Day one of rehearsals at Pleasance
So today was my first real day of In Our Hands rehearsals. Having seen the work in progress at Kingston I was eager to get into the space and get up to date on the creative process. Today was also Gemma’s (the dramaturg) first session after watching the version at Hatch, so naturally we came into the room hungry to learn about the trip to Newlyn, what they had discovered and how we can add to the work already in place.
It became apparent listening to the ins and outs of Trawler fishing and its industry that there is somewhat a divide between those who do the fishing and those who decide how it is done. Its the gap that a lot of governing bodies have with those that they govern, and it appears that from the fishermans point of view it makes actually fishing and keeping the trade alive in Britain very difficult. One piece of information that surprised me was that once a boat has been a fishing boat under one mans license it then can never be a fishing boat again. He either must make adjustments for it to become a houseboat or sell it for scrap. Therefore it seems he cannot pass it down to his son once he has become too old to do the difficult work involved, the son must buy a new one and start from there, which can get very expensive. How can this method of fishing be continued if there is no younger generation coming through the ranks?
Listening to the accounts of the people that they met in Newlyn, and the experience of being on a trawler boat, the struggles to make a catch that will cover the expenses of a trip and earn the fishermen a wage is very apparent. The work is very hard, leaving at 4am returning at 8pm, and having to go out again the next day because they didn’t make enough money. One particular story of a man who fishes with the bare essentials reminded me of “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway. Where an old fisherman who is having no luck, catches a giant fish after a physically exhausting 2 days wearing it down, only to have the meat eaten by sharks on the return journey home. This then led me onto a video where an artist Aleksandr Petrov created a beautiful short film of this story using oil-on-glass, and it has been edited to include music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSG6-R_t4Ac
The atmosphere the video creates for me the beauty and stillness of being out to sea, and element which attracts many of the fishermen to continue to fish, being out to sea.
From the experiences Luke and Matt had on board the boat, one of the points to come up was that silence was a big part of being on the boat, the fishermen worked efficiently and silently together as they have done it for so long. Silence, is very much present within In Our Hands, the sounds of the boat, the sounds of the docks and the sea are there, and the puppetry informs the narrative, which is why it is a perfect method for exploring the issues and lives that encompass trawling.
However the question begs, should we be continuing to use trawling as a method for fishing? Are the constraints that the EU are putting on trawling trying to act as a deterrent so that the trawlermen will become forced to find other methods of fishing? These other methods will certainly make fish become more expensive as trawling is the cheaper method, but will the public accept this price increase, or start buying imported trawled fish because it is cheaper?
Most of the fish that we buy in the UK is fished locally, but a lot of the trawled fish by the bigger companies will be sold to poorer countries who need fish but cannot afford the higher price of sustainable fishing, what should happen here? As the project moves on so will the questions, as more sides of the story are uncovered, I cant wait.
George Bellamy
Bramley Apple