ThirdSpace Theatre, formerly known as Windmill Young Actors, are back at Brighton Festival, with Earth Teeth, a new play looking at the sacrifices we might need to make for the sake of our planet.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt-Ruponts, editor at Sussex Newspapers.
00:06Really lovely to speak to Tanushka now at Third Space Theatre, staging something really interesting,
00:12really challenging and really relevant. May 4th and 5th at Brighton Dome Studios Theatre.
00:18The piece is called Earth Teeth. Explain.
00:22Our piece, Earth Teeth, is about a group of climate activists who have, at an anti-fracking protest,
00:37who have lost the fight and the protagonist is looking for what more she can do to save the earth.
00:49The earth that these young people find themselves born into with all this destruction and chaos before them.
00:58And you're saying that we've got to reach the realisation that we need to make sacrifices,
01:04sacrifices if things are to move on.
01:07Yes. And the sort of metaphor for this piece is that the protagonist discovers through shamanism
01:14the idea of an exchange with the earth and believing that her wobbly tooth is the earth asking for her voice.
01:21She gives her tooth to the earth and then she goes to persuade her eight friends to also pull out a tooth,
01:28to give it to the earth, to give the earth a voice.
01:31We also have a chorus who are the voice of the earth.
01:34It sounds terrific.
01:36And you've got a company of 18, haven't you? Nine chorus, nine princes?
01:40Yes.
01:41And how are they responding to the challenge?
01:43Oh, they love it. They really love it.
01:46The character parts absolutely enjoy a fantastic script by Sarah Lever,
01:53which realises a youth voice so accurately, perfectly.
01:57And it's very, very funny. They love the depth of the story.
02:04And the chorus are very used to, we're very used to as a company working with abstract themes
02:09and physical theatre and choral work.
02:12So it's a mixture of sort of complete super realism and hyper realism together.
02:20So we have physical theatre and naturalism.
02:23It sounds terrific. And the lovely thing from your point of view is you can see just how much your young performers are getting out of this.
02:30What is it that they gain from being part of something like this, do you think?
02:34They, obviously they gain skills in theatre and drama, but most of all,
02:40what we all gain is a sense of collective achievement.
02:47And that brings an amazing sense of community as we all work.
02:52Every theatre piece you ever make feels like you're trying to attain the impossible and then you achieve that.
02:58And that gives a really strong sense of community together.
03:04And they, they definitely gain friendship, but they, and they gain confidence, not just in performance, but in their, their ability to put an intellectual argument together as well.
03:15And to something because philosophy, philosophy, drama is the philosophy, it's the art of the philosophy of humanity of life.
03:26So in making drama, you are often debating and discussing the themes about what you're making.
03:34And I think that's a huge gain and an important gain.
03:37Another lovely thing for you is that you are now with a company that you don't mind admitting to the name of, do you?
03:43You've got the name right.
03:45Yeah.
03:46Yeah.
03:47I didn't choose the name myself originally.
03:48I sort of slightly inherited it.
03:50When you were windmill young actors, but now you are third space, third space theatre.
03:55Why is that better?
03:56Why does that convey more what you want to do?
03:59We're not about acting.
04:02We're about, we're not about getting people to just stand in place and, and do what a director tells them.
04:08We're about making work together collaboratively.
04:11Um, we are about asking questions and, um, creating spaces, um, where the doors are open and people can, um, you know, there is an actual theory of third space by, um, a theorist soldier.
04:30And he describes it as a space of radical openness where the, um, binaries and otherness of society can collapse.
04:38And, and together we can create this space where authority comes from within, not from outside.
04:45And we can make another, another world possible really within, you know, and there's the third space between reality and fiction as well.
04:55And that's kind of where you exist.
04:57It's terrific.
04:58It's Earth Teeth.
04:59It's from third space theatre and at the Brighton Dome studio theatre on May the 4th and 5th.
05:05Good luck with it.
05:06And lovely to speak to you.