Based in Hobart, Terrapin’s purpose is to make lives better, shift realities and create connection. For over 40 years the company has been creating rich, unique experiences for intergenerational audiences performing in schools, aged care, theatres, festivals, galleries and public spaces. The company’s work has been presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, De Betovering (the Netherlands), A.S.K Shanghai, Aichi Arts Centre (Japan), the Taipei Children's Art Festival, the Lincoln Center (New York), the Kennedy Center (Washington DC), the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Festival among many others. Terrapin is committed to developing and producing dynamic new Tasmanian work, providing a platform for emerging and established local artists and a medium for touring their work nationally and internationally.

Writer: Dan Giovannoni
Co-Directors: Kouhei Narumi (Dainanagekijo) / 鳴海康平（第七劇場）& Sam Routledge
Performers: Mayu Iwasaki, Marcus McKenzie and Rino Daidoji
Designer: Ayami Sasaki (FAIFAI)/ 佐々木文美（快快）
Composer: Dylan Sheridan
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Associate Designer: Yumemi Hiraki
Residence Coordination and Cooperation in Japan: Aichi Prefectural Arts Theater
Residence Coordination in Japan: Chiryu Public Theater

What role might theatre (and theatres) play in times of increasing calamity?

Of course, we’re not the first to ask it but in making Goldfish some answers and provocations have emerged. The first consideration was around material use – using items at hand, that speak to the context of the work, and that consider the environmental ledger. Disaster recovery organisations have been consulted about items that are essential in their work and we’ve then used them in the storytelling, donating them after the season. A further design rule, introduced with the intention of reducing the carbon spend by eliminating freight, was to use the existing technical stock of a typical theatre as a skeleton for the set design. Flexibility in the required production resources was also agreed, with the work being remade in each location according to local conditions. While you are experiencing Goldfish in the theatre with a lighting design, it can also play outside theatres and will tour to Tasmanian schools without any lighting design at all.

In conceiving these values-based parameters, joined by an audience rule – relevant intergenerationally, more existential questions lurked

Doesn’t art inherently do-good with no need to do-good outside of the work itself?

If we draw attention to the value of the social impact of a work, are we admitting defeat about its inherent value as a work of art?

Isn’t this the central tension between community engaged and contemporary practice, where the former must justify its existence through its contribution to social causes and the latter doesn’t need to because of the unassailability of the artists’ vision and the blanket of art for art’s sake?

How useful is this binary for the theatre today?

If we don’t like the show, do we feel better that at least they’ve given some kit to the SES?

And finally is it ok to platform Nestlé onstage (without doing a risk assessment on the current ethics of the company and considering reputational damage to our own company) if the Milo is going to a family in need afterwards (also noting it is a highly-processed food)?

To work in two languages, with self-imposed restrictions on materials, whilst being expansive and not reductive in our storytelling ambition, has required an enormous amount of collective imagination, nerve, verve, resourcefulness, flexibility, patience and concentration. Deeply human, collective skills. We’ve had the right people in the room. And the right people outside the room; those who championed an international co-commission for major arts festivals that imagines a new way. To everyone that has supported the idea, from big actions to small conversations, thank you.