London theater turns England's riots into a drama
But that is the offer currently packing audiences into London's Tricycle Theatre, a small venue that has built a big reputation with fact-based plays about divisive issues, from Guantanamo Bay to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The Riots," which opened this week, vividly recreates the mayhem that raged for four nights in August through the testimony of real people — residents, police, politicians, community workers and the rioters themselves.
Director Nicholas Kent said the play was intended to take the place of a public inquiry into the riots, which the government has declined to hold.
"It didn't have to happen," Kent said. "That's the thing I totally took away from our work on the play.
"It seemed to us important to explore the reasons for cheap nba women jersey the riots and people's motivations and what happened and what our response was to it as Londoners — and how we could prevent something like that happening again."
The riots were triggered by the fatal police shooting, in disputed circumstances, of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in the working-class London district of Tottenham on Aug. 4. The play shows how Duggan's death led, partly through accidents and missteps, to Britain's worst civil unrest in a generation. The mayhem across London and other English cities left hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of property damage, as well as pain and questions, in its wake.
Writer Gillian Slovo and her researchers taped 56 hours of interviews with everyone from police officers on duty in Tottenham that night to community leaders, young looters and a man left homeless by arson. They even heard from two people imprisoned for rioting, who wrote to the theater with adidas Boston Celtics Rajon Rondo Revolution 30 Authentic jersey their stories after the Tricycle put an ad in a prison newspaper.
The conservative Daily Mail newspaper criticized the company for giving criminals a voice, but Slovo said the rioters' viewpoint was vital.
"I do think it's important for us to listen and to see how they got caught up, what they think about it afterwards and what provoked them to do it," she told BBC radio. "Because otherwise how can you make sure that this won't happen again?"
Although a few senior politicians — including London Mayor Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Theresa May — declined to participate, many agreed to give interviews, as did top police officers. Kent said many police and politicians were as shocked by the riots as most Britons, and wanted to learn the lessons.
Kent, who has led the Tricycle since 1984, plans to step down next year. Under his leadership, the 250-seat venue in a scruffy part of north London has gained international acclaim with documentary dramas and verbatim plays which mold real people's words into compelling theater.
In 2003, "Justifying War" recreated the legal inquiry into the death of David Kelly, a weapons expert caught up in a storm about the British government's case for war with Iraq. The next year, "Guantanamo — Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" drew on adidas Boston Celtics Kevin Garnett jersey the testimony of terrorist suspects detained at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The play transferred to London's West End and ran off-Broadway in New York.
