Overview

• The production adapts Ilya Kaminsky’s poems in a collaboration between Dead Centre and BSL poet Zoë McWhinney, directed by Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd.
• Set in a fictional occupied town, the drama turns a community’s sudden refusal to hear into a collective act of dissent after an act of violence.
• Hybrid staging blends British Sign Language, surtitles, spoken interpretation, puppetry, circus elements and filmed imagery to question who controls a narrative.
• Critics note the piece’s metaphor of a puppet state and its resonances with Eastern Europe and Ukraine, while resisting ties to any single conflict.
• Reviewers largely praise the emotional force and imagery, with some finding the pacing long or obscure, and single out Romel Belcher and Caoimhe Coburn Gray among the cast.