truth and reconciliation at Bussey Building

truth and reconciliation at Bussey Building

05 October, 2011
by: CatherineSpoonfed

The grim power of confrontation and the impossibilty of reconciliation plays out in debbie tucker-green's truth and reconciliation at Bussey Building

“Buildings where theatre takes place are exclusive,” observes Dominic Cooke, artistic director of the Royal Court, at the launch of their latest Theatre Local season. The Royal Court’s pop-up theatre initiative involves taking over Peckham’s Bussey Building for two months to break down this exclusivity and bring theatre to new audiences.

Cooke describes Peckham, an area that is currently having something of a cultural renaissance, as “vibrant”; a place where a colourful “collision of different cultures” can be witnessed on the streets. In this light, debbie tucker green’s truth and reconciliation (clearly capital letters are exclusive too) is an intriguing piece to showcase here. Cultures are also colliding in tucker green’s world but for all the wrong reasons. Examining the fallout from violence and atrocity, tucker green’s overlapping collage of scenes guides the audience through the aftermaths of several comparatively recent bloody conflicts.

We move from South Africa to Rwanda to Northern Ireland, sweeping through Bosnia and Zimbabwe along the way. In each of the fragmented vignettes, often simultaneously crowding the small performance space, victims confront each other and their perpetrators. They speak in a language that is often stuttering, frequently forceful and at times breathtakingly powerful.

There is no question mark at the end of tucker green’s title, but perhaps there ought to be. The playwright repeatedly questions what is true and asks if reconciliation is possible, to which the answer is almost invariably no.

Designer Lisa Marie Hall has done an impressive job with the blank canvas of this bare space inside the Bussey Building. Places and years are scratched on the walls, illuminated one by one to tell the audience where and when we are. The grooves are painfully reminiscent of etchings on prison walls, communicating the agony that has scarred tucker green’s characters. As the consistently solid cast of 22 pace around the compact space, their footsteps disturb the black, ash-like blanket that covers the bare floorboards, both a symbol of the dark emotional residue of such conflicts and a potent visual reminder of the marks left by the actions of these individuals.

The seemingly haphazard layering of tucker green’s scenes, however, gives an impression that is as scattered as the debris underfoot. Some snapshots, such as the painfully short scene between two Serbian ex-soldiers and a pregnant Bosnian rape victim, are fragile skeletons coated with just enough flesh to inject a sharp sting, while others drag on unnecessarily. The characters talk in circles, a technique that poignantly conveys their struggle to communicate in the face of rage and trauma, but one that becomes monotonous when pushed too far.

In this latest offering, directed by the playwright, tucker green’s vision is a wide one that is broken up into disjointed little bits and loses something by trying to cram this myriad of scenes into just over an hour. Despite this, the confrontations themselves manage to achieve a certain grim power and one that will no doubt impress itself firmly on the minds of those who visit it here in the unusual surroundings of the Bussey Building.

truth and reconciliation runs at Bussey Building until 15th October. 

Image by Stephen Cummiskey

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CatherineSpoonfed