Review: Apu Ollantay A Drama of the Time of the Incas

Apu Ollantay is a unique artefact. It is the only drama / play script which was written in Quechua and which claims to be of Inca origin. That claim is disputed. Reading it in English makes for a curious and not always comfortable experience. You can download a version for free through Project Gutenberg - and that is the version I read and link to.

There are three aspects that my mind focused on when reading Apu Ollantay:

1) The framing (written by its translator, an academic)

2) The historicity (what was the context of its writing, is it authentic, is it Inca?)

3) The text itself

The Framing: On Translators and 19th Century Scholars

Since the framing takes the form of a lengthy foreword followed by lots of footnotes, it's fair to look at that first. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is "of its time". The translator/author gives context of the claimed history of the play itself, which is useful, and the provenance of the written text which he used for his translations. Translations, plural, because the version preserved for history on Project Gutenberg was not his first attempt. In fact, the author reveals that there has been some controversy: he first translated the text, line by line, in 1871 "with many mistakes, since corrected". In strolls a person whom the author obviously isn't terribly fond of:

"In 1878 Gavino Pacheco Zegarra published his version of Ollantay, with a free translation in French. His text is a manuscript of the drama which he found in his uncle's library. Zegarra, as a native of Peru whose language was Quichua, had great advantages. He was a very severe, and often unfair, critic of his predecessors.

The work of Zegarra is, however, exceedingly valuable. He was not only a Quichua scholar, but also accomplished and well read. His notes on special words and on the construction of sentences are often very interesting. But his conclusions respecting several passages which are in the Justiniani text, but not in the others, are certainly erroneous. (...)

The great drawback to the study of Zegarra's work is that he invented a number of letters to express the various modifications of sound as they appealed to his ear. No one else can use them, while they render the reading of his own works difficult and intolerably tiresome 

 (....)

There is truth in what Zegarra says, that the attempts to translate line for line, by von Tschudi and myself, 'fail to convey a proper idea of the original drama to European readers, the result being alike contrary to the genius of the modern languages of Europe and to that of the Quichua language.' Zegarra accordingly gives a very free translation in French.

In the present translation I believe that I have always preserved the sense of the original, without necessarily binding myself to the words."

(Emphasis mine)
It's a little strange to read. There is begrudging admission that Zegarra's work was invaluable. At the same time, the author is bitter and much annoyed about the (admittedly accurate!) criticisms that Zegarra made about his own work (and that of other Western academics). So, in response to these criticisms, the text now preserved on Project Gutenberg was produced - a looser translation, which sticks closer to the scansion and poetic forms of the original, but is less loyal to line-by-line meaning. (He also sticks to his own conclusions about what scenes were supposed to convey, e.g. by including "humorous" dialogues that Zegarra didn't)

Still, reading the snide asides about the "difficult and intolerably tiresome" text produced by the only native scholar (& Quechua speaker) and the whining about how "severe and often unfair" his criticism of the efforts of non-native scholars were, while acknowledging that his criticisms were broadly correct... it's hard not to see this as pretty staggering entitlement and arrogance on behalf of Sir Clements Markham (the scholar who wrote this translation). It's also a bit rich that he almost complains about Zegarra having a "great advantage" due to being a native Peruvian & Quechua speaker. The end result is that I wish Zegarra had written an English translation, or that my own French was serviceable enough to seek out his work and read that instead of this one.

Another example of being "of its time" is in the footnote where Sir Markham writes that "The Inca Pachacuti does not appear to advantage in the drama. But he was the greatest man of his dynasty, indeed the greatest that the red race has produced." (again, emphasis mine)

So: the framing makes me distrust this version of the text a bit. Being a loose translation is fair, so long as there is loyalty not just to form, but also to substance. A loose translation written with some colonial arrogance thrown in? It undermines my trust in the authenticity of the text.

Historicity: An Inca Play?

Spanish conquistadors reached the Inca in the 1530s. The first written text of Apu Ollantay was put on paper in 1770. The Markham text was written in 1910. So 240 years passed between the conquest and the time when the play was written down for the first time, and another 140 before this translation was produced.

A lot happened to the Inca and their descendants in those 240 years.

Markham outlines the historicity right at the start:

"The drama was cultivated by the Incas, and dramatic performances were enacted before them.(...) Some of these dramas, and portions of others, were preserved in the memories of members of Inca and Amauta families. The Spanish priests, especially the Jesuits of Juli, soon discovered the dramatic aptitude of the people. Plays were composed and acted, under priestly auspices, which contained songs and other fragments of the ancient Inca drama. These plays were called 'Autos Sacramentales.'

But complete Inca dramas were also preserved in the memories of members of the Amauta caste and, until the rebellion of 1781, they were acted. (...) Taking the name of his maternal ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amaru, the ill-fated Condorcanqui rose in rebellion, was defeated, taken, and put to death under torture, in the great square of Cuzco. In the monstrous sentence 'the representation of dramas as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrate in memory of their Incas' was prohibited.[2] This is a clear proof that before 1781 these Quichua dramas were acted."

Despite his claims, I am aware that there is an oft-quoted stance taken by academics studying the Selk'nam people of Patagonia that those were the only native peoples with a pre-conquest history of drama, in the shape of their Hain rites of passage. Assuming that academics studying the Selk'nam were not completely ignorant of the work academics studying the Inca had produced, this suggests that the historicity of Incan drama can't have been universally accepted by scholars.

Did the Inca perform plays? And was Apu Ollantay an Inca play? Did people pass on Inca dramas in oral history within one caste / family for hundreds of years, ready to be recorded at last by Western & priestly scholars with a sudden interest in recording such things? And is the resulting record authentic to pre-conquest Inca dramatic lore?

After reading the play, I think that, whatever the kernels of its original seed, it must have undergone a lot of adaptation in the hundreds of years under Spanish rule. From things as simple as having a scythe as a symbol of death (even though the Inca had a scythe, I doubt it had the same symbolism), to casting the founder of the Inca empire and venerated Inca hero as the villain of the piece, the text feels like most of it was meant to appeal to post-conquest society. I have no doubt that there were performative arts in Inca times - storytellers, songs, festivals, rituals - and I can imagine staged plays being part of that, too. But reading an English text written in 1910 by a British scholar based on texts recorded in 1770... that text did not feel like it was part of a pre-conquest canon of plays, not to my eyes.

Apu Ollantay: A Romance

The story of Apu Ollantay is very simple. If I had to summarise it, I'd describe it as Romeo and Juliet crossed with Coriolanus, minus any complexity. Full plot (SPOILERS) ahead:

Big general Ollantay is in love with princess & daughter of his king. The king's law decrees that royals may only marry each other. General & princess have married in secret. The general asks the king for his blessing, is refused, and plans a rebellion & conquest, but by the time he is ready to do this, the king has taken his court elsewhere. Ten years later, and the civil war caused by the general's uprising is still in progress. The princess had a daughter, who lives in a temple of sacred virgins and is sad about being alone and locked up. Also, she hears mournful cries at night. King dies. Little girl discovers that the mournful crying comes from her mother, who is locked up in a dungeon below the temple. New king sends out his general to conquer the rebels once and for all, which he does by acting as a trojan horse. When the rebel general is brought to the new king to face justice, he is suddenly offered mercy and permanent rule over a province of his own. Then, the little girl storms the palace and pleads for her mother's life, so the king (and all present) go to investigate, discover the locked-away princess in the dungeon, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I felt that the plot was very thin. I do wonder whether my impression would be different if I saw the play performed on stage: reading scripts can sometimes feel a lot flatter than seeing them performed.

The tone of the Markham text feels a bit faux-Shakespearian (hence my comparison to Romeo & Juliet and Coriolanus). The author makes choices about which Quechua names and words to use, and which to translate, but these choices are to the detriment of the text when characters make a lot of puns that are now broken. (One character has a name that includes the Quechua word for "rock" or "stone", so there is a lot of talk about stones and rocks whenever he is around. Only the footnotes make clear that these are puns. Another character is called "joyous star" in Quechua, so when others ask her where the joy has gone, or refer to her as "the star", then the text again relies on footnotes to clarify the meanings).

There are references to locations, plants, animals, and some customs which are Inca. At the same time, the court, the generals, the temple of virgins... those things don't seem very different from tropes in Western drama. Incan religion is laid on very, very thin, if at all. If the play was not originally conceived in post-conquest times, then it seems very likely that it was toned down to avoid persecution by the zealot Catholics in charge for hundreds of years. The end result is a play that, in its English translation, could just as well be a play about any other old civilisation. Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Macedonians, Ottomans. Is it the act of translation itself which causes this feeling - of a story dipped in Inca decorations for flavour, rather than an Inca story? Or is it the fact that, whatever kernel of Ollantay's story had been the root of this play, it probably took on influences by the conquerors and their cultural traditions (or rather,  was it heavily edited and amended over time because of prevalent persecution)? I don't know.

All in all, I would buy a ticket and see this play performed on stage, to see if it feels differently that way. I would love to see it in Quechua, with English subtitles or surtitles. However, on paper / screen, the text is an interesting curiosity, but not quite the immersive dive into Incan culture I had hoped for.

The Last Mermaid by Charlotte Church, Jonathan Powell & Sion Trefor

The Last Mermaid is a new production commissioned by the Festival of Voice - a Welsh cultural festival. I'd seen the posters for it, noticed it being tweeted about (I follow Charlotte Church on Twitter because of her political activism), but only made up my mind to go and see it after reading a lacklustre review in Walesonline. This might seem perverse, but the review actually made me very intrigued about the show. Normally, any production with a famous person staged in the WMC for a Welsh festival would automatically get 5 stars in Welsh media, and the review praised the production values, choreography, staging, voice / singing... It's the story Walesonline chose to be scathing about, as "No words are spoken for 30 minutes, and it’s not easy to decipher exactly what is happening pushing the audience’s powers of interpretive detective work to the limit."

So, armed with that review and a determination to be a better story detective than the Walesonline reviewer, I was eager to give The Last Mermaid a try.

First things first: I strongly recommend buying the booklet that accompanies The Last Mermaid. As is often the case with opera (or opera-like) productions, the booklet isn't a list of the cast, but a synopsis of the story, a written overture, if you like. In The Last Mermaid's case, this is done in a semi-poetic way, rather than as a simple summary, but even so, if you read the booklet, you'll get the story easily. However, you might want to buy it about half an hour to an hour before the production starts: due to its style, it is a much longer read than usual. The poeticness was not to my personal taste, but the book serves its purpose very well.

The production itself starts in the sea, where merfolk exist in peace and fearlessness. However, a cataclysm eradicates them (the book indicates an oil spill, but in the staging, this was not obvious: they just seemed to have passed away in their sleep). After the sea has mostly died, the Mermaid hatches from her egg / clamshell, born into a lonely world full of floating plastic. She keens for others like her (a sweet and heartbreaking "Nnng, Nnnng" sound) and explores her world with a newborn's fascination. When a whale finds her, he is overjoyed and deeply saddened - she is the last of her kind; he is the last of his, and to free her from the loneliness she is fated to suffer, he turns her into a human, to the chagrin of the (not entirely gentle) waves.

The Last Mermaid is not a straightforward narrative. It is surreal, full of symbolism, and a distinct artistic streak. There is singing throughout (the first word might be spoken about half an hour in, but there are plenty words sung before then!), accompanied by masterful choreography and beautifully visual, hypnotic staging. It's more operatic in its influences - and modern opera at that. The music is never boring, but neither does it move into catchy pop tunes or stand-out arias. Accompanied by electronic backdrop that wouldn't be out of place in a Gorillaz or Moby album, the musical aspect of the production is intriguing.

I will be honest: as a child, I would not have enjoyed The Last Mermaid. I hated opera then, too. I was never comfortable with the surreal as a child, and the underlying bleakness of the story would not have worked for me.

As a grown-up, however, I enjoyed myself immensely. I did wish that the songs were a little more catchy, with more pronounced refrains, but that's because I have a corny taste in music. I did wish that the lyrics (and booklet) had been smoothed out a bit - they didn't roll of the tongue or flow as they should have done. And I did wish that the smell of brand new plastic/rubber stage props had been avoided, and replaced with a smell of the ocean. But compared to the visual extravaganza, the energy on stage, the sheer variety of dazzle, and the richness of the atmosphere that was being evoked, these are fairly minor points.

It's not a simple fairy tale, it's not for everyone, and I would only recommend it to families / children with a taste for high arts, patience, and an appreciation of opera. That said, if you can appreciate art for art's sake, and if you want to see something visually stunning, musically intriguing and hugely energetic; most of all, if you can enjoy having a story evoked rather than told, then The Last Mermaid is perfect.

Rating: 4/5

Bordergame by National Theatre Wales

Review

I’ve heard someone bemoan that National Theatre Wales has sucked all the funding for drama in Wales into itself, leading to the “sad” demise of many a small local theatre. Having attended two NTW productions by now (and wishing I had attended several others), I can’t help disagreeing: NTW does interesting, exciting things, the likes of which I have never before seen in theatres. If the price of that is the demise of all other funded theatre productions in Wales, then it is still a fair price to pay.
NTW’s ethos is that Wales itself is the stage. So if they do Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, the production takes place in an aircraft hangar, and the audience walks around following the actors and battles (and stepping out of the way of cars). Other plays have been staged in a fake German village built for military exercises, in the homes of Cardiff’s Somali community, and in Port Talbot.

Bordergame takes place in Bristol and Newport. It’s presented as an interactive play about immigration, but really, it’s hard to describe it as a play at all. There are two audiences – one, admission-paying, starts in Bristol Temple Meads. These are the wannabe immigrants. The other audience, admission-free, is sitting at home at a www-connected computer. These are the volunteers who help the border agency to watch the migrants and make decisions. If that sounds more like a social experiment than a stage play, then you’re not entirely wrong. The performance certainly takes inspiration from various influential psychology experiments of the past.

I’ve now partaken both ways – first as immigrant, then as border-watching volunteer. Both experiences were interesting, but in very very different ways. As participant trying to make your way from Bristol to Newport, you never really have a full overview. You get two emails before the event (one on the day itself), with instructions for picking up an envelope in a locker at the station. Once you’ve got the envelope, things quickly get quite stressful, as your interactions with the actors may well take you out of your comfort zone. (I suspect it’s a little less scary if you go in a group). The adventure itself is scripted only in part – it’s cheerfully non-linear, and different people get different opportunities and instructions. You literally never find out what everyone else got up to, and it’s all too easy to believe that some people might never have made it even as far as Newport. Those who get there are bound to meet the border agency, which is intimidating in quite different ways.

For the home-audience, the adventure starts with a little quiz, and then, at the appointed time, a chance to watch feeds from cameras watching the migrants. There is a chat room where volunteer border agents can discuss what they see, and there are instructions and a few choices along the way. There’s more of an overview (though not a complete overview: some people fall through the cracks), with a cheerfully governmental feel. It’s not at all stressful.

The tone of the experience is quite satirical, not Monty-Python-satirical but Four-Lions-satirical. For the people at home, it’s all satirical. For the people on the ground, the satire is delivered with a little more steel – but during the train journey, the tension dissipates and everyone’s quite relaxed by the time they get to their destination. This makes the adventure feel quite safe and playful. I can see why the production strikes this particular tone – without it, the paying audience might feel very uncomfortable indeed, especially if the train journey had been omitted – but it robs Bordergame of some of its bite. It ends up being an amusing night out. I am not sure it ends up making anyone think very much about anything.

Of course, it’s unlikely these playful shenanigans would ever appeal to the BNP / Britain First / UKIP / Nazi crowd, so perhaps ‘making people think’ was never really top of the agenda. The audience mostly comprised of students, GROLI types, lefties of various ages and a few theatre aficionados of indeterminate political leaning. In short, it was an evening of entertainment, rather than mind expansion.

If things were just left at that, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a little bit exploitative (“Hey! Let’s play at immigrants and border guards for a laugh!”). In fact, while taking part I felt reminded of a rumour I heard last summer, that wealthy Mexicans can now have “adventure holiday experiences” where they play at trying to be border-crossing poor people, facing all the sort of obstacles illegal immigrants encounter. Fortunately, things get tied up at the end in a way that punctures any accusation of exploitative entertainment / poor taste. The final phase was, however, quite confusing.

I'd highly recommend taking part, if you can. It might not be seminal, but it is a strong hint at the future direction of theatre - and I certainly hope there will be many more projects like it.

Rating: 3.5/5

Other Reviews:

• BBC
• WalesOnline
• Guardian
• Financial Times

Experience Report (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I’ve outlined in broad strokes what this performance is like. Now, SPOILER WARNING, here’s a complete experience report.

After booking the ticket, I received an email from “Miki” (presumably, a sibling) that told me travel had been arranged on my behalf, through an agency called Escape Migration (http://escapemigration.com/), and that $1000 in cash was on its way to me. There was a brief mention that “a bribe is a last resort”. On the website, I had to register and upload a photo for my ID card.

A second email arrived on the day, telling me to approach a woman dressed as a traffic surveyor, near a set of lockers, at Bristol Temple Meads railway station, to get details of my locker number and access code, and to be there for 8pm sharp. 

My train into Bristol was a bit late – if I had been supposed to catch a train at 8pm after picking up things from the locker, I would have missed it. So, naturally, I was a little nervous. (Having read on Twitter that someone had been executed on the Bordergame the night before had not helped my nerves at all!)

The envelope in the locker included a map, $1000 in toy money, and instructions to meet a man wearing a daffodil under a tree by a zebra crossing at a very specific time slot. I had a few minutes, so I hung around. Other people seemed to be hanging around too, but I wasn’t sure whether they were part of the game, or people waiting to be met by friends and acquaintances. At the appointed time, I approached him, using the special phrases (like in a spy movie). He was short, dark-skinned, with a strong accent and a serious, shifty demeanour. He made me wait out of sight, but no one else showed up, so, quizzing me about UK trivia all along the way, he took me to a dark corner to hand over my fake ID. (The ID card is magnificent by the way, I have it still & wonder whether I could get on a domestic flight or buy alcohol with it: it’s a lot more authentic than I thought it’d be! I’m surprised this sort of thing is legal.)

This is where we had a misunderstanding: I’d read the original email to mean that everything had already been paid for and the cash was to start a new life / use as bribe in Cymru, but, re-reading it now, it actually said a deposit had been paid and I’d have to pay the rest in cash. So when he asked for $500, I was taken aback and tried, in my meek way, to argue with him, which I should not have and which annoyed him. Anyway, I failed. He got the full $500 out of me, but I then did not buy the Welsh currency he was offering me at a “good rate” because I had incorrectly concluded that this character was a scam artist. 

Next, I was taken to the back of a van, where I got to sit on a blanket in the dark. Periodically, the door would open and other migrants would be rushed inside. It was a bit scary, as it suddenly seemed possible that we might be smuggled into Wales in the dark back of a van – maybe we had been selected for a different people smuggling operation. Eventually, a very intimidating (white) man turned up, shouted and growled at all of us, and gave us citizenship test books, vaccination documents, daffodil-bearing beanie hats and umbrellas, along with instructions and mobile phones (we had to switch our own off). And he took more of our money. One person protested that he’d already paid, and was left behind, locked up in the van, never to be seen again…

After passing through a very brief ‘customs’ check, where another person was held back, people made their way to the platform. I  noticed that my ID lacked a signature, and my vaccination document had no personal details in it, so I borrowed a pen and filled in the latter. The former was plastic, so the pen could not write on it.

There was a wait for the train – 15-20 minutes or so, and then a 25-minute train journey. This was the bit where the tension eroded. During that time, everyone got lots of text messages meant to trigger actions, amuse, or create tension, but mostly people treated these as diversion while chatting to each other. (It became clear that everyone had been offered different things to trade, but no real trade developed on board the train)

Then, at Severn Tunnel Junction, some of the hat-wearing people got off. I thought they might have made a mistake. Later, I’d realise they (probably) hadn’t: the game is so non-linear that there are, I think, at least three different paths to the end, and people have received different instructions.
In Newport, we were told to head to a specific exit. There, the “border agency” organised us into a queue and divided us into people who were let in, and people who failed and were suspected of being illegal. (Or claiming asylum)

I was among the illegals. I couldn’t sing the Welsh anthem & my passport had been flagged up by Interpol. So I was among those who were bussed to the border agency offices. There, people were again divided – some were interviewed extensively about their attempts to claim asylum. Some (including me) were taken to a sound lab to do a test to see if our accents matched our ID cards. And one was never seen again…

At the end of it all, we were taken away to “our people” and told “Thank you for taking part in Bordergame”. “Our people”, it turned out, were genuine asylum seekers and we met them in a basement somewhere. This is where some of us had no clue what to do, or what was expected of us. People stayed for a few minutes, some had conversations, but despite efforts to make us feel comfortable by serving dhal and squash and so on, the theatre goers weren’t on the whole to keen on hanging around. I did have a conversation with one young man, and sooner than I expected found myself among the last guests left. 

Critique

That is what happened. Here are some thoughts about different aspects of the experience:

The actors were excellent.

The movement and immersiveness was great.

The events in Bristol were great – all the way until we were left to catch our train.

The non-linearity with different paths and outcomes was an interesting choice – but as it seemed to be largely random / predetermined and felt disconnected from our own choices and actions, it felt artificial and unearned and a little frustrating.

The politics was bonkers, and not in a good way. The basic premise is that the UK has split and that Cymru is doing better than the NewK (it was never clear whether this meant England, or England and Scotland). Disease is rife in the NewK. So, Cymru wants to stop illegal immigration. But it was never clear whose shoes the audience was stepping into. I guess the idea was that we were migrants from elsewhere who were already in England, but unhappy there & deciding to upgrade and move to Wales, but this was never explicit. It was certainly odd for all of us (mostly British people) to be pretending we were British in order to get into Cymru,

Unfortunately, there was no internal logic at all. For example, we were continuously quizzed about silly UK trivia from the citizenship tests. However, British people don’t know that sort of stuff. Given that we were all pretending to be British, it was irrelevant: no one does a pop quiz of Brit-Trivia at the border: that sort of stuff is something you experience if you want to naturalise and become British, not as a test of your authenticity at a border. As for the Republic of Cymru / NewK split: it was shoddy. If British IDs were still valid until 2017 and English people can enter Cymru, then why were any of us going to people traffickers? Worst of all, there was not a huge deal of clarity about what exactly was supposed to have happened / be the reality on the ground, so I kept feeling like I did not understand who I was meant to be.

Here’s what should have been different:

We should have had a little more background & intro to the scenario.

Our choices should have had a direct impact on our paths through the narrative. Perhaps the coyote should have hustled for extra bribes, offering a different route at the end. Perhaps the trading should have been organised by actors on board the train – offering different items, and each of us choosing what, if anything, to buy to make our entry into Cymru easier. It should have been possible to run out of money entirely – and there should have been a consequence to that (e.g. an entry visa administration fee).

I think the experience might have been improved if there had been (more) scripted events, within sight / hearing of the audience, but without interaction, to build up a sense of threat and urgency. You know, like the things you encounter when playing PC games like Half Life - things that enhance the plot, but you can't affect. The migrants in the border agency detention facility could have been led past locked rooms with people demanding to be let out on the other side. Someone could have been arrested and dragged off in handcuffs. We could have been given newspapers on the train, with headlines telling us more about the world we were meant to be inhabiting & fleeing from, rather than citizenship test revision handbooks. And it would have been really useful to have some kind of a catalyst at the start of the journey - something to make the audience really want and need to get away to Cymru. 

The sorting of legal / illegal people in Newport should have been more systematic and less played for amusement. Yes, the border guards were a little scary, too, but it strikes me that every white actor had a role that was slightly tongue in cheek, while the dark-skinned actors who we met in Bristol had roles that were the most individual, and the most serious of them all. So somehow the dark-skinned actor (even though he was physically shorter) ended up being scarier than all the white skinned ones – simply because the tense interactions with him were individual, serious, and not made safe by tongue in cheek satire. I know the organisers of Bordergame would not have wanted it to have any racist undertones, but I think that, unintentionally, it did. 

The politics should have made sense. Here’s what it should have been: UK has had an EU referendum and independence referendums at the same time. Cymru has become independent and stayed in the EU. England has left the EU. The EU has punished England by not letting it in the EEA and imposing customs duties etc. English businesses have moved to Wales and Scotland to make use of the single market, leading to crisis in England. Banks have collapsed, the state has gone bankrupt, and healthcare is only available for those who can afford it. England First have started burning down mosques, synagogues, Quaker houses of worship and gay bars. 

In that scenario, to get into Cymru, the audience has to pretend they are European. They are issued with documents listing various different countries, and they have to pass muster as coming from Austria, Slovenia, Portugal, Poland, Croatia, Czech Republic etc. – by knowing a few very basic facts about whichever country their document says they are from, and perhaps having a suitable accent. Not all Brits know the birthday of the Queen, or how many people are in prisons in England and Wales (two things we were constantly quizzed about). But anyone should be expected to know the capital city, president, and political party in government of their home country. And those of the people seeking asylum could do so because they are Quakers, Muslims or queer. All of a sudden, there is some internal logic (when I was asked to sing the Welsh national anthem, I should really have said “of course I can’t, I’m English!”). All of a sudden, there is no special reward for speaking Welsh (one of the theatre goers was particularly attention-seeking and started interjecting comments, and later, conversing with the guards in Welsh to be able to get into Cymru: to my mind, that’s cheating)

Finally, our encounter with the genuine asylum seekers should have been a bit more structured. Left to our own devices, people just didn’t really know what to do, how much to interact, when to leave. I wasn't sure whether I was in a set or someone's home. I've seen another review claim it was a real safehouse, but I don't know whether that's true. There should have been someone to explain where we were, what was going on, and then yes, some chance to talk to people. But there really should have been some framework to understand why we were there and whether we were still role playing or not.

As for the interactive / home volunteer audience, there were some technical issues (feeds kept hanging), but the really important one is that the choices and instructions should have been sent to actors, rather than certain members of the migrant audience. The actors would then presumably have actually acted on them, and done so convincingly and professionally. And there should have been a bit more to guide our choice on who to suspect of terrorism than photos, names and ages. (This is where giving choices consequences could have come in – by giving the monitoring audience access to specific moments and choices the migrant audience members make, and perhaps some more data)

Basically, Bordergame should have been a bit braver, a lot more logical, a bit more realistic, and a bit more intelligent / less shallow. I still think it was a great idea and well-executed project – but with some tweaks, it could have been spectacular.