkasuka. That experience taught me about scale, storytelling and the power of theatre to hold cultural narratives. And it was through my mentor Sabera Shaik, that I was able to cultivate and nurture my distinct voice and desire to infuse my heritage in my practice through a contemporary lens.
When I moved to London, I had to rebuild from scratch. I started by assisting, collaborating, and immersing myself in the fringe scene. Programmes like New Earth Theatre’s Academy Plus and my role as a Young Ambassador for London Bubble were instrumental. They gave me community, mentorship and a sense that there was a place for my voice here.
I founded The Fever Kinetic as a way to create the work I wanted to see: interdisciplinary, politically engaged, irreverent, cross-cultural and rooted in the human condition. Bayangkan Bayang is our most ambitious project to date, and it feels like the culmination of everything I’ve learned across two continents.
What message do you hope audiences take away from the show?
I don’t believe in delivering a single “message” – I think that can close down the complexity of an audience’s experience. But I hope they leave with questions.
Questions like: What does it mean to be seen? What do we owe to people whose existence isn’t recognised by the state? How do you carry home when it isn’t a place?
I also hope they feel a connection to experiences that may be far from their own. Ultimately, I hope audiences leave more curious, more open, and more willing to sit with stories that don’t offer easy answers.
And what’s next after SPRINT?
This is just the beginning for Bayangkan Bayang. We’re already in conversations about future presentations. I’d love to see the work tour, to reach communities across the UK and globally who might recognise these stories. Longer term, I’m committed to building partnerships with organisations working at the intersection of art and social impact. I’d love to develop workshops, post-show conversations, and advocacy tools alongside Bayangkan Bayang so the work can live beyond the stage.
There’s so much more to say. But right now, my focus is on 24 March, inviting audiences to imagine a shadow.