by Euan Vincent
Last night time, I scribbled one thing in my pocket book: ‘all guards; all refugees.’ The thought occurred to me as I used to be sitting within the darkened stalls of the National Theatre, taking-in Amit Lahav’s newest manufacturing, Kin.
Two teams of refugees traverse dusty landscapes, bare hostilities, and heartless forms within the pursuit of security. This is experiential theatre at its greatest informed by lovely motion, an beautiful soundtrack, and clever lighting. The manufacturing’s capability to focus on the dissonance between the on a regular basis of border guard life and the emotional swell of these of their ‘care’ was at occasions cinematic.
Multiple languages are spoken however the solely English-speaking viewers has little understanding. This locations us immediately within the sneakers of these pressured right into a overseas land. Obfuscation by a scarcity of shared language universalises the plight of refugees. This permits us to concentrate on our shared humanity, while concurrently depriving refugees a big a part of their id.
Later within the manufacturing, we witness the necessity for assimilation. To be accepted, one should surrender one’s id. As one refugee dons whiteface to celebration with a gaggle of guards, I return to my preliminary thought – ‘all guards, all refugees’.
In this manufacturing, Gecko combines a deep appreciation of what it means to be a refugee with attuned information of meaning-making in theatre, and a capability to interrupt the divide between the spectator and spectated. It’s a should see for all those that want to management our borders.
Kin runs by 27 January.
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