Interview: Sophie Bertrand Besse on Mohand & Peter at Southwark Playhouse

Sophie Bertrand Besse is the Artistic Director of PSYCHEdelight which returns this Spring with a family-friendly devised show Mohand & Peter at Southwark Playhouse.

Using humour and visual poetry to explore cultural identity and the traumatic effect of long-term exile as well as celebrating refugee home countries, Mohand & Peter platforms the collaborative chemistry between the actors.

PSYCHEdelight is one of the leading creators of theatre made by refugees worldwide. With an emphasis on artistic development, PSYCHEdelight continues to celebrate diversity and promote social inclusion through its creative output, facilitating arts-focused workshops and professional productions. For Mohand & Peter, the company has committed to providing a selection of free tickets for refugees and asylum seekers for every performance. More information can be found here.

You’re bringing Mohand & Peter to Southwark Playhouse, what can you tell us about the play?

It’s quite an unexpected double act, Peter, the Jordy lad, and Mohand a Sudanese fellow who sought asylum in the U.K. 6 years ago. Despite all their differences or rather thanks to their differences, they have quite a unique complicity enriched with various cultural layers. They bounce between English and Arabic and embrace the magic of theatre to take us on an epic road trip through Sudan. Mohand is not allowed to go back home? They will bring his country on stage. For him but also for the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes and miss them dearly every day.

Be ready for quite an exhilarating journey through this beautiful country where you’ll meet Omar Al Bashir, Mohand’s 450 cousins, and even a lazy camel.

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What inspired you to create Mohand & Peter?

Well, Mohand lived with my family for 3 years so I witnessed the impact on him of the horror happening in Sudan. The military forces cutting the internet to shoot people in the protest. Mohand clinging on to his phone hoping and dreading for some news at the same time. I then realised the trauma of long-term exile and how it affected millions of people. There are so many “FaceTime families”.

People who have not held their loved ones in their arms for years! I really struggled with not being allowed to visit my own parents in France during the lockdown, I can’t imagine what years apart feel like. We focus on our fear of these people coming to the U.K. and tend to completely forget that their countries are not only war zones, dictatorships, or Taliban’s nest. They are their homes.

Already in our previous show Welcome To The U.K. (The Bunker Jan 2019) I suggested to Mohand and Wasig, another Sudanese actor from our company, to have a scene where they demonstrate outside the Sudanese embassy in London. That’s where they were most of the time outside rehearsal hours. Night after night I saw Sudanese audience members standing up during this scene to “march” with them.

Already there I felt the embryo of something important. We had talked about their perilous journey to the U.K. in Borderline, our satire of the Calais Jungle, we had raised the issues related to the asylum process and the hostile environment policy in Welcome To The U.K., now it was time to talk about their homes and their loved ones that they had to leave behind most of the time to protect them. Yes, families are often the first targets to reach the political dissidents.

Mohand and Peter already had a couple of scenes together in Welcome to the U.K. where they were ‘wannabe actors’ in the quest for the show that would bring them fame and fortune. They were hilarious and it really felt like a promise of a future show together. It all fell into place really.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in bringing this devised show to the stage?

The main challenge when you do participatory theatre, so when you create work involving people who experienced the story you are devising together, is to make sure they feel safe, listened to, and proud of the show. It’s not the first time that I do that but in my previous creations where we also addressed very difficult topics, I had a cast of 14 performers, so it’s very different.

As much as it was hell to find funding, organise rehearsals schedule etc, this ensemble became a real community and that’s massive. People did support each other a lot and shared the space and time on stage I suppose. This time it’s only Mohand and Peter and of course, a lot of the focus is on Mohand story-wise. It’s exhausting for him on many levels. As always, we use humour to convey tragic events but still, for Mohand it implied reliving painful events and even diving back into lovely long gone memories can be as difficult if not more.

It was his choice of course, I tried not to push anything, just to follow his process and to hold the space between us where he deposited his memories one after the other. Mohand wants people to know what happened in his country. That’s his way to share his people’s voices, to fight with them.

So as a director and close friend I am aware that this is much more than a show, it’s a very personal journey to go through. It’s very empowering in a way but much more demanding of course. Even for Peter. He is suddenly thrown in the story of a country going through hell and where Mohand and him seem to represent some kind of hope (their silly videos went viral in Sudan and ended up on national TV news).

It’s a lot of pressure. That’s why I decided to recreate a close community to surround them. I chose a creative team of people very close to them whom I knew would embrace Mohand’s journey fully and be welcoming whatever was needed. Rémy, for example, designed the sound with several dozens of soundtracks recorded by Mohand’s friends and family back in Khartoum.

Mohand was very excited to have them involved and that was brilliant! They recorded protest sounds, bus sounds, etc How many times did I hear “Wait! I’m gonna ask my friends…” And now thanks to them all, when Mohand will be here in London on stage taking the bus to go back home in the show, somehow deep down he will be with them back home….

Why was it important to you that this was a family-friendly production?

We didn’t do it on purpose to be honest. As much as we are very happy to be able to welcome younger generations because they represent our future of course, it’s not a family show as such.

When we create a show, our aim is to make sure that it is accessible to the people we talk about in our production. Our performers but also an important part of our audience don’t speak English fluently so we developed a language based on physical theatre and visual poetry to convey our messages.

We also use clowning and comedy because we strongly believe that laughter brings so much positivity. It’s healing and empowering. To have a full audience in stitches is a superpower, isn’t it? It magically breaks the wall of fear, turns pity into admiration and generates connections, post-show drinks and new friends.

Laughter is the antidote to isolation and exclusion. So of course, this mix of comedy, physical theatre and visual poetry makes our shows very attractive to children and that’s wonderful. They need to hear about what’s happening in the world in a digestible way for them. They feel the stress we carry anyway, so I think it’s good they can process it and ask the questions they need.

Children are the future of our country, their education is crucial. As a theatre company, we celebrate diversity and welcome kids in our workshops as well. We believe they bring something so fresh and authentic in the room. One of our actresses had her baby and I had my 10 year old son quite often during the creation of Welcome to the U.K. They brought lots of love, silliness, and playfulness in the room. Just what was needed.

Tell us a little bit about the cast?

I met Mohand and Peter 6 years ago when I first met performers for Borderline. Peter had recently finished drama school and done quite a lot of improvisation with my husband Remy Bertrand. He was just back from volunteering in a camp in Greece and was very keen to be part of the project.

Mohand was still living in Bradford at that time, he was a friend of Mohamed Sarrar and jumped on the train with him to attend the first day of creation. I remember his beaming smile when I went to pick them up at the station.

Mohand LOVES comedy. And Peter too. They are very different but have quite a unique chemistry on stage. They share childlike energy, something very endearing and silly at the same time. They got to know and trust each other in our two past productions and all their differences became a chance, an opportunity for more comedy.

Peter is a great physical theatre performer, he became our famous generator in Borderline. People loved him in the volunteer character as well, but it’s true that Peter loves exploring the world as a whole including animals and objects and I knew he would have the skills and the visual poetry to help us bring Sudan to life. Mohand is the soul of the show of course. He’s a proper comedian and is obviously thrilled about taking his British ginger mate back home with him!

What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Mohand and Peter?

That’s it’s not only a show. It’s a human adventure and the celebration of a country very much underrepresented in the arts. African Arabic Muslim country is often associated with quite a negative image. We are here to challenge that, to try to rehumanise people and places. Expect beautiful post-show Sudanese Sudanese live music (dates on the website) and special guests during our Q&As, a Sudanese stand-up comedian, A hip hop artist and many other talents that we are discovering as we go along. Expect a big bright sun in March at the Southwark! Families are welcome and note that we have some performances subtitled in Arabic and others in English with these Q&A translated in BSL.

I will finish this interview with a quote that Mohand once told me one morning at breakfast when I was telling him that he should stop putting 8 sugars in his coffee. “Sophie, do you know why Sudanese need a lot of sugar in their coffee? Because they are the sweetest people……”