Missing is performed and written by Engineer, a new theatre company to come out of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
The show tackles some of the issues connected with missing people and their families, which until now I had not considered as a human rights issue.
I took the opportunity to speak to Simon Lyshon, one of Engineer's founding members to get the back story behind the show.
How you you go about researching the issues involved?
We were lucky to have had a good contact in Greg Walton. He had already built up a network of people who were interested in the issue and we asked him to approach his network to see if we could talk to them.
A lot of the work from then on involved arranging interviews. We were a new theatre company, we lacked any previous record of tackling such big issues and the only thing we had was our former connection with Royal Central.
We had to build up trust. Following the initial introduction, we built that trust. We began to record interviews. We had to make sure we kept it real; each subtle intonation in speech and nuance was particularly important to us. The issue remained live for many of the people interviewed and we had to keep it personal for that reason.
Why did you decide to use Verbatim, as opposed to a more traditional form of documentary storytelling or theatre?
Verbatim is a different form of theatre. It lives and breathes from the stories of real people. As it is based on real-life conversation, it can have a tendency to become static and dry in terms of presentation. Verbatim is known as 'documentary theatre' by many people and this brings it's own set of prejudices. We were keen to break away from this and did this by exploring ways of physicalising and presenting the text in a more active way.
How does the set relate to the issue of missing people?
When people go missing, usually all that is left behind are the objects that belonged to them. So, to put it into context, when we talk about the case of Luke Durbin, his sister speaks about the old caravan at the back of the house, which belonged to Luke. In the case of Moira Anderson also covered in the show, we place a present - a box in itself - inside a cupboard, representing all of the unopened presents that Moira's mother bought for her.
Also, some of the boxes allow us to represent the passage of time - demonstrating the passing of seasons. Each box being labelled, Spring, Summer or Autumn and when opened sound illustrates the season, such as chirping birds in Spring.
They represent the idea of archives, the passage of time and that all that is left of a person are their possessions.
The show also covers the Police response, how did you research this aspect?
In one interview, we were told, and this is also in the show, that if a strong enough case could be made for a particular investigation, then the resources would be made available for that investigation. In this respect, its not just a question about a lack of resources from the Police point of view.
We also used various academic reports concerning missing people. These reports were mainly written with a criminal justice / Police audience in mind and unfortunately don't always translate into dramatic/theatrical material very easily. However, one useful report was entitled "Geographies of Missing People" co-authored by the University of Glasgow.
The show is quite powerful. It opened my eyes. Is there any message that you are seeking to get across?
Naturally, this question did occur to us in the process of making the show. We asked ourselves, what is Missing? Is this about the experience of missing people, the Police, Society or the whole of the media?
We did not consider this an equalities or human rights issue as such. We did not want to relay a political message.
Missing, is probably best considered as a "Human Experience"; a window into the experiences of the people left behind.
I took the opportunity to speak to Simon Lyshon, one of Engineer's founding members to get the back story behind the show.
Why the issue of Missing people?
We were living with Greg Walton from the Independent and he had written a piece about how there are an estimated 275,000 missing people in Britain every year. That is around 1 person going missing every 2 minutes - to give you an idea of scale, that's a City the size of Plymouth.
Jesse, a co-founder along with myself, Beatrice and George, started the project after that.
How you you go about researching the issues involved?
We were lucky to have had a good contact in Greg Walton. He had already built up a network of people who were interested in the issue and we asked him to approach his network to see if we could talk to them.
A lot of the work from then on involved arranging interviews. We were a new theatre company, we lacked any previous record of tackling such big issues and the only thing we had was our former connection with Royal Central.
We had to build up trust. Following the initial introduction, we built that trust. We began to record interviews. We had to make sure we kept it real; each subtle intonation in speech and nuance was particularly important to us. The issue remained live for many of the people interviewed and we had to keep it personal for that reason.
Why did you decide to use Verbatim, as opposed to a more traditional form of documentary storytelling or theatre?
Verbatim is a different form of theatre. It lives and breathes from the stories of real people. As it is based on real-life conversation, it can have a tendency to become static and dry in terms of presentation. Verbatim is known as 'documentary theatre' by many people and this brings it's own set of prejudices. We were keen to break away from this and did this by exploring ways of physicalising and presenting the text in a more active way.
How does the set relate to the issue of missing people?
When people go missing, usually all that is left behind are the objects that belonged to them. So, to put it into context, when we talk about the case of Luke Durbin, his sister speaks about the old caravan at the back of the house, which belonged to Luke. In the case of Moira Anderson also covered in the show, we place a present - a box in itself - inside a cupboard, representing all of the unopened presents that Moira's mother bought for her.
Also, some of the boxes allow us to represent the passage of time - demonstrating the passing of seasons. Each box being labelled, Spring, Summer or Autumn and when opened sound illustrates the season, such as chirping birds in Spring.
They represent the idea of archives, the passage of time and that all that is left of a person are their possessions.
The show also covers the Police response, how did you research this aspect?
The character in the show is actually an amalgam of several different sources. To be fair, it's not just about saying that the Police need to do more, or that there needs to be some sort of national database or investigating agency created. We found out, that it is actually more complex than that.
In one interview, we were told, and this is also in the show, that if a strong enough case could be made for a particular investigation, then the resources would be made available for that investigation. In this respect, its not just a question about a lack of resources from the Police point of view.
In reality, the Police have limited ways of investigating the disappearance of people. There is only so much that can be gained from CCTV, talking to witnesses and tracking the person before they go missing.
We also used various academic reports concerning missing people. These reports were mainly written with a criminal justice / Police audience in mind and unfortunately don't always translate into dramatic/theatrical material very easily. However, one useful report was entitled "Geographies of Missing People" co-authored by the University of Glasgow.
The show is quite powerful. It opened my eyes. Is there any message that you are seeking to get across?
Naturally, this question did occur to us in the process of making the show. We asked ourselves, what is Missing? Is this about the experience of missing people, the Police, Society or the whole of the media?
We did not consider this an equalities or human rights issue as such. We did not want to relay a political message.
Missing, is probably best considered as a "Human Experience"; a window into the experiences of the people left behind.
