Preview: Translunar Paradise, Tobacco Factory Theatres

Multi-award-winning, Bristol-based company Theatre Ad Infinitum bring back their powerful play about a moving journey of life, death and enduring love.

After his wife passes away, William escapes to a paradise of fantasy and past memories, a place far from the reality of his grief. Returning from beyond the grave, Rose revisits her widowed companion to perform one last act of love: to help him let go.

Using a live accordion accompaniment, Translunar Paradise is an exquisite piece of mask and movement theatre which was a multi-award-winning, critically acclaimed sell out at the 2011 and 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It has played at the Barbican as part of the London International Mime Festival, and has toured throughout the UK and to more than 20 countries internationally. It is also the winner of eight international theatre awards.

Here’s the show’s Bristol-based creator George Mann – who’s also associate director of Bristol Old Vic, and recently co-directed the acclaimed Pink Mist.

You wrote the show out of your own feelings about your father’s illness and death. Was it a very cathartic exercise?
It definitely started as something cathartic, and came from an intensely personal place of grief. My father had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and after five years of fighting the disease, he passed away. I made the show during this time, and sadly he never lived to see it. But what’s so special about creative processes in collaborative theatre making, is that the piece you’re making begins to take on a life of its own, and the people involved begin to feel as close to the piece as you do. Midway through the making of Translunar the room took on a very emotional atmosphere – one moment we would cry as we discover a moving moment, the next, because of the strong feelings evoked by the work, we’d be in stitches laughing – which in itself was a kind of healing relief. By the time we premiered the piece, it was about something much bigger than myself, or my feelings, or any of the company – and putting it in front of an audience for the first time was a very special experience.

Translunar Paradise. Pic: Idil Sukan / Draw HQ

I’m sure it’s an emotional and cathartic evening for audiences too. What feelings, conversations, new ways of looking at death, grief etc do you hope to inspire?
Since we began touring Translunar Paradise in 2011 it has provoked so many different reactions. The main reaction being a feeling I hadn’t known before we made the piece: communal grieving. An entire audience of people sharing in their unspoken feelings, memories, emotional pain and joy and love. It was an unexpected response – we hadn’t known how people might react.

In the past many people have spontaneously approached us after the show to share their stories – but the piece is also uplifting, and the most memorable story was of a couple who came to see it for a second time: following the first show, it inspired a marriage proposal, and then, as a married couple one year on, they came to see it again.

I hope that the show will continue to touch and move people as it continues touring, that it will encourage them to think about the way we grieve – and how difficult and isolating it can be in our culture, how hard it is to speak about your loss, and not know how to deal with it.

How demanding a piece is this for the performers?
It’s a very sweaty performance, I won’t lie! By the end me and the exceptionally talented Deborah Pugh, who plays William’s wife, Rose, are drenched! It requires not just physical endurance, but also precision, a high level of concentration and focus, rhythm and musicality and of course, play. The accordionist and musical storyteller, played by the brilliant Sophie Crawford, doesn’t sweat as much as we do, but she has her own challenge. Sophie is playing, singing, puppeteering masks, moving objects and making sound effects with her accordion in a feta of co-ordination that is very demanding indeed. All in all, its a big challenge every time we perform, but it’s rewarding and we love it.

How have you seen the show go down in other countries – and has this prompted any reflections on how different nationalities deal with death and grief (or indeed strong, difficult emotions generally)?
It’s different everywhere we go. In Brazil, where we toured for 3 months, people were much more openly emotional, both during the show – gasping, sobbing and laughing – and afterwards seeking us out to talk about it with such enthusiasm. In Sarajevo, which had recently gone through the horrors of war, we found that the scene in which William remembers his experiences in WWII really struck a cord. We performed that show at midnight in a festival, it was a remarkable and unforgettable experience. A heavy silence fell over the audience, crammed into the auditorium, on seats, the floor, ledges and very close to us, you could hear a pin drop. We find that people laugh in different parts of the show, surprising us, and what resinates here in the UK, resinates differently depending on the culture we’re visiting. It’s fascinating because the show is able to move between cultures and languages, being a piece without words, there’s a universal and human quality to it that allows it to be understood where ever we go, and yet, the way it is perceived is always changing, and the reactions it provokes are never quite the same.

You (and the company) moved to Bristol two years ago. Are you happy to have made the move?
Yes, we moved in 2015 and we really like it here. Bristol has a vibrant, exciting, inspiring and important arts community. It feels very supportive. And we love being part of it. We’ve made some good friends, met some great artists, makers and innovators, and we love the audience here too – always so warm and generous. It has become home very quickly and its hard to imagine living anywhere else. In fact, Translunar Paradise is linked to Bristol in two ways:

1. It is actually how we came to know Bristol, Tom Morris and the Bristol Old Vic team spotted the show in Edinburgh 2011 and they invited us to tour for a week at the studio in 2012. That was our first time in Bristol, and little did we know it would end up being our home…

2. Mike Tweddle, artistic director of Tobacco Factory Theatres, programmed the scratch of Translunar at BE Festival (which he founded) and it went on to win 1st prize and secure funding for its creation. So it feels quite special to bring it home…

Theatre Ad Infinitum reprise their previous hit show ‘Light’ this year. Pic: Alex Brenner

What next for Theatre Ad Infinitum?
This year is our ten year anniversary. So we’ve made sure to tour a lot of repertoire – Bucket List, our latest production, toured the country for three months; Light (reviewed by us here, and pictured above) had its fourth London run at Battersea Arts Centre; and two of our most loved pieces, Odyssey and Translunar Paradise return to the Edinburgh Festival after touring the world for 6-8 years. The return of Translunar kicks off at home in Bristol with a week at Tobacco Factory Theatres – we can’t wait!

And an anniversary wouldn’t be complete without something new… We’re working on a new piece called No Kids, which will examine the ethical and emotional considerations that we have to make when deciding whether to have children. As a gay couple, Nir Paldi and I, who co-run Theatre Ad Infinitum, won’t have children unexpectedly, and as political theatre makers deciding whether to bring more children into an overpopulated world is difficult. So we’ll be creating that show to premiere in 2018… watch this space!

Translunar Paradise is at Tobacco Factory Theatres from July 4-8. For more info, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/translunar-paradise

Read more: Review: Light, Bristol Old Vic Studio