A magical forest comes alive through dance, puppetry and play in Return to the Forest, a brand-new family friendly promenade performance piece for ages 8+. Co-produced with Factory International and co-commissioned by Sadler’s Wells, the piece centres acclaimed company Theatre-Rites’ 30th anniversary celebrations this year.
Return to the Forest centres on the idea that heritage is “a living, breathing force.” How did you translate such an abstract concept into something theatrically tangible—especially for younger audiences?
All Theatre-Rites productions begin with the inspiration of an object, a site or a puppet. In Return to the Forest, created with South African Choreographer Gregory Maqoma, our inspirations have come from a carefully selected group of museum objects. These treasures hold history and once researched and engaged with by our creative team including puppeteers, dancers, craftswomen and composers from varying cultures which the objects relate to, then their heritage turns into a living, breathing artistic expression. The objects are animated and transformed through dance and puppetry in a way which is theatrical and magical. This approach is appealing to our younger audience but also has subtle layers of meaning for the adults who are with them. This is not a story in words, but a narrative which speaks the visual and physical language of dance and puppetry, suitable for adults and children over 8.
The production moves from a museum space into an enchanted forest through promenade staging. What dramaturgical role does this spatial transition play in shaping the audience’s understanding of ownership and freedom?
In Return to the Forest the 5 precious objects start in a museum and, through dance and puppetry, come alive to tell us their stories. By following the objects the audiences will be transported from a museum space to an enchanted forest, then into the magical world of tangly roots, re-emerging into the joys of a masquerade celebrating all things important – marking the importance of knowing one’s roots, nurturing potential growth and sustaining connections.
Dramaturgically, this shift in space allows the audience to think about the benefits, caretaking and responsibility of museum spaces, and the origin story of each treasure. How they were once free from being displayed and represented something essential to their community.
As Gregory says ‘this format allows the audience to become part of the movement and changing spaces rather than witnesses to it. When we remove fixed seating, we also remove the hierarchy of who performs and who observes. The space becomes porous, alive. The audience is invited to navigate, to choose where to look, what to follow, what to feel. That is closer to how memory actually works – fragmented, embodied, constantly shifting. You don’t just sit and watch memory; you move through it. This format allows us to activate that sense of discovery and intimacy’.
In this performance the audience both sit and promenade throughout the experience.
Your work is often associated with animism and what you’ve described as a “puppet whispering” technique. How does this approach inform the way objects in this piece seem to possess agency—or even lead the narrative?
Animism perceives all things as being animate, and all parts of nature having a soul that can be listened to. My Puppet Whispering technique involves listening to and engaging with the object or the puppet and not the puppeteer – I whisper to the objects until they come to life and tell me what they want to do or what message they have for us. Then they can lead the narrative.
In many successful recent productions’ puppetry has enabled us to play with the human at different scales or represent animals on stage. More recently we have seen an interest in puppetry helping us imagine an ‘other’ world – magical figures which hold symbolic meaning.
The puppetry for Return to the Forest is inspired by Masquerade practice from around the world, whether that be the various mask figures that use an Ishoba stick in different countries, the elaborate masks of West African traditions, the Mas celebrations of the Caribbean, or the many versions of Krampus around Europe and the folk dances and hobby horses of the UK. The essential element of Masquerade is its ability to make the wearer invisible. Many would say it is so that the wearer can disappear and take on a spirit of something bigger than themselves and perform with that creative energy for the benefit of the well-being of the community it is celebrated within.
In this show a number of artists, from all over the world, have shared the objects and masquerade practice which they have encountered. As a team, we have allowed these references to give birth to some new contemporary masquerade figures who will hopefully have their own exciting and maybe healing impact on our audiences.
There’s an interesting tension between preservation and liberation—the museum as a space of protection, but also of restriction. Were you consciously engaging with debates around repatriation and cultural ownership?
Like all Theatre-Rites projects Return to the Forest is built on a foundation of extensive research which of course included informing ourselves of the many conversations about repatriation and ownership. Our focus is always on the objects, that’s the starting point of every show. In 2024 we planned a week of r&d in London and I asked Gregory to bring an object with him as a starting point. He brought an Ishoba, a healing stick from South Africa, made by his brother who is a Healer. It was by playing with this object and listening to its ancestral wisdom and physical origin that certain creative ideas began to emerge. I also asked Visual Artist Bunmi Agusto to introduce an object to Gregory and me, and she helped us reimagine a contemporary mask inspired by her Yorubic culture in Nigeria; a Gelede Mask. This inspired further ideas for dance and puppetry, and we went on to discover additional inspiring museum objects.
As a team, we were already aware of the challenges associated with being inspired by such ancestral objects and the on-going important post-colonial debates about ownership and representation. We sought out how to be respectful in our process. It was at that point when Bunmi said to me ‘ of course the traditional masks are just dead objects when hung in a museum’ removed from their original purpose. So, in the research weeks we asked the objects where they would rather be, or where they once thrived. Both the Ishoba and the Gelede took us back to the Forest. To nature.
We have been inspired by the artistic discussions adults are having about post-colonial ownership of museum objects and the place of ancestral wisdom in light of climate change and an ever-increasing digital age. Without being too didactic, Theatre-Rites, using a more abstract and symbolic visual language, wishes to make this show an imaginative opportunity for the young and old to consider these subjects in a way appropriate to them.
This is a collaboration with Gregory Maqoma, whose choreographic language is deeply rooted in South African histories and embodiment. How did you negotiate authorship and cultural specificity within a work aimed at a broad, family audience?
Negotiating authorship in collaborative, cross cultural artwork takes time. Essentially it is a shared authorship. We protect this by ensuring we do extensive research, inviting the right people to join the process and allowing the space between ideas to flourish. If the creative process is truly inclusive, then the collaborators will all be able to embody it and find their own historical connections. References to the South African experience of Gregory and our dancer/singer Xolisile Bongwana are clearly in the creative space. Equally as valid is the Yorubic experience brought into the room from our Assistant Choreographer Miguel Altunaga from Cuba, Costume Designer Kinnetia Isidore and Visual Artist Bunmi Agusto from Nigeria. This is then parallelled with European rituals encountered by our performers from Estonia and UK. The Green Man celebrations in Hastings, where one of our composers Frank Moon is based, has also influenced our imaginations, as have the number of Masquerade practices and folklore traditions which I and the other puppet makers Naomi Oppenheim and Alison Duddle have been studying all our lives. Jean Chan, the Designer then brings her own cultural influence into the room and gives us an overall aesthetic framework and contributed a specific museum object – a heart made of red thread inspired by Chinese knot threading tradition.
If we truly play creatively together then the work embodies more than just one cultural reference. It becomes a celebration of our connections and exchanges. Then it is likely to engage with the multi-cultural family audiences who will be attending.
The show is described as both playful and thought-provoking. How do you calibrate that balance—ensuring accessibility for children while still inviting more complex, even political readings for adult audiences?
Previously Theatre-Rites have created productions for children exploring Neuroscience, Economics, Death, the Refugee experience and Coal Mining, to name a few. As an Artist I wish to use my Art as a way of expanding my own research interests, some of which, on first glance, do not appear very child-friendly. However, all these topics can have a huge impact on children, and we need to give them a chance to ponder on their own developing views. I believe there is a way to present these themes to children which is appropriate, and may I dare say, even more exciting than some of the didactic work created for adults.
Many people think we must sort out our adult opinions before we can present them to children. However, currently adults don’t always have the answer, and I feel it is wise to present food for thought which can be shared by all ages. I remember for Bank On It, our site-specific show for the Barbican, the adults who came with their children arrived feeling angry in the light of the recent Economic Crisis. They left the show feeling moved and inspired by the way the children engaged with thoughts around shared resources. The Welcoming Party, for Manchester International Festival, inspired wonderful conversations around how we should consider what home looks like and how we can provide safety for each other. Experiencing theatre with adults and children is really very special.
In Return to the Forest we are being inspired by the artistic discussions adults are having about post-colonial ownership of museum objects and the place of ancestral wisdom in light of climate change and an ever-increasing digital age. Without being too didactic, Theatre-Rites, Gregory Maqoma and the creative team, using a more abstract and symbolic visual language, wish to make this show an imaginative opportunity for the young and old to consider these subjects in a way that delights and intrigues them.