Jane Arnfield

The root of Jane Arnfield's theatre practice comes from a personal interest in the process of justice; how people deal with and continue to seek justice.

The Gymnast is concerned with how justice affects the perception of the self, one's country and the routes required for rebuilding one's self and country. The Gymnast has been made in response to the current UN backed tribunal of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh. As a theatre practitioner Arnfield has been offered unprecedented access to archived material at the Documentation Centre Cambodia (DC-Cam). She has used this resource to fuel her personal testimony that began whilst watching television as a child. Through the BBC she witnessed Cambodian people crawling and collapsing over their border into the refugee camps of Thailand. The law shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator in the relations between people. Theatre can be included in the above as at the very least it also seeks to serve society.

'The Geneva Spur starts at about 24,000 ft - just before the summit of Everest - a place of final and impossible decisions.' Geneva, first performed in Newcastle in 2004, is about love, mountaineering and hallucination. It is a journey from Base Camp to summit and back, investigating human limits in extreme, punishing situations. Geneva asks why we repeat our mistakes. Why we refuse to see things as they really are, why we keep on going onwards and upwards. Jane Arnfield's process of research began with a trip to Everest base camp in May 2003, and a series of interviews with climbers who have scaled Everest. Her questions raised more questions - if we don't take risks how do we explore, if we don't explore how do we test commitment, if we don't test our commitment how do we know the strength of our investment?