Adah Kay Memorial Commission
(Ongoing)In honour of Adah Kay – writer, anthropologist, urban planner and lifelong activist.
With support from the MSN Fund, ice&fire have established the Adah Kay Memorial Commission. This fund aims to build on Adah’s legacy with ice&fire, using theatre as a means to communicate some of the most important and under-represented stories.
The prize fund will be awarded annually (over five years) to a theatre maker and an expert witness (an academic with field experience/social researcher/rights defender/survivor) to create an original play that examines a contemporary human rights issue.
The 2018 commission is a theatrical response to Jason Hickel’s The Divide, looking at how and why global inequality persists and grows. Jason is working with ice&fire as the expert witness on this project.
Our inaugural commission, with Dr Chris Rossdale and theatre-makers at Teatro Vivo, led by Sophie Austin, explored the relationship between the Middle-East power plays, militarism, mass migration and the arms trade. The resulting work was called #ArmingtheWorld and took place in September 2017. It will continue to tour the UK in 2018 and is available upon request.
The 2017 commission brings political philosopher Dr Sarah Fine together with playwright Amy Ng and Director Donnacadh O’Briain. Our aim is to explore Dr Fine’s research around the ethics of immigration controls. We are interested in inviting audiences to play and interact with some of these concepts, creating a welcoming and playful experience that allows people to explore their own assumptions and beliefs around immigration controls and what is at the heart of them. Production is planned for 2019.
