Polish Community

"On the one hand we want them to cling on to their individuality. At the same time they have to surrender a little bit in order for us all to live together but, what's the balance?"

So said Ivan Cutting, the artistic director of Eastern Angles and the writer of Getting Here - a play about immigration to the UK.

It's set in two rooms and a corridor and starts with a Portuguese couple (played by Chara Jackson and Pedro Reichert) trying to find their baggage, but running up against air hostess (Beata Majka) and Captain John (Adé Sapara).

It becomes clear this is no ordinary airline, but something more fantastical, when a Polish woman (Noeleen Comiskey) pops out of a trunk. All this happens while the audience, at various points, line up in a check-in queue and watch events unfold in the baggage room.

Air hostess, Catarina and Malina

"We wanted to imagine this journey to here as if this air flight is interrupted and they're stuck in this venue," continued Ivan. "So, if we're in a museum that's what we're in.

"They've been off-loaded here and their baggage has been put down in a separate room and they've got to go off and identify it. They find all these stray bits of their past and they decide which bits they want to take with them."

Feets don't fail me now

Given that the first public performances are in the summer, audience members need to be fairly fit. They have to stay on their feet for over an hour and walk from room-to-room, although there may be chances to sit on any chairs or floor-spaces that happen to be in the various venues.

These include a pub in Ipswich and museums in Great Yarmouth and Peterborough.

"It's quite a tricky thing to do. I don't think audiences around here are all that familiar with it.

"There are productions that have gone on around the country - 'site-specific' work as it's often called. It's very much a new thing and a lot of people are trying it out.

"What it does is it gets away from that sense of a velvet space and a curtain and everything being orchestrated backstage. You're going to see everything here - the actors are going to be a foot away arguing right in front of you.

"Because we're touring it to different places, we're having to adapt to them. We're hoping for audiences of around 60 people and we'll have an 'air hostess' to help move people around - 'right we're going here now!'.

"But we need to know that the audience is comfortable and knows what is wanted of it."

Research and integration

Three interviewers carried out research by talking to people who'd come to the UK. Oral historian Juliana Vandegrift spoke to Polish people, including the woman whose testimony about the Soviet advance against the Germans in East Prussia in 1945 is used in the play.

"I'm the outsider trying to gain entry to a foreign community," said Juliana. "Trying to explain the project, overcoming two-way language barriers, fear, suspicion and even disinterest were major obstacles in finding the people willing to be interviewed. 

Catarina and José

"I think by now we all realise that the Polish community provides the bulk labour for our service industries in this country but what never dawned on me was they have quietly introduced their own community infrastructure to support their families, religion, shopping habits. Once I persuaded the volunteers that they would enjoy being interviewed, they truly opened up and gave such honest, frank answers that it was very humbling and a privilege to share an insight into the obstacles they have overcome to reinvent their lives in this country."

Another piece of Juliana's research which made it to the play was a line about wishing Poland had roundabouts like the UK does. It's hoped the Polish oral research will be preserved in the Suffolk Records Office.

Del White, who's behind Suffolk's African History Month, did research with African and Caribbean immigrants while Madalena Bobone spoke to the Portuguese community. In fact, Madalena was actually a well-known soap star in Portugal's Anjo Selvagem (Wild Angel) before she herself came to England.

Fado remi sola tido

The play also incorporates Portuguese fado music, tackles stereotypes about Afro Caribbean people and even splits the audience into males and females and takes them into separate rooms at one point.

"[I was struck] by the sheer diversity of it," said Ivan Cutting. "The different backgrounds, some people were well off, some people were fleeing from their own country or were economic migrants.

"The idea of conflating that all into one play was almost impossible. Trying to dream up a place where a Portuguese couple would meet a Polish couple and an Afro-Caribbean couple - there isn't a place in Ipswich where that happens.

"So that's why we've come up with this more surreal type of show.

"I want them to have a good time and have seen a funny, quirky story that they've enjoyed. I want them to have a few questions in their head about what happens when we mix different communities together."

The play is touring East Anglia (29 June-25 July 2009) and visits Peterborough, Ipswich, Wingfield, Haverhill, Thetford, Halesworth, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Wivenhoe and Maldon. Visit the Eastern Angles website for full details or ring the box office on 01473 218202.