Ghost Ships brings history to life

David Mead looks talks to artistic directors Nancy Hirst of Icon Theatre and Amina Khayyam of Amina Khayyam Dance Company about Ghost Ships, a large-scale production coming at the end of the month at the Historic Dockyard Chatham, that also features ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company.

Slip 5 at Historic Dockyard Chatham, which dates from 1847, is seriously impressive in itself. “It’s got sort of huge, slender iron arches and has the sense of a cathedral. It’s the most gorgeous place. There’s something magical about it,” says Nancy Hirst.

Icon Theatre is noted for creating shows in unconventional ways, in unconventional, often hidden or forgotten spaces. Slip 5 may be an unusual theatre space but it is about to become very special for a few nights as it plays host to Ghost Ships, a show that promises to bring the history to life in new ways.

The Chatham Dockyard has a long history and association with Royal Navy, going right back to when the River Medway was used to overwinter the fleet in the mid-1500s. Inspired by newly uncovered research from people working there just before its closure as a naval facility in 1984, the show recharts that history, drawing on and illuminating true stories of just some of the people who built and sailed the ships it produced. As it does so, it promises to explore how past and present are inextricably connected, and the impact of the yard on the local community.

Ghost Ships was devised as a response to it being the fortieth anniversary of the naval facility closing. “When it closed, it took one in four jobs in the area. It’s like when they closed the pits. People still remember. It has that sort of resonance. Around Chatham, the economic impact of that took 15 years to lift even a little,” Hirst says.

“As a local company, we’ve always felt it’s a really iconic space and we wanted to do something that explored not only it’s story, but what it represents about Britain and Britain’s history, those connections to Empire. It was just finding the right time. And while you could do something with physical theatre, we felt it really needed something more poetic.”

ZooNation’s hip hop and Amina Khayyam’s kathak might initially appear strange bedfellows, but Chatham Dockyard has strong connections over centuries with Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia as Britain sought to extend its overseas influence with the aid of the Royal Navy.

And the two dance companies themselves are closer than one might think. Both are noted for their storytelling and their contemporary approach to work, and for pieces that explore and reflect on life and current issues.

Both dance forms are also very much of today. Khayyam says, “I always think of kathak as a very modern form, because it has always been progressing. And so it should. No art should stand still. I think this is probably where the kathak sometimes gets a bad reputation with kind of very old-school Indian thinking that it should stay traditional. This is where I come in. I fight and I claim my own space.”

She notes that both hip hop and kathak also have an anti-establishment aspect. That hip hop started as a voice of protest is well known. The history of kathak includes a lot of influence from the Mughal Empire and its rulers, who took the dance’s storytellers into their palaces, she says. But today, that Muslim influence is problematic. “There is protest going on about how we should take everything out that has an influence from the Muslim rulers. In a way, we feel like kathak itself has become anti-establishment.”

Historically, kathak also fell foul of colonial officials in 19th-century India, being discouraged along with other classical dance forms, many dancers going underground to survive a legal ban on performances, all part of a strategic move to divide and conquer the Indian sub-continent.

While Ghost Ships doesn’t see a blending of kathak with hip hop, the two do find a meeting point and have a dialogue. Khayyam explains that the two companies support and act as backing dancers for each other. “Kathak and hip hop are very different ways of knowing, but one thing they really have in common, is rhythm.

She recalls using a rhythm in seven. “The hip hop dancers have really nailed it, but you could see the concentration in their eyes as they got to grips with it.” Counting in seven may be unusual in music and dance but she says, “At the end of the day, they’re just beats. And seven is a story teller rhythm for me. If I wanted to tell an epic story, I would bring seven in straight away. And it can be taught and used in so many different ways. It has really worked.”

While there is little commonality in movement, she says they hip hop dancers do things that appear in Indian dance as well, including a sort of scissors movement of the legs. “Hopefully we can explore that a little more in the final stages of rehearsal. But I think there have been some quite big learning curves in terms of the different forms.”

Ghost Ships looks at a number of specific, often lesser-known stories and characters from Chatham Dockyard’s history. Selecting which ones to focus on was a long process, Hirst admits. Initial research started around eighteen months ago, the company working with Suchitra Chatterjee, a historian doing a project at the yard looking at alternative histories.

“We had so much stuff. Piles of books on the table. Then we sort of put everything up on the wall. I remember looking at it thinking, ‘Oh God, this is a lot!’ But then we asked ourselves, ‘What can we not tell the story without?’ And, you know, I’ve never looked back and thought we should have included something else.”

Among the events covered are how the British arrived in India and how the East India Company was set up, famine in India and Bengal, and the slave trade. “It’s quite horrific what they did in the name of trading,” says Hirst.

The Bengal Famine of 1943 is one of the deepest and darkest moments of India’s colonial history, one that we must remember now more than ever, says Khayyam. An estimated three million people lost their lives to the famine in eastern India induced by Britain’s Churchill-era war policies.

Among the historic characters involved in slavery putting in an appearance are John Hawkins, who was heavily involved in the slave trade; and John Newton, another slave trader but who was enslaved himself for a time, and later turned Anglican cleric and slavery abolitionist. Also included in the production are the twenty women in the 1700s and 1800s who assumed men’s clothing to work at the Dockyard and in the Navy, including the first black female sailor to serve.

When it comes to more recent stories, Icon Theatre have been getting first hand accounts including of the Dockyard’s impact on local immigration from elders in the Medway Caribbean Association, some of whom worked in the naval yard. “People are telling us what it was like in their own voices. We also putting those voices into the music so that it’s part of the soundscape. It is so important they are there, that we not only present stuff from 300 years ago but also the things that people associate with and remember about Chatham Dockyard.

But the starting point was always the history and what the ships were doing. “In Medway, I think there’s a bit of a blindness, praise about the ships, when they were actually warships, sometimes doing awful things,” Hirst believes. “When you read through the ships logs, it’s like stepping through time.” She explains how Ghost Ships will also move through time, telling a series of stories linked by the building of the next ship.

The music is specially composed. While some will be recorded, that for Amina Khayyam’s dancers will be live. “I can’t do without live music,” she says. “I had one experience of doing a show without it and I regret it to this day. Kathak is nothing without live music. It has to have it. So we’ve got three musicians from our side coming on board. It will be magical when they start playing.”

Indeed, the sound promises to be special whether live or recorded. “Because the sides of the slip are essentially open, any echoes just dissipate,” Hirst adds. “We did a full test in May with proper speakers and the choir. I just bathed in the sound. It was extraordinarily rich and beautiful.”

Having the cast include a large group of performers from the community is challenging, admits Hirst, “But I there’s also the excitement of having that many people on stage, some of whom have never performed before. We’ve got eight-year-olds and we’ve got one who is 82. The warmth in the room, the sense of community, it really does shine through. It’s amazingly rewarding.”

Hirst and Khayyam hope Ghost Ships gives those who see it an understanding of history, of why we are a multicultural society, the wonderfulness of that and what it means. “It’s about owing who we are today,” Hirst says. “But I really want them to also enjoy the music, the dance and the space. At the end we’re going to have all 150 people dancing together in a real feel-good finale. We’ll go out smiling. It will be amazing.”

Ghost Ships is at Historic Dockyard Chatham from September from September 25 to 28, 2024.