The National Theatre Connections Festival is a week-long celebration showcasing ten plays workshopped throughout the year by schools and youth theatres. Closing the Connections Festival, was Wind/Rush Generation(s) written by Mojisola Adebayo. Set in a prominent university, students are haunted by a ghost in their common room and use an Ouija board to communicate with the spirit. Instead of finding answers to why it is there, they are confronted by the weight of Britain’s colonial past in all its gory glory.
This play is not for the faint-hearted. Snapping to different periods, poetic text demanding to be performed in a surging rhythm, and characters including wind and a ship, Make Sense Theatre Company had a challenge on their hands. Yet, this young company led by director Bryony Gough, started the piece like they were preparing for battle and this determination and energy powered them through until the last line was spoken.
The design was minimalistic with a projection to help locate the setting and to highlight the letters chosen on the Ouija board. Sound (Anisha Sharma) was used in an effective way to keep the dialogue flowing quickly and also to create a darker atmosphere, such as the “Wind, Chill, Fact” section recounting historical acts of racial discrimination from 1948 to 2024.
There were some brilliant, clever moments such as Monta Rosa being carried by the ensemble, suggesting from the start that she wasn’t human. Or the hard-hitting scene set on ‘The Zong’ where the captain chose to throw 131 black slaves into the sea to claim the insurance money, followed by a haunting sea shanty representing the lost souls. Not forgetting Adebayo’s genius scene in a town hall meeting debating wind farms…or immigration?
It was indeed an educational rollercoaster with a lot of content to cover and whilst the young performers did an excellent job, with standouts being the four actors playing Monta Rosa (Ibtisam Ahmed, Maegan Fernandes, Rashmeet Kaur and Prathma Patel), I must confess that at times I was a little lost. There were also moments during the fast-paced dialogue when I found myself reading the captions to keep up.
Perhaps too much content can dilute the substance of the play? Either way, the performers left their hearts on the stage and I left more educated with the desire to want to find out more.
Applications for Connections 2025 close on 8th July 2024. For more information and to apply, you can follow the link here.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3*)
Gifted tickets in return for an honest review