Last year, theatre-makers Emily Lim and Dan Canham spent time in Sunderland developing a three-night live performance that sought to capture the north-east city’s essence and history through music, dance and spoken word. It was Lim’s final coup as the director of the National Theatre’s now defunct, UK-wide community programme, Public Acts, and the result was Public Record – a title that nods to both physical media (the audio is stored at the British Library and Sunderland Museum) and to the institutional archive.
“It’s very full-circle,” Lim says, now doing the same for New York City’s Public Theatre, whose own Public Works branch inspired the National’s initiative. “The key difference is that instead of serving the country and national profile, our responsibility here is to serve the city.”
