Theatre company Border Crossings have just published CHECKPOINT: 30 Years of Border Crossings – a book recounting three decades of cutting-edge theatre consistently ahead of the headlines.
“From working with Māori communities to collaborating with theatre-makers in Ghana, India and China and Latin American artists in London, Border Crossings has made the stage a place of debate and constant relevance. CHECKPOINT captures this legacy, written by leading academics and thinkers. “
To celebrate the book’s publication, I interviewed Michael Walling, the Artistic Director of Border Crossings.
Your vision and mission at Border Crossings is very much about cultural exchange and equality. How have things changed and developed in the 30 years since the company started?
In some ways, it was actually easier 30 years ago. The world was very unequal in the 1990s, but it’s got much more unequal over time, and we’ve lost the consensus that equality is something we should even desire.
The consensus now is that extreme competition is the natural order of things – which is just a convenient myth to shore up the power of the billionaires.
While we were working on the book, I came to realise that our cultural exchanges in recent years have been more and more with people who have been marginalised in some way: Indigenous people from the Arctic or the Andes, Syrian refugees, Palestinians. We’re inevitably reflecting an ever more polarised and brutal world.
You have a very strong focus on collaboration across all sorts of borders, not just physical. Can you give us an example where this worked out really well?
I loved our collaboration with London’s South American communities in The Mouth Of The Gods. This was a music theatre piece we made about the history of the continent. Only one person actually travelled across the physical borders – Edith Ramos coming from the Andes to sing the central role – but the project was massively intercultural in so many other ways.
For a start, much of it was in Indigenous languages, with only the sections involving the colonisers being in English, implicating the audience in a productively uncomfortable way. And with the language came an Indigenous worldview, a sense of connection to place, environment and ancestors.
The wonderful Peruvian embroiderer Bella Lane worked with a team of volunteers to recreate an ancient burial mantle from Paracas, and we used it to wrap a body on stage.
Once you’ve seen that really happen, you understand how Indigenous cultures conceive time as circular, how the dead are with us and are cared for. The total opposite of our linear ways of seeing.
What barriers have you found across the globe as you try to develop innovative and challenging work?
Literal borders are often a problem. Back in 2014, we weren’t able to get visas for two Palestinian performers: the Home Office turned them down, even though the project was being supported by the British Council, which is overseen by the Foreign Office. Not very joined-up thinking from the UK government!
I also remember in the very early days, when we toured to Hungary. Because we didn’t have much money, the set, props and actors all travelled across Europe in the same van. When it got to the Austrian border, there was a police search of the vehicle.
Because the play was about the Kosovo conflict and related criminal activity, we had some very realistic props, including an automatic rifle, a pistol, a knife, a hollowed-out Bible containing bullets, a bag of cocaine and a stash of gay porn. But the only thing that seemed to bother the border police was that one of the actors was black. So that was an eye-opener.
How does it feel for Border Crossings to celebrate its 30th anniversary, and what can you tell us about the recent book?
It feels incredible. When you’re running a company and creating projects, you don’t get much chance to stand back and take the longer view, so I’ve really valued the opportunity to work with Jasmin Ofamo’oni on the book, sorting through the archive and delving into the memories.
She’s brought out such strong and clear narrative lines and evolving themes: it’s really thrilling to read.
Jasmin has structured the book into seven “Acts”, each of which looks at a particular area of the world where we’ve undertaken collaborations, or a particular strand like our Festivals or our Community work.
In between the Acts there are Intervals, each of which is written by a guest with a particular interest in an aspect of the story. I find these very moving.
There’s a feeling of many lives all leaning in towards this “CHECKPOINT” moment, and reflecting on the encounters that our theatre provides.
Touring is obviously core to your remit. Are there any countries you would still like to visit or collaborate with?
The Mouth Of The Gods was hugely concerned with Peru, but I’ve never been to that part of the world, and I would love to. We did put together some initial plans for a project in the Amazon, but it didn’t work out: I would love to revisit that.
The Amazon is the planet’s respiratory system, and it’s dying. We have to listen to what the forest and its people are saying – it’s really urgent.
We presented another Peruvian piece, the dark, complex and stunningly beautiful Ino Moxo by Grupo Integro, at the Southbank as part of ORIGINS 2019.
There was an Ayahuasca shaman, Rawa, at the heart of that show, singing the traditional chants and performing ceremonies. Rawa gave me a beautiful shirt that his mother had made especially for me: and that felt like a spiritual call.
The book CHECKPOINT: 30 Years of Border Crossings is now available.
Photo credit: Border Crossings