We Are Tribe Arts

Perhaps aptly, Tribe met during Black History month when a group of five independent actors were cast in a play, loosely based on ‘Othello’, by an emerging local writer, staged at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford. It was during the rehearsals for the show that the spark for Tribe ignited, all of them aligned by the frustrations and anger of the lack of opportunities, stereotyping and the lack of representation faced by many artists of colour; each saw their present-day frustrations arising from the consequences of colonialism. This is where the journey started…

Queued up at the ‘Star Wars’ open auditions in Manchester, Tribe had the whole day waiting, freezing cold, to talk about everything under the sun: from aliens to revolution, the cosmos to religion; knocking back espressos, the conversation took a turn. “What should we call ourselves?” Tajpal had recently seen an episode of American Horror Story and a phrase stuck: ‘they say you’re most at home when you’re with your tribe’; nothing was more fitting for the collective and it stuck. Tribe reflected so much of what they believed in: combativeness, fearlessness, community, unity, solidarity, ancestral roots and origins.

It wasn’t until Tribe attended Improbable’s ‘Devoted & Disgruntled’, an open-space event exploring race and diversity in British theatre that they realised the beginnings of their vision and mission, which would be the foundation for Tribe Arts.

Tribe won their first commission, a partnership between Leeds Playhouse and the Musical Theatre Network, to reimagine and experiment with a new type of musical theatre. The ‘Tribe Chant’ was performed at a scratch night and this commission allowed them to workshop the piece further by working with award-winning, Manchester based poet, Lemn Sissay.

Staged at the National Media Museum and programmed as part of Bradford Literature Festival, Tribe launched with their first show, ‘Tribe Talks’ – a radical, innovative new format of multidisciplinary, participatory theatre, blending live performance, music, film and discussion, exploring the effects of Empire and colonialism.

Exactly one year later, and to mark Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary, Tribe staged a ‘trailer’ show inspired by six of Shakespeare’s most well-loved plays, amalgamated into an original story and set in a ‘Gothic-Mughal’ word – think Steampunk and ‘Game of Thrones’ on stage!

They say all good things come to an end. And sometimes, in order to preserve the bigger thing, other things have to be sacrificed. So it wasn’t quite the end of Tribe, but a reimagining and realigning of the philosophies they believed in: Tajpal & Samran become the co-Artistic Directors of Tribe.

Tribe’s always been interested in rhythm and rhyme, and an opportunity presented itself to develop a new show: a black, dark comedy charting the rise of British Bhangra and Ragga music, focusing on two competing restaurants on the same street, one a Caribbean-owned fish & chip shop, and the other an Indian-run family restaurant.

Ex-Tribe member, Sid Akbar Ali, reached out to see if we might be interested in producing a show he had in the pipeline from the early days of Tribe’s formation: Nikah, a show about forced marriage from the male, Pakistani perspective. The work-in-progress sharings toured Bradford and London.

Dedicated to the stories of the first generation of ex-Commonwealth migrants who helped shape the NHS, and to mark the country’s first Windrush Day, as well as 70 years of the NHS, this performance-event explored the true-to-life experiences of the Windrush generation and early South Asian contributions to the formation of the NHS.

After 5 years in development, we were finally about to stage an industry-wide sharing of Tribe Talks at the Lowry in Salford. But, as fate would have it, the UK government announced a nationwide lockdown due to the global Coronavirus pandemic in the week we were going to showcase the work. And the world stopped.

They say when one door closes, another one opens. And that was certainly the forced nature of the pandemic. As the industry adapted, so did we. We launched the pilot editions of Off/Stage during the lockdown – the only publication of its kind in the UK dedicated to British black & Asian theatre and culture.