Who made the shirt on your back?

Developed with

Touring 2017/18

"They think because we are poor, because we have nothing, we do not smile. she smiled.”

“We make things for faces we will never see. That is hard work. We barter a piece of us away every day, but we do it with pride.”

The play

MADE is a drama with seven characters, which tells the story of millions of workers thousands of miles away in Bangladesh who toil to make the clothes we wear. Day in day out these mothers, daughters, sisters, fathers, sons and brothers sweat behind machines to make the fast fashion we buy on the British high street. Who are the people who make our clothes? What are their hopes, dreams and fears? What is the story behind the shirt on your back? 

As the Western World demands the latest fast fashion, trouble is brewing in Bangladesh's newest garments factory. With a profit obsessed boss and the revolutionary Nibha to contend with, factory

manager Ali has the weight of the world on his shoulders.  When big money can be made from a country that clothes us, who will lose? 

Based on the lives of real people we met in Bangladesh, MADE explores the parallels between the east and the west, and how our need for cheap clothing affects millions of people on the other side of the world.

This deeply personal and current play explores the rise of feminism within a country that is notoriously conservative; the economic impact our hunger for fast fashion is having on developing nations across the globe; and the harsh realities of living in poverty at the hands of the world’s demands within a capitalist society. It tells the personal, individual stories of the people involved in the garments industry - from workers to buyers; from the factory managers to us, the consumers - and scrutinises how the choices we make as consumers affect the lives of people thousands of miles away.

MADE is not intended to be an exposé of working conditions or a commentary of the industry or fuelled by political agendas, but is intended to tell the untold stories of the people who make our clothes in the UK; and to connect audiences and consumers in the UK with the lives of the people at the other side of the world who we literally carry on

our shoulders everyday in the clothing we wear. We also visited workers’ homes in the slums of Dhaka and we want to tell personal stories. Telling a negative story about the garments industry has serious implications in terms of the economies of these developing nations, and we are very conscious of not doing this.

ideas, as well as possible staging elements. We’re allowing these to be developed alongside each other organically. This week will culminate in a public sharing at Rich Mix at 7:30pm on Friday 1 April 2016. This is part of Battersea Arts Centre’s project ‘A Nation’s Theatre’ and will feature as part of the festival of work created outside of London. This is also part of Rich Mix’s programme of work for Bangladesh Freedom Week.

The second week will be spent split between Cast in Doncaster, and Slung Low’s HUB in Leeds. Monday and Tuesday will be spent working with the team to further develop the script and ideas, with a sharing at 7pm on Tuesday 5 April 2016. After that, we’ll be moving to Slung Low’s HUB to work towards a public sharing at 6pm on Friday 8 April 2016.

The process

2015 In May 2015 we flew a team out to Dhaka, Bangladesh to meet the garments workers making clothes for western companies and hear their stories.  

June 2015 saw us take up residency at Cast in Doncaster to further develop MADE and create this urgent new piece of theatre. At the end of this R&D, we were able to write a full first draft which is now in further development.

2016 We are now in the second development stage of the project, and will be taking residency at Rich Mix with seven actors and the full team, as well as a Music Director and a Movement Director. The aim of the next stage of development is to further develop the script, narrative arc and key dramaturgical

The Future

The Team

Conceived by Brett Lee Roberts & Ikhtisad Ahmed

Written By Ikhtisad Ahmed Director / Dramaturg Brett Lee Roberts Creative Producer Mikey Cook Music director Dom Coyote Lighting Design Jack Weir Costumes Hannah Ruth Watte original contributors Sushil Chudasama Leesa Gazi Shama Rahman Sarah Sayeed

Key Themes

Globalisation/Consumerism/Feminism/Capitalism/Traditional South Asian art forms/Industrial Heritage/Collectivisation/Solidarity/Ethical Clothing/Poverty

Audiences

We see our core organic audience to be ethical consumers, students and people interested in politics and current affairs. The piece will have an appeal to audiences of South Asian ancestry, and we aim to actively engage these for this activity, and in the longer term.

As part of our commitment to audience development, we aim to actively engage not only new audiences from

areas of low engagement, but also specific communities such as Bangladeshi

communities; BAME; and young people who can be engaged through

inspiring debate

through creative pathways.

We are planning to strategically work with communities for each partner venue, and this will be bespoke to each locality. Examples of our audience development plans include school workshops; education packs (GCSE Geography, Citizenship, Drama & Theatre Studies, English Literature, and Philosophy & Ethics); open sessions within Bangladeshi communities and former industrial communities. Community ambassadors will play a key part in the delivery of our audience development strategy, and we would hope to appoint two for each venue - one for Bangladeshi communities, and one for industrial communities.

Aunty’s Adda

‘Adda’ (or আ"া in Bengali) is a Bengali tradition of friends eating together and having conversation. As part of the tour, we will host an adda in each venue. This will be included in the ticket price, and will be an opportunity for audiences to sit, eat and talk. This will be a performance installation, with characters from MADE interspersed among the audience, and developing ideas which will lead into the opening of the play. This is a great opportunity for one of our key target audience segments - traditional Western audiences with little understanding or comprehension of South Asian culture - to be immersed in a tradition which is so engrained in the culture of Bangladesh. As we visited Bangladesh in 2015, it was something that we really loved, as it was socialising at its purest, without the distractions of the modern western world that we face every day.

“ You want us to be reasonable? What does that look like? Working without pay, working night and day. Not seeing

the sun rise or set. Not knowing whether it was summer or winter.

Infernal heat. Temperature always rising. The six

seasons won’t exist where we will live

and die.”

The Process

2015 In May 2015 we flew a team out to Dhaka, Bangladesh to meet the garments workers making clothes for western companies and hear their stories.

When conceiving the plan for the initial R&D for MADE, we knew that we had to physically go to Bangladesh if we were going to tell genuine stories. We strive towards a high level of authenticity, and the huge amount of research we undertook in Bangladesh has had a massive influence on the richness and depth of MADE - particularly in the characters.

June 2015 saw us take up residency at Cast in Doncaster to further develop MADE and create this urgent new piece of theatre. At the end of this R&D, we were able to write a full first draft which underwent further development.

2016 We have now completed our second stage of development, working with a full cast and our composer and sound designer, Dom Coyote, on staging elements and further script development, which culminated in three preview performances at Rich Mix (part of A Nation’s Theatre Festival), Slung Low’s HUB and Cast. We were featured on Nadia Ali’s show on BBC Asian Network - have a listen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qmtyr.

Production

When Autumn 2017 - Spring 2018 Scale Small - mid scale Configuration Traverse where possible Running Time 80 minutes, no interval Get-In and Get-out On the same day as the first and last performances Company 5 cast, 1 stage manager, 1 tech Collateral ‘Aunty’s Adda’; educational material; community outreach with Bangladeshi communities; marketing campaigns and packages

Links

Website targettheatrecompany.co.uk Trailer vimeo.com/163834252 Twitter @TargetTheatreCo Facebook Target Theatre Company

The Company

Target Theatre Company was founded in 2012 by Brett Lee Roberts with the aim of producing new theatre that tells the world's stories in innovative ways.

In Autumn 2012 we supported emerging Bangladeshi playwright Ikhtisad Ahmed in the development of his first play 'The Deliverance of Sanctuary’ - a new absurdist play - for a short run at artsdepot.

In 2013, we were commissioned by The University of Lincoln to produce ‘States of Mind’ - an hour-long piece of interactive theatre exploring mental health care this resulted in an immersive theatre experience which focused on the day-to-day life of a returning soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Since 2013 we have grown significantly, and have developed strong relationships with Arts Council England; overseas organisations such as Dhaka Tribune and Impactt Bangladesh; and organisations in the UK, such as Cast, Rich Mix and Slung Low.

Contact

Creative Producer Mikey Cook mikey@targettheatrecompany.co.uk +44 (0) 78 509 58 509

Company Directors Brett Lee Roberts

Mikey Cook

Patron Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP

Associate Artists Ikhtisad Ahmed

Dom Coyote Ryan Burkwood Shaan Rahman

Ricky May Leesa Gazi

Hannah Ruth Watte