Look Left Look Right's work takes its inspiration from its surrounding. Molly Taylor explains why visiting Lagos has been a fascinating – but steep – learning curve.
Listening to what the city has to tell us
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(c) Mimi Poskitt
We have arrived! Lagos has welcomed us in a haze of dust and heat, and honking car horns. We are slowly acclimatising to the city, its frenetic pace and ebullient people. For both Mimi [Poskitt] and I, this is our first visit to Africa, and as our bodies are labouring in the humidity, our brains have been buzzing with the prospect of making a production for the Lagos Theatre Festival.
Early meetings with the British Council and the festival producers have been lively affairs; we are learning quickly that Lagosians love to laugh, and they do so with their whole bodies. We visit the festival site, Freedom Park. for the first time, and instantly Mimi and I go into research mode, trying to unearth the stories that are attached to the site. Our lack of knowledge about the area, the city, the site, makes us sponges for new information. The site was previously the home of Broad Street Prison, a colonial jail that closed not long after independence, and it housed some noteworthy political activists. We talk to the museum curator, the architect, and we scour the park for potential performance spaces.
"...we are learning quickly that Lagosians love to laugh, and they do so with their whole bodies"
The work Look Left Look Right make responds directly to the site of performance, so the discovery process of what the show will be is always a fluid one. We have tried to come to Lagos without a pre-conceived notion of the stories we want to tell; we’re here to absorb what the city has to tell us, so these first few days have been about asking a lot of questions and seeing where the answers take us. One thing we love, one thing we will rely on as researchers, is that Lagosians love to talk! There is a directness here that is refreshing. By the end of the first week we have interviewed lawyers, historians, retired policemen, artists; we’ve spent a morning at the Lagos State High Court looking for details of the prison itself. We are meeting a fascinating array of people. And we haven’t even met the actors yet...
Look Left Look Right is in Lagos with the support of the British Council to start making a new piece of work. This is the first of two blogs documentating the process. LLLR's Edinburgh Showcase piece, You Once Said Yes, is currently at the Perth Festival in Australia, also supported by the British Council.
You can follow Look Left Look Right's progress @LookLeftLookRt and you can keep up to date with the Theatre and Dance team's work and projects @UKTheatreDance.
