Have you ever rummaged through the family attic? Danny Braverman has and what he found inspired him to create Wot? No Fish!! – a solo show that stormed through last year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Now in London for a run at the Battersea Arts Centre, Wot? No Fish!! stems from an unlikely set of source material: thousands of old wage packets embellished with drawings. The artist was Braverman’s great-uncle Ab, who for decades captured the most striking moments of his week and drew them for his wife, Celie. Collected, these miniature pieces of art are a document not only of Braverman’s family but also a London of the past. Celie and Ab lived through the Blitz, and all the historic tectonics that came before and afer; they were Jewish and lived in the East End, embedded in a community that during their lifetime gradually moved from one part of the city to another.

Most of all however, Celie and Ab encapsulate the idea of the extraordinary in the ordinary – their heritage is perhaps not of the kind that results in Wikipedia pages, but Ab’s drawings provide a window into a history that’s occupied by people other than politicians and generals. Our interest sparked, we talked to Danny Braverman about finding a narrative in the imagery, his take on the political in theatre and what Ab would make of hipsters.

Run Riot: There is an extraordinary story behind the creation of Wot? No Fish!! Can you tell us how you discovered the drawings that inspired the piece?

Danny Braverman: In the back of my mind, I always knew that my Great-Uncle Ab drew on the back of his wage packets, but I had never seen any.  I was intrigued.  I knew that Ab’s son Jeff had kept some, but, tantalisingly, whenever I asked him, he was coy and wouldn’t show them.  In 2009, Jeff died, and as his nearest relative, my Mum helped clear out his flat.  She came home not with a few pictures, but with piles of Uncle Ab’s art: about 3,000 pictures.

Run Riot: Wot? No Fish!! is based on a specific kind of documentary material - were there any gaps to fill in turning images into a narrative? What was your approach to the temptations of adding fiction to the drawings?

Danny Braverman: Hah, good question!  Yes, part of the intrigue of creating the piece was to try to make sense of pictures where it was impossible to know the full context.  I think audiences are aware that I’m then offering an interpretation of the lives of Ab and his family.  In fact, if you think about it, I’m interpreting Ab’s interpretation – these are not a photographic record, but his take on the happenings each week; often symbolic or re-imagined as a myth or fairy tale, for example.  So, to create a narrative that works for audiences I started by choosing about 70 pictures that I felt were particularly resonant.  They were either key events in their lives or highlighted themes that resonated with me: aspiration, family, institutionalisation, love, history and so on.  I also found that Ab’s work, like most great art, compelled me to reflect on my own life, so there’s a level of autobiography in the show as well. 

As the show has developed over the last couple of years, it has changed as different people who knew Celie, Ab and the rest of the family have appeared and added background detail.  My Mum was key in this, and I was often contacting her during the show’s development.  Other important people also added important elements.  A friend of Nick Philippou, the show’s director, for example, told us a story about my cousin Jeff in his career as an art dealer.  That story now fills out the theme of the value of art that is at the heart of the piece.  Another friend, the Head Teacher of a special school, helped me to understand how the institution that my cousin Larry was placed in would have operated.

It was important to be as honest as possible to the essential truths within Ab’s art.  As with a lot of work based on document, this will mean some simplification for the sake of clarity.  As an example, Ab and his wife Celie, lived in a number of addresses in both Hackney and North-West London.  But, in order not to send audiences’ heads into a spin with a lot of place names, I focus on the addresses in Dalston and Golders Green.  In that way, the theme of “moving to the promised land”, from East to West, is foregrounded.  Some London audiences, of course, would be able to navigate a more complex narrative, but it was more important for Nick Philippou and I to find the universals in this particular story, which works for audiences of all ages and from all places.

Run Riot: What prompted you to turn the family heritage into a show?

Danny Braverman: I’m a theatre-maker, so I’m always looking for material that both means something to me and that I think can connect with an audience.  I didn’t actually know at first what shape that might take.  After braving a solo scratch performance in July 2012, various friends and colleagues, including importantly Nick Philippou, encouraged me to develop that performance. 

Run Riot: The performance uncovers an intimate relationship, but it’s set in a very distinct cultural and historical context. How do these two elements - the private and the socio-political - relate to each other?  

Danny Braverman: Thinking about this question, it’s hard to think about much great theatre where the personal and political don’t rub shoulders.  My favourite theatre – Taste of Honey, Death of Salesman, Caucasian Chalk Circle, West Side Story, Hamlet –they all set personal relationships against both specific contexts and universals.  In the case of Wot? No Fish!! the characters are inevitably swimming in a political sea (aren’t we all?).  Part of its charm, though, for me, is that Ab and Celie weren’t political activists, as much of that generation of East End Jews were – so no one will, I hope, find a clunky “author’s message” here.  However, the fact remains that they were the children of immigrants, they had one gay son and one disabled son, they lived through the blitz etc.  I’m not actually sure how it’s possible to tell this story without the interplay between the personal and the political.

Run Riot: What perspective does the show offer on London’s past? Today’s East London is somewhat different to what it was in Ab’s time - how do the past and the present interact with each other in the piece?

Danny Braverman: Much of this interaction comes about through the autobiographical element and the reflections that are made about history.  For me, history is as much about the present as the past. I think it is hugely regrettable that the emphasis in history teaching is so often about those in power; we learn as much, and debatably more, about ourselves from the stories of so-called “ordinary people”.  We are all, actually, extraordinary in our own ways, especially when we look through the lens of history.  The great thing with stories is that they can throw a light on complexities, without oversimplification. I hope the show does this.  Yes, patterns repeat themselves.  We see immigrant communities today, for example, escaping persecution and aspiring to a “better life”, whatever that means.  But there are also changes.  East London is currently very different from how it was in Ab’s day.  I often imagine him taking a bemused and ironic view of the hipster phenomenon and the soaring property prices, for example.  But it has always been a place of contradictions; a creative powerhouse as well as a place with deprivation; crime and violence as well as strong communities.  And I have an ambiguous relationship to it.  I want to see a much higher quality of life for its people, but I also would not want it to lose that edge that makes it so unique.

Run Riot: You revived bread&circuses to produce Wot? No Fish!!  - can you tell us about the company’s history and what motivated you to re-launch it?

Danny Braverman: When Nick and I got back together to produce the show, we decided it would be a good idea to reinvent the company we founded in 1983.  The original Bread & Circuses Theatre Company was founded by Nick, myself and a handful of others when we graduated from Birmingham University. The original company was formed within the tradition of alternative socialist theatre. In one form or another, the original company lasted, I think, about five years.  We toured a number of different shows. I tended to write and direct quite direct, agitprop, devised theatre, to community venues and as street theatre. Nick developed a rich strand of theatre-based work, including British premieres of work by Edward Bond and Dario Fo. In a sense, we were ourselves working out how we could express our politics through theatre, trying out different forms and working for different audiences.  It was, for me, a kind of apprenticeship into the theatre world. 

The company’s name is, of course, ironic. Juvenal’s original notion was that basic sustenance and culture were the ways that the powerful contained the people.  You can see how in the age of reality TV and so on, a strong case can be made that the anaesthetic (the opposite to aesthetic?) qualities of much culture works against the majority’s best interests.  We hope that our work runs counter to this notion; that art and culture can actually be ways to challenge power.  Now, I hope that my work isn’t nearly as polemical as it was in the eighties – but building a sense of community in an audience is part of a wider struggle for marginal voices to be heard.

Run Riot: You are a lecturer in applied theatre at Goldsmiths, have 30 years experience in educational and community drama, and you started out in socialist theatre – all signs point to someone who thinks theatre can make a difference. Where do you think are its limits – when it comes to politics, and when it comes to individuals?

Danny Braverman:  As a young man, I was under the illusion that theatre can change the world.  Really. If you can’t be an idealist in your twenties, then when can you be?  I believe now - if you’ll pardon me paraphrasing that old Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci - in “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will” – I hope I’m a realist and am content with any difference I can make to audiences and my students. 

The pessimism bit comes when I see growing inequality, the attacks on creativity in education, the lack of urgency in addressing the destruction of the planet and our wonderful NHS constantly threatened by privatisation.  My optimism about theatre, and by inference all other cultural forms that are interconnected with it, comes from both witnessing the significant changes that have happened over the last thirty years and the dynamism of young artists. My years running youth theatres, and now teaching at Goldsmiths, have given me great faith in the next generation.  I love watching their careers progress and constantly admire their dedication and integrity.  

As far as progress is concerned, I look at the extraordinary opening ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. Bold, radical, funny and moving statements from artists who grew up with the alternative theatre movement, applauded across the world.  A project I’m involved with, Unfinished Histories, is now documenting brilliantly the history of the alternative theatre movement in the UK.  My students are learning their own histories as theatre makers and standing on the shoulders of giants like the great Joan Littlewood, whose birth centenary is this year; her work is being celebrated through the amazing Fun Palaces project, which will blossom during the first weekend of October this year: examples of history, our radical theatre history, being very much part of the present.

Wot? No Fish!!

1-19 July

Battersea Arts Centre