It’s hard to pin down There There, the performance company created by Dana Olarescu and Bojana Jankovic. 50% Romanian, 50% Serbian and based in London they make performance exploring ideas of national and immigrant identities. While the content of their work examines shifting geographic and psychological borders, so their diverse practice transcends formal ones with past pieces including studio work, performances for galleries and the outdoors, one-on-ones and sound installations.

June sees them performing Text HOME as part of dis/placed, a week long programme of events, performances and talks around the subject of displacement, and Eastern Europeans for Dummies: Is it About Sex Trafficking, a satirical study into immigration, at Rich Mix. There There aim to provoke, entertain and engage their audiences out of complacency. With a referendum on the UK’s membership to the EU looming, their work has never felt more relevant. But just who are they are and where – if it can ever be so binary - do they feel they come from?

Run Riot: How and why did There There come about?

There There: We did an MA together at Goldsmiths and then we did a lot of hanging out after we graduated. It was all very platonic - no theatre-making was involved - but neither of us was really sure where to go from there or who to work with. Eventually it dawned on us that we should give working together a chance. It’s your standard rom-com, with theatre where the romance usually is. We both came to collaborative performance from directing, we both had a somewhat continental approach to theatre and we were both in the midst of realising we were Eastern European, which gave us plenty of material.

Run Riot: Where does the name There There come from?

There There: We get asked this a lot and as soon as we get some time off we’ll have to sit down and devise a worthy origin story. The truth is as two immigrants we thought a quintessentially English name would be most appropriate; we also thought the ambiguous nature of the expression works well - it can be sardonic and it can be honest and it can be both at the same time and it can be difficult to discern which one it is. Much like our work.

Run Riot: What inspires your work both in terms of content and form?

There There: There are certain topics that obsess us - national and immigrant identities, exclusion, heritage. We think about them in very grand ways and wait for them collide with something simple, every day or something from the realms of daily politics. We spent a lot of time pondering about the objectification of immigrants, then the Home Office launched their Text HOME campaign - sending vans with ‘go home or face arrest’ taglines to drive around London - and our somewhat theoretical musings found their somewhat more common match. Form comes from content - we’ve done pieces for studios and streets, galleries and the internet - whatever we think the piece asks for. Text HOME eventually ended up taking to the streets; it seemed only fair.

Run Riot: How do you create your shows?

There There: We’re directors by trade, so our nature is to research and think and then research and think some more; a copious amount of talking and sorting out the creative differences ensues. We usually only venture into space when we’re on solid ground - once we’re confident about the basics of what we are trying to create we can play and devise.

The most important element of our devising process is the disagreement. We have very different tastes, very different ways of thinking, very different senses of humour - if we both feel confident about an idea then you can be sure it was hammered out in detail over the course of painstaking creative negotiations. We cherish all those differences; if we were two peas in a pod, the chances are only other peas would find our work interesting. Preaching to the converted is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Run Riot: What do you want your audiences to come away thinking or feeling?

There There: Thinking and feeling are both good - as long as there’s no complacency. We’re not prescriptive though - if our work makes people reconsider their opinions, if it exposes the stereotypes they’ve accepted, challenges their preconceptions, reveals a new angle, if it’s evocative or enraging, we’re all good.

Run Riot: There There seem to have a highly political focus, do you think theatre and art has an obligation to question the social status quo?

There There: I think we may have a placard saying that somewhere.

Theatre won’t be starting a revolution anytime soon - but it can interrogate and investigate and disassemble the norms and the status quo pretty effectively. If it’s not doing that, then it’s inevitably reinforcing the status quo and we have elected officials to do that.

Run Riot: Your work focuses on ideas of national identity and immigration, which are topics at the forefront of the social agenda at the moment. But as a Romanian and Serb does the impetus for such exploration come from a personal basis too?

There There: We are a Romanian and a Serb - but immigration in the UK takes very little notice of immigrants’ national identity or indeed nationality. We are, for all intents and purposes, Eastern European - institutionally, in the public discourse, in everyday encounters. It was a bit shocking at first, as we never really thought of ourselves that way, but it’s proved a fascinating topic to research through performances.

So yes - our personal experiences play a part in our work - but personal experiences will only get you so far. They tend to be restrictive even if insightful. We don’t want to make performances that reduce the immigration experience to asking for sympathy.  It’s far more interesting to dig beyond those personal experiences, to take them as a starting point only, and deconstruct away, to the bottom of immigrant or national identities and mechanisms that sustain them.

It’s only natural for immigrants to be invested in national identities, sustaining and reinforcing them from a distance. In the UK though it’s especially fascinating because the British identity seems so fractured - it’s a matter of pride yet English politicians spent months persuading everyone that a strong Scottish presence in the parliament would spell chaos. The Scottish referendum, the upcoming EU referendum, the focus on immigration - they are all forcing a bit of a think on what British means. We’re in for at least two turbulent and inspirational years.

Run Riot: Your upcoming show Eastern Europeans for Dummies: Is it About Sex Trafficking? brings a dark humour to a pretty bleak subject. What role does comedy play in your work?

There There: We’re attracted to that sweet spot where the politics meets the everyday to form the absurd - and the best way we know how to tackle that pressure point is by exposing the absurd in all its glory.  We had a second generation immigrant funding his election campaign by selling mugs with ‘control immigration’ on them; we have a PM who uses the phrase ‘so called right to family life’ every chance he gets; the next residence-related form I will have to fill out is 140 pages long. The implications are serious, but the content is prime comedy material.

Run Riot: You are performing as part of week-long programme of events that has been curated in response to global demographic shifts and unprecedented levels of human displacement. These are epic issues, what role do you think art can play in helping to address them?

There There: Well they are epic in scale and importance, but the realities and resonance of those epic stories are actually much less grandiose. People drowning is very simple, if you think about it.

You may read the papers or inject yourself with op-eds and news, but we all know what to expect from The Guardian or The Daily Mail or the BBC; they have their biases and more importantly we have our biases about them. More often than not though you won’t have such pre-emptive thoughts walking into an exhibition or a performance - there is much more scope for surprise and openness, for offering alternatives to what the media is serving and for going beyond the headlines. dis/placed will include over 40 artists, responding to a very broad theme in all manner of forms and ways: that guarantees a plurality of voices and opportunities.

Dis/placed 

The Ditch, Shoreditch Town Hall

16 – 21 June

Eastern Europeans for Dummies: Is it About Sex Trafficking?

Rich Mix

19 June

photo: Adam Chard