CityLife

Sanctuary at the Contact

"I LOVED it when I was in Manchester, working with young Asian women in the late eighties," remembers Tanika Gupta, whose National Theatre play Sanctuary opens on Tuesday at the Contact.

"It always seemed such an open, multi-cultural place. But when I was visiting just recently, it seemed to me that the feel had changed a little, that groups were more ghetto-ised."

Whether or not you agree with her assessment,Tanika's feelings about how integrated - or not - we are right now as a society is pivotal to her complex drama of morality and conscience. It's set in a London churchyard which has become a haven for the gardener, Kabir, who has a painful personal history in Kashmir, and a place of solace for others, including Michael, who used to be a pastor in Rwanda before he fled persecution; Sebastian, a former war photographer, destroyed by drink and his memories; Jenny, the vicar, and her grandmother Margaret, an outspoken ex-colonial widow.

The play was inspired, Tanika remembers, by two things.

"The first was Kashmir, and the thought of all the people who have perished there over the last 14 years. It was where my husband and I went on our honeymoon in 1988 and was such a paradise that I still have the image of that place floating around in my head. The day we left there was some kind of a disturbance and gun shots were heard ringing out. Since then, thousands of innocent civilians have died in the war and tourists are advised not to go there. In fact, the character of Kabir the gardener is based on someone we met there, also called Kabir, who was obsessed with Moghul gardening.

"The second was the situation in Rwanda. I just got obsessed with it after a friend of mine, who was quite a big, beefy guy, told me about his horrible experience when he was visiting Lake Victoria.

"He came across the remains of a whole family who had been butchered up-stream in Rwanda and then just carelessly allowed to float down there, so that they were just bobbing about in the rushes.

"There was some criticism of the play, mostly from white reviewers, when it opened in London that I had tried to fit too many ideas in, as if I was trying to look at it from a totally realistic point of view. It was almost as if I didn't know my place. Really, they'd love me to just write something about the Burnley riots!

"Some writers, I know, don't like to see their work actually performed too often. But I practically have to fight myself from going every night and I'll definitely be coming to see it in Manchester!"

Sanctuary is part of the National Theatre's Transformation season which also includes The Associate at Bolton Octagon. Sanctuary is at Contact from Tuesday until Saturday, September 21.