To begin, what is Night Train Theatre Company?

Night Train is dedicated to sharing compelling stories from around the world, with a focus on original translations and new stories. Like night trains traversing different regions, terrains and countries, we see our role as being a conveyer of stories and voices, aiming to break boundaries and connect different parts of the globe.

We are committed to finding urgent stories from different times and places, and working to show their relevance in new contexts. Our style is characterised by a focus on storytelling, using tools such as movement, music, and puppetry, to develop plays that are bold, immediate, and visually and aurally engaging. Some of the companies that we have drawn inspiration from include Kneehigh, Cheek by Jowl, and the work of Peter Brook.

And who’s behind Night Train?

At the moment, Night Train has four core members. Although we represent only a small subset of countries/languages, we bring in collaborators from a range of places in our work. Our four founding members of Night Train collectively speak French, Spanish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Hebrew and English. Alona is currently based in the States, Léa is in France, and Maria and Oli are both in the UK – and we will all come together this summer to stage Maklena as a more fully-realised production (an abridged version of the play was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer). In the future, we also plan to stage more new translations, and to work in different languages, not only English.

How do you find working on such an international scale?

We are continually excited by the richness it brings to the creative process. We each arrive with slightly different ideas of what theatre means, what it involves and looks like, and each bring our different cultural ideas and practices to devising and rehearsing.

As an emerging company, we still have a lot of questions to answer about how we will manifest our international focus. It’s crucial for us that we are stewards of international stories, rather than appropriators, and this is something we will be keeping in mind as we grow. We’re also thinking about issues such as: any boundaries for where we draw our stories from, and how we bring in new collaborators. Do we look for a range of places, or do we concentrate on specific areas; do we seek out specific voices, or do we just let ourselves grow organically? Does this vary project-by-project? We’re still figuring out how to bring these collaborators together in a way that allows everyone to bring their backgrounds to the table without the pressure of having to act as an ‘ambassador’.

On your website, you describe yourselves as an ensemble theatre company. What does this mean in practice?

Being an ensemble theatre company means that working together is at the core of the theatre that we make. Collaborative devising is really important to us, and we work to ensure that all of the team have a voice during the development process. For our production of Maklena last summer, we had a week where we imagined and built scenes, worlds, characters, and moments together, without considering what anyone’s official ‘role’ was. It was just us in a room with whatever skills – puppetry, music, movement, visual composition, literary analysis – we could bring to the table to bring the story to life. On stage, being an ensemble is about connecting with each other, breathing together; it means carrying the play as one.

Why is storytelling so important to you?

Storytelling is a distinctly human medium: stories are how humans process, store, and preserve information. They cultivate empathy and understanding. They are lasting – you can think of stories as these constantly mutating artefacts which, unlike physical artefacts, are preserved only through constant use. So we have a responsibility to keep telling stories. Participating in the tradition of storytelling links us to our past – but it also connects us to the people living around us. Sitting in an audience, you have a shared experience that serves as a mutually recognised reference point and even operates as a kind of shared language – with complete strangers. Also, let’s not forget that storytelling (for both speaker and listener) is generally a joyous activity!

What makes a good story?

A good story is one that keeps you on your toes from the beginning until the end. A story that conveys an important message; a story that invites you into its universe. The mark of a good story is whether it can stand the test of time: whether its themes still have significance many years later, and whether it can translate across languages and cultures. This is what we find so incredible about Maklena – it was written in 1933 Soviet Ukraine, and yet there is so much in this play that is extremely poignant now and in the UK.

Let’s talk a little about Maklena now. What are you most proud of with the production?

The fact that we took this Ukrainian play from such a different context (which had never been translated before) and made our own fresh adaptation. We were able to tell a story which otherwise wouldn’t have been heard by audiences in the UK – and we can’t wait to share it with more audiences.

The play has been translated into English for the first time by Maria Montague – Maria, what was the hardest part about translating it into English?

The biggest challenge was finding the right balance between staying true to the original Ukrainian script, and making sure that the translation sounds natural for actors in English. Ukrainian is a very poetic language, and English is more direct, and finding the right way to translate certain phrases and idioms was sometimes really tricky. I was very lucky to work with Marta Jenkala, who is a lecturer in the Ukrainian language and a native speaker herself, and her help was crucial in pinpointing the nuance of various expressions that are specific to Ukrainian. It’s such a beautiful play, and I felt a huge responsibility to do justice to the playwright, Mykola Kulish!

And Oliver Vibrans composed original music for the production. Oliver, can you tell me a bit more about that?

The main aim of the music in the show was to articulate the fantasy into which the character Maklena retreats to escape the harsh and unforgiving reality in which she lives. We open the show with acoustic music being played live on stage as Maklena takes up a piece of newspaper and folds it into the shape of a goose. The music on stage morphs into electronically created music played through speakers as the goose that Maklena has created comes to life and flies away. We were interested in taking sounds from the world of the play and using them as part of the musical texture, further demonstrating how Maklena creates fantasy from the world around her. During rehearsals we recorded multiple sounds in workshops, including wing beats created with newspaper and rain with finger clicks, which we then incorporated into the score.

To find out more about the Night Train Theatre Company and their upcoming projects, visit www.nighttraintheatrecompany.com