Creator: Amit Lahav
Music: Dave Price
For many of us, we always know where our home is. It has been in the same place since birth, and we can always return.
We are the lucky ones; for others, finding a place to call home can be a long, dangerous road, and they may not be made to feel welcome when they get there.
Gecko Theatre’s Kin, created by its artistic director Amit Lahav and devised with the company’s corps of international dancers and movement artists, is a reflection of the challenges many people around the world face in the quest for somewhere to call home. Inspired by Lahav’s grandmother, who in 1932 escaped persecution in Yemen and travelled to Palestine, a sense of family also runs through the narrative of the piece.
Kin opens with its eight performers as carousing soldiers, a sense of party and camaraderie present in the loosely regimented choreography. Soon, we see the other side of their work as border guards, inspecting documents and visas of those seeking to enter their land. Rejected applicants are thrown around and kicked, while white people in suits have no problem. The next time we see the soldiers partying, it is through a colder, more cynical eye.
Chris Swain’s lighting provides huge amounts of atmosphere throughout, with the stage often illuminated by onstage lanterns (some of which may be in the shape of two-bar heaters or battered televisions). This also helps some life-size puppets be even more effectively rendered, although their presence is brief enough that their purpose and meaning are unclear.
Elsewhere in the piece, a family who struggles to be accepted at the border find themselves tempted by assimilation – removing their own headwear, donning ties, and even rubbing white paint over their faces. This act, a very literal metaphor for how migrants are often told they should behave by abandoning their own culture and behaving like those from whom they seek shelter, is as effective as it is unsubtle. When the paint is wiped off, the tie loosened, and pride in one’s heritage restored, the rejection returns.
But while the messages in Kin are obvious, that does not render them any less effective, thought-provoking, and necessary. Given the multi-year nature of Gecko and Lahav’s development process, Kin is not a direct response to current events in Gaza and Israel but to the ongoing and seemingly intractable issues faced by those seeking a place to call home.
The piece ends with the company speaking directly to the audience, each performer telling us where they are from – Central and South America, India, Scandinavia, and more – and what home means to them. Each has a different story; Kin is a testament to the global similarities and beautiful differences in everyone’s quest to find a home.
Continues until 27 January 2024