INTERVIEW: Director Amy Draper on Day of the Living at the RSC Mischief Festival

Director Amy Draper tells Gill Sutherland about Day of the Living, which is on at The Other Place as part of the RSC’s Mischief Festival. The play is inspired by the events in Iguala, Mexico, 2014, when 43 students were forcibly taken and disappeared.

First of all is there any kind of update on what might have happened to the 43 male students?

“There’s been no update on the official government account which came 17 months after the case: that the students had been taken by a cartel and the bodies burned in a dump. That story has been proven by various human rights organisations to be false. So it’s just sort of drifted, and remains in limbo – with the government insisting that that’s the truth.

“It’s still very much unfinished business. A lot of parents have taken the matters into their own hands and have been digging in the hills near Iguala looking for the students’ remains; horrifically they have discovered other mass graves, which are not their sons. So it’s opened a lid on the situation; people are still protesting and fighting, but it’s far from solved.”

How have you put your story together?

“We’ve used a book called I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us, which includes testimony mainly from students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College [where the 43 were studying], who survived to tell their stories. The book was compiled by John Gibler, who’s been our main contact. He lives in Mexico City and meets protestors and families every month; the case is still very active but sadly it's not the only case.”

What was it about the chain of events in Iguala that put it on the global stage?

“It’s a good question because I have done lots of research and come across many cases of people in Mexico that have disappeared en masse. There were a couple of aspects about this case that made it particularly compelling. Firstly there were 43 of them, so a large number, and they were students mainly from poor rural families that had gone to Ayotzinapa College to learn and go back to their communities to be teachers, so they were doing a good worthy thing; the injustice of that was felt quite keenly. Secondly the technology meant a lot of what happened that night was filmed on phones, and spread on social media.”

How does the retelling of those events work as a drama?

“It’s a devised piece which means we are still working it out! There are six ensemble cast members. We use verbatim testimony from the book and some accounts are voice recordings; and that charts who the students are, what they study.

“The drama tells what happens from when the students commandeer buses [to get to an annual protest in Iguala that mark the 1968 massacre of students] and to what happened and the aftermath.

“What is really striking reading that book of testimony is that there’s lots of conflicting accounts — even people who were there on the same side say different things. So a lot of the piece is about what’s true and what’s not true. We examine what might have happened, but clearly there are so many versions, so what the piece can’t do is supply answers, it just sets out that story.

“Running alongside this we have a fictionalised story from a fictional family — a grandfather, mother and ten-year-old girl, and there is an older brother who is one of the disappeared students; so it follows them in the aftermath.”

You use masks and music in the play, tell us about that.

“The family are fully masked characters so they are incredibly expressive and poignant, sometimes hilarious — they can’t speak, they are deliberately voiceless characters. Then there are a lot of characters with half-masks, and they are quite satirical and political.

“Mask is a huge thing in Mexico — such as the wrestling masks — so our premiss is that every character who is not a storyteller from the ensemble is masked in some way. You never see anyone’s true colours as it were, and that’s quite deliberate because the piece is about corruption and cover up.

“There’s lots of music too, about 11 songs, so it’s really a musical. It’s inspired by lots of Mexican music but also our own style.”

What will the audience make of the production?

“We have some Mexican cast members, and there’s a real flavour of the country — it’s colourful and bright.

“The play is 70 minutes, so it’s quick and economic and bold. I’m not a big fan of the word ‘educate’, it sounds so dry; but what we hope to impart is what is happening in Mexico right now, and this story.

“It’s a cerebral and emotional journey. We can’t provide answers so it’s important we draw the tragedy, but explore the sense of community and hope in Mexico too.”

Thinking of the meaning for the audience, what are the ramifications of the story for a UK audience?

“From a theatrical point of view, it’s important to have that emotional connection with the characters: what if it was me or my family? How that affects you individually, but then there’s a more global aspect too.

“We start with Ayotzinapa, which is small, a microcosm of the story, then we turn our heads to Mexico entirely, then at the very end there’s a very gentle turning out to the global implications. Because a lot of it is to do with the drugs trade, and the cartels, which is in turn linked to the States, where the demand for drugs comes from – and then of course the wall [Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the Mexico border]… All that stuff, and the Western world is very implicated. We are linked politically and socially – and of course the drugs trade is here as well. We are trying to get across that it is all interlinked. We hope that it makes you turn a gentle eye to what is happening in Britain. How many steps do you have to get to where cycles of violence are imbedded in a culture?

“The play is empathetic. If people leave the theatre and know a little bit more than they did before; or they then go and Goggle it, or do some research that’s a positive thing.

What can people do?

“I believe in the power of theatre to change minds and therefore change the world, that’s why I do it. I’m not expecting anyone to go to Mexico City and start marching, although great if they did… I think it’s more about being globally and politically aware personally. We’ll be giving out information on where people can find out more. I see it as a springboard — it’s about going ‘this is a thing that needs talking about’ and in short it’s about having that conversation.”

When and where: The Mischief Festival brings two powerful political dramas to The Other Place and runs to 23rd June. The plays are seen together with an interval. As well as Day of the Living, there is #WeAreArrested which tells the story of Turkish journalist Can Dündar’s stance against corruption in his country (see our interview with Sophie Ivatts in next week's Herald). For tickets go to www.rsc.or.uk or call 01789 403493.