[Performance Analysis:] FREEDOM, Chisenhale Dance Space, London.

My Theatre Mentor, Lee James Broadwood, analyses Freedom, Chisenhale Dance Space, London.

This analysis has been written in the new Letters from a Mentor format introduced in July 2026. For more information on this format, visit this publication.

Dear Unity Arts Collective Team,

I had the privilege of discussing your performance-exhibition and a bit of my thinking with Surya after its close. I was really impressed by the work you had produced and by your commitment to the liveness of performance and trance work, which was certainly inherent to and palpable in this work.

I think the work is really strong, and I have some suggestions, some of which I mentioned to Surya, to really drive its messages home, without taking away from the spontaneity, feltness, and liveness of your agent style and without requiring extensive funding. To be able to illustrate one of my principal suggestions within the restriction of this word count, I will analyse one significant moment, in particular, as I feel my line of thinking here could be applied to various other aspects of the performance, too.

I worded my thinking here to Surya as “It felt as though, rather than performance-exhibition being a means of exploring immigration, immigration was sometimes being used as a means of exploring performance-exhibition.” This is not true of the entire work, of course, but it was true of its most significant events. For example, I thought the invitation to the audience to join in animating the second puppet was a very poignant and interesting idea: it directly encourages group effort in successfully protecting an immigrant and bringing them to safety.

However, currently the focus is forced onto the puppeteering itself; it is present as a quirky and enjoyable teamwork exercise with little risk, purely performative and hedonistic, which allows for a misalignment from your trance work efforts. This was furthermore evidenced by an audience member’s fascination with the mechanics and aesthetics of puppeteering thereafter, as opposed to how puppetry can be, and should be here, used in performance to illustrate, convey and materialise meaning and theory.

One way to realign this inclusion would be to give the puppet a name (X) and to refer to it NOT as a puppet but solely as X, as an immigrant, and to treat them accordingly: as a human, as a real person with trauma, with a history. Changing James’s passive instruction, “Slow-motion is good for puppets” to something visceral, purposeful and relevant to content, such as “X needs help. X moves slowly because she is weary, dehydrated, and starving”, would both succeed at facilitating the desired puppeteering activity of the performance but, more importantly, at relating it back to the content, immigration, and at providing an emotive impulse: we now proceed with caution, delicateness, care, when moving X. We now have a collective objective: bring X to safety — respectfully. If we were then to use the true anecdotes of the immigrants behind this work, to further contextualise and populate this collective journey, inspired by the real obstacles and dangers out at sea or while crossing borders that they faced, this would add even further emotivity and didacticism to the work.

Including the shark puppet is an excellent idea, and the same theory above applies: be wary of being overly playful with a “mind the shark” game; its presence ought to be silent, lurking, dangerous. The mere connotation of its image, along with its physical proximity to the audience-performers, is enough to convey danger in this context without caricaturising and gamifying. We remove the playful puppetry of sharks and replace it with a puppet as a vehicle to achieve active audience awareness and comprehension of the underlying material.

How much more poignant would it have been if the implication behind this exercice was that with the help of the collective given to an immigrant stranger, the careful journey to safety would ensure the immigrant’s life, their protection, their fortitude? If the journey was not so simple as walking from one side of the room to another in slow-motion, but if they had obstacles and dangers they would actively confront and work together to overcome, the message would be so much more tangible and relevant to the rest of the content which pivots not around the journey itself but on risk and treatment — most notably, detention, mental and physical decline, and death.

This suggestion is not to take away from the definite successes of this work. There is so much strong material here, from the compelling statistics to the personal stories, to the viscerality of performative elements. If we just take a moment to gently draw out a few of these finer nuances, I think it will really elevate the impactful message you've already built. I hope the above suggestion, along with those in my discussion with you, Surya, has given you all some inspiration and ideas to build upon. Your work was a true pleasure to watch, very original and inspiring, and I would love to take our discussions further by offering further support on any of the following, specific to your performance, which I have marked as what I consider to be low–high priority:

• Differentiation between agent style and performance style. (High Priority)

• Ensuring thematic relevance in all constituents: incorporation of found objects, and the choice of object, instrument and medium types. (Medium Priority).

• Raw presentation vs histrionics: presenting real histories, creations and identities as factual accounts within a mimetic context. (High Priority)

• Conceiving and encouraging audience participation. (Low Priority)

• Chronology and spatial presentation: ensuring distinction in performance between an immigrant’s journey and their detention upon arrival. (High Priority)

Of course, I welcome discussions about any other aspect of the work on which you would like support, too — just let me know.

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