Polish Vermin

Tell us a bit about yourselves
We’re a group of Polish and British collaborators exploring the lives of EU migrants living in the UK in the wake of the Brexit vote. We are Agnieszka Blonska – director, Patrycja Kujawska – performer, Michal Iwanowski – visuals, Benji Bower – sound designer and Helen Edwards – producer. We live and work across the South West of England and Wales in Cornwall, Somerset, Bristol & Cardiff.

What are you presenting during the ‘work-in-progress’ sharing?
We’ve been talking about making this show for about six months, but have only been working on it together in the room for the last couple of weeks in Cornwall and Bristol. This performance is the first tentative (or not so tentative) step in sharing this work with an audience. We’re also sharing our initial ideas as part of the Ferment Fortnight in Bristol on the 13th July. This isn’t the finished piece, but these are some of our ideas and we hope it provokes a conversation with the audience.

What inspired/influenced your piece?
The world has changed hugely over the past 18 months – with the Brexit vote, the election of Trump in America, the rise of the far right in Poland and increased numbers of hate crimes being reported. There are almost daily news stories appearing which inspire and influence this project. We don’t presume to have an answer, but we want to explore what these subjects (particularly the Brexit vote) mean to each of us. How do we make the politics personal and how do we stand up when we don’t like what we see going on around us?