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Helsingin Sanomat Article (24th September, 2000); in Finnish:
'NO PASARAN' The play was devised by the M6 Theatre Company and first performed in 1977. This company was a Theatre in Education (TIE) company working in schools in Lancashire in areas where there were large numbers of Asian and West Indian children. Racial attacks were common, and the play was written in order to support an educational project against racism. I was working for a TIE company in Coventry at the time and knew members of the original cast. I was invited to see the production and was very impressed. I have adapted the original script for this production. I have inserted a number of scenes from another TIE show ('Marches', devised by the Cockpit TIE company) and also added some of my own. Anne Frank did not appear in the original production and I wished the audience to be aware of her story. In addition, I wrote the section about the Treblinka survivor by using material from various sources. Otherwise, the play remains very much the same as the one which I first saw more than twenty years ago. The type of staging and acting in the play belongs to a genre known as 'agit-prop' theatre. The term is short for the Russian 'agitatsionno-propaganditsky ordel', which means a kind of theatre whose main aim is to inform and educate the public by using the twin strategies of agitation and propaganda. The purpose of propaganda was to explain the causes of social inequalities, while the term 'agitator' refers to the means whereby the emotional aspects of these issues are revealed in order to arouse the audience's indignation. Although most of the characters in 'No Pasaran' are fictional, some are not. Moreover, the events described are based on historical evidence, and much use is made of documentary material in the form of slides and news broadcasts in order to give the play authenticity. The audience is involved in the play and is not merely an observer. The role of the audience changes from that of schoolchildren to Nazis, Blackshirts, members of London's East End community and, finally, to witnesses of the atrocities of the concentration camps. It is the audience that eventually has to pass judgement and shoulder the responsibility of No Pasaran. Glyn Welden Banks
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`No
Pasaran´
