In a claustrophobic room somewhere in an airport, a group of passengers are sub-merged into a rigorous, absurd and violent interrogation with the police force. The police begin to abuse their authority as people arrive from different countries.

Marked with menacing questions and satire, the game becomes more dangerous as the narrative structure unfolds.

The B-File undresses the theme of power and collective paranoia over seccurity, which, since Sept 11th, has increased in dimension and is now a big theme in contemporary society.

It is grand reflection on the abuse of control whilst at the same time, an emotional game with the audience, spurring them to follow with interest.

A theatre piece (play), with elements of contemporary dance.

“A magnificent, unique, six language, theatre experience.” - Morgan Post, Berlin.

The six languages used in this production - Japanese, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, German and English - change from place to place. We have two interrogators and a victim in each scene. The victim speaks another language and one interrogator communicates with them in that language and translates to the other in the language of the country we are playing in. in this case there will always be a reference to English.

Deborah Levy first produced the B-File in 1992, in Cardiff. It was first published by Methuen (London) in 1992. Our version premiered in Berlin at the Tanzfabrik-Berlin (May 2004), and toured Portugal and Spain... and Adelaide!

Deborah Levy is a playwright and novelist. She trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their “intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination”. Her plays are published by Methuen in Levy: Plays 1, including The B File: An erotic interrogation of five female personas, which is one of the most performed postdramatic texts.

Other plays include Pax, Heresies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Clam, Call Blue Jane, Shiny Nylon, Honey Baby Middle England, Pushing The Prince Into Denmark and Macbeth-False Memories. Her four novels, BeautifulMutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl, are published by Bloomsbury and Vintage. Her new collection of short stories, Pillow Talk In Europe And Other Places, is published by Dalkey Archive in the USA. Deborah is the editor of Walks on Water, an anthology of performance texts by Rose English, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Claire McDonald and David Gale. Current work includes The Inner Voice / I Am Big, written for acclaimed master native American ventriloquist, Buddy Big Mountain, and opened at Tansquatier Wien, Vienna in May 2006. Deborah was fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity college Cambridge and is visiting lecturer in writing at the Royal College of Art.

Paulo Castro is a well known Portguese theatre director, actor and filmaker. Recognized and respected for his political, corrosive and humorous works, Paulo has directed and acted in the Portuguese National Theatre with plays from writers such as Edward Bond and Lars Noren. He won the “best new director” award in Portugal with plays from Dostoyevsky and Heiner Muller and was commissioned to direct three plays for the European ‘Capital of Culture’ 2001 in Porto/ Portugal. He currently directs and writes for many independent companies and has recently toured: Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Iceland, Austria, Belgium with these works.


La Mama presents
B-File
Based on text by Deborah Levy

Directed by Paulo Castro

Co-written and Performed by Jo Stone, Karen Lawrence, Paolo Dos Santos, Paulo Castro, Silvia Pinto Coehlo and Madeleine Lawrence.

Venue: La Mama | 205 Faraday Street, Carlton
Dates: April 3 - April 14, 2007
Times: Tues and Sun at 6.30pm, Wed - Sat at 8.00pm
Duration: 90 minutes approx.
Bookings: 9347 6142