G's Theatre Blog

  © Zhaolin Zhou and Tingying The wholesome feeling I have while walking home after  Walking Cats  at Camden People's Theatre is almost impossible to put down in words. As I walk home, I keep thinking about how, as a migrant, the show's themes of nostalgia and fitting in feel relevant and relatable; at the same time, it's a unique masterclass in storytelling that highlights the uniqueness of each individual experience, in all their singular beauty and vulnerability.  Walking Cats  is an intimate and endlessly ingenious exploration of two parts within the protagonist's soul, and the effort to make them coexist. On one side, we have Kilburn Cat, a grey and white cat who lives in North London, shops for groceries at the Sainsbury's down the road, and tries to get acquainted with its new home away from home; Dongfeng Cat, on the other hand, comes from a village in China, is colorful, and very in touch with its roots, strengthening that connection with food and memories

  © Craig Fuller When I wrote my MA dissertation, I was interested in exploring how theatre and social abjection are interconnected. My first chapter ended up being about the performativity of asylum and Zodwa Nyoni's play Nine Lives , in which the protagonist Ishmael is forced to escape his home in Zimbabwe because his homosexuality is endangering his life. I found myself rethinking a lot about what I learned from that process the other night when watching The P Word at Bush Theatre. The show recounts the story of two gay Pakistani men; Bilal (Waleed Akhtar) leads a busy but lonely life between his job in fashion, the gym, and Grindr hook-ups. Zafar (Esh Alladi) is an asylum seeker who fled from his village after his father murdered his partner; he now finds himself in the hostile Hounslow, waiting for his claim to be processed. In order not to be sent back to his death, Zafar has to, somehow, prove his homosexuality. The bureaucratic performance he is expected to provide is dehum