Border Crossings Marks 30 Years with New Book ‘CHECKPOINT’

Marking three decades of live performance work across London and overseas, Border Crossings publishes CHECKPOINT: 30 Years of Border Crossings to mark this major milestone. This deeply researched and lavishly illustrated book reflects on thirty years of pioneering work with artists across cultures and artforms around the globe. Through theatre, film, festivals and community projects, Border Crossings has consistently explored what it means to collaborate, and CHECKPOINT captures that journey in depth.

Founded in 1995, Border Crossings has worked with artists and communities from across the globe, from London’s Latin American and Māori communities to collaborators in China, India, Ghana and beyond. CHECKPOINT reflects their extraordinary range of work whilst interrogating the ethical, political and artistic questions that underpin it. The main narrative is written by Tongan New Zealander Jasmin ‘Ofamo’oni, whose perspective offers a distinctive lens on Border Crossings’ work. Her engagement with the concept of vā, a relational space that connects people, communities and environments, provides a unique framework for understanding intercultural performance today.

The book features contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners including Helen Gilbert (Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology, Taylor & Francis Ltd; Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, Taylor & Francis Ltd) and Graham Harvey (Animism: Respecting the Living World, C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd; Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, Routledge). Turkish scholar İlke Şanlıer, Mauritian academic Roshni Mooneeram, and Border Crossings’ patron the renowned American director Peter Sellars (Nixon in China, English National Opera; Theodora, Glyndebourne Festival Opera) also add their expertise into this anthology of cultural writing. The book concludes with a candid and critical conversation between Border Crossings’ Founder and Artistic Director Michael Walling and Border Crossings’ Chair and Founder of Tara Arts Jatinder Verma MBE, engaging directly with the complexities and challenges of intercultural practice today.

Artistic Director of Border Crossings Michael Walling comments, Working with Jasmin ʻOfamoʻoni on the CHECKPOINT book has been an extraordinary experience. I’ve been able to look back over 30 years of theatrical experiments and intercultural encounters, aided by her acute and critical eye. She’s helped us to make sense of what we have done, drawing out clear lines of narrative and development we hadn’t even known were there. The finished book is really something very precious to me.

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the book will be launched at a celebratory event in London this June bringing together the company’s past and current collaborators, regular contributors and the local community to mark this incredible anniversary.

Main Image: Border Crossings, The Mouth of the Gods, Credit John Cobb

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