Fact and fiction: Liam Jarvis plays Michael, who suffers from
The latest show to visit the Millfield Arts Centre is inspired by the true story of a man pushed under a train. Miriam Craig talks to
the co-director of
a play that explores the responsibilities of both the artist and society.
Is it right to take the facts of a real-life tragedy, and use them to create a piece of fiction?
This is one of the
questions dealt with in Analogue theatre company's debut show, Mile End.
It won four-star reviews at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as a Fringe First Award and the Arches Brick Award for experimental theatre.
By making the show in the first place, Analogue seems to be answering its own question, and suggesting that making a piece of theatre out of a real-life death is an acceptable thing to do.
Analogue's joint artistic director, Liam Jarvis, 27, says: "I think theatre should be an art form where you can deal with challenging subject matter. These things are in the news and are very much part of the public
consciousness.
"Everyone's picking up their copy of the Metro but they don't necessarily get a sense of the emotion behind these events. We can enlighten a story like that."
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The play was based on the murder of Christophe Duclos, who was pushed in front of a train at Mile End Tube station in 2002 by Stephen Soans-Wade, a man with a history of
mental illness.
An independent inquiry concluded the NHS had failed to assess the risks Soans-Wade posed, citing, among other failings, that two weeks earlier he had threatened to push someone in front of a bus or train if he did not receive help.
The event happened down the road from where Mr Jarvis and his co-
artistic director Hannah Barker, used to live.
Mr Jarvis says: "In the news at the time, there was a CCTV image of Christophe being pushed under a train. We were really affected by the story.
"Around the same time, something similar happened at Highbury and Islington Tube station. It all adds to a pervasive sense of paranoia for
people travelling around London, especially after the July 7 bombings, with the constant announcements about looking out for suspicious packages."
Mile End plots the journey of three central characters up until the murder: Michael, who suffers from personality disorders; Alex, who is having nightmares about the future that appear to be coming true; and Kate, Alex's girlfriend. Analogue has used techniques from computer game design, puppetry and cinema.
For Mr Jarvis and his colleagues, researching the facts has also been an important part of fictionalising the events. This has included talking to Jayne Zito, whose husband was killed by a mentally ill man in 1992 at Finsbury Park Tube station, as well as police officers and experts at mental health charity Sane.
Mr Jarvis says: "We've tried to talk to people
who have first-hand experience in similar situations; we wanted to tackle the problem of trying to tell
a story that doesn't belong to us."
The effort to tackle the problem must be paying off - last week Analogue received the good news that it will be getting Arts Council funding to extend the show's tour.
Mile End is on at the Millfield Arts Centre, in Silver Street, Edmonton, on Wednesday, at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £12 (concessions £10) and are available from the box office on
020 8807 6680.
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