How Do You Bury A Whale? opens Friday 14th August at WAC Arts, exploring the grief and loss of the last keeper of Da Bai: a captive beluga whale who has died. Learn more about what you can expect:
1: What first led you to Da Bai’s story?
Abby: I first heard Da Bai’s story from Yi, who had learned about it through her cousin. It took me a long time to process what had happened. Since then, I often find myself thinking about the captive whales living on the other side of the world that so many people have forgotten. To me, this is not just a story about one place, but about the relationship between humans and non-human animals.
When I looked back at the personal statement I wrote for my MA application to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, I found these words:
“I aim to create art that speaks not just for humanity, but also for animals, promoting greater awareness of animal survival, protection, and what we can learn from observing animals in their natural behaviours. I hope to bring together my passion for animals and my artistic practice.”
Reading it again made me realise that I had forgotten those lives for far too long. This project became a way of returning to where I first started.
Yi: I think it’s the idea of human hubris behind this story of burying a whale. It’s a true story, and I first heard it from my cousin. Upon first hearing it, I kept asking myself: How could this be? How is it even possible? How ignorant and arrogant must we as human beings be to trap ourselves in a situation where we have to lay our hands on beings that are supposed to remain delicately agnostic to our kind forever? In the name of self‑preservation and in the name of knowledge, we have done far too many things, the consequences of which we as a species can never fully prepare for – the captivity of marine mammals is one of them. This whole event is a question we have posed to ourselves, one that lies beyond our ability to answer, and I want to challenge theatre’s potential to expose that impossibility.
2: The show explores ecological grief. What does that term mean to you personally?
Murphy: Grief sounds like such a heavy, defeated word, but for me the term is much more delicate than that. In real life, we’ve all been trained to keep our sadness within a ‘manageable’ range, we’ve grown used to not looking, not listening, until we’re living in a kind of healthy numbness. But I think making this show is about forcing ourselves to look anyway. Ecological grief, to me, is realizing I’m already living inside that numbness, and also fighting against it, trying to use my own eyes to meet an animal’s eyes. Maybe we’ll both end up crying, but we keep looking at each other.
Iraz: Ecological grief, for me, is a state of mourning that I live with again and again, every day, something I fall asleep with and wake up carrying. I feel a deep sadness about the violent structures of our species has built through its domination of other species and all the more-than-human world. Wherever I find a possibility to stand against that violence, I try to take it. And I think my grief also lives there: not only as sadness, but as something that asks me to act. I want to keep raising my voice, through the way I live and through my artistic practice, for the possibility of a world in which this grief might one day become a little lighter.
3: What drew you towards this style of theatre-making?
Iraz: Over the years, my understanding of theatre-making has become increasingly rooted in creating spaces where meanings, realities and relationships can emerge through performance, embracing their fluidity and understanding these relationships as forces through which worlds are continuously made and remade, rather than presenting meanings and realities as something already formed. Karen Barad’s thinking has been very influential for me here; particularly the idea that we do not stand outside the world and observe it from a distance; we are also already entangled within the realities we are trying to understand. That has deeply shaped the kind of artist I want to be. I think this is what drew me towards experimental documentary theatre: it allows me to work with real events and lived experiences without treating them as fixed truths. Instead, theatre can become a space to encounter their complexity, question how we relate to them, and recognise how our own presence participates in the realities we are exploring. With How Do You Bury A Whale?, this approach gave us a space where research, artistic practice and activism could meet. For me, it became a form of artivism: a collective way of questioning, witnessing and resisting together.
Murphy: We didn’t set out to make verbatim theatre, the interviews themselves brought us here. We were struck by the language people used in the moment, and by the facts hidden underneath that language, about the world these testimonies belonged to. I don’t think this form is about saying, “okay, you love animals, you’re an environmentalist, so come watch this.” What we’re trying to show is a kind of curiosity that comes from empathy, an open palm toward everything, offering up all we know, trying to hold new narratives, new possibilities. Our questions were what gave us the text, and what organized it.
4: What do you hope audiences feel in the final moments of the show?
Abby: I hope this story can be seen as something bigger. None of us, as human beings, are exempt from it. Sooner or later, we all have to confront our relationship with the more-than-human world. It’s not meant to be a punch to the gut. It’s a gentle reminder that those furry, slippery creatures have offered us love and support, even if we’ve never met them.
Yi: The courage to care for a world larger than our mortal human flesh. Courage, truly, is the word. I believe this piece has given me that gift, one of the most beautiful I’ve ever received. And I hope our art can pass on that same beauty of courage to the audience.
5: Where would you like to see the show go from here?
Yi: Where it is needed most, countries and regions where the issue of animal captivity and performance is given less attention, and where the consequences of such a cruel industry are being shifted to other places. I believe this is both a local and a global story. It speaks to the sensibilities of different cultures because it is a universally shared dilemma.
Murphy: I’d like it to spark more public conversation about animal ethics. I’d like it to be performed in more places, especially in countries and regions that haven’t yet banned animal performances or put animal protection laws in place. I hope Da Bai’s absence can create more presence.
6: What has been the most enjoyable part about creating How Do You Bury A Whale?
Murphy: Returning again and again to the verbatim themselves. Searching for the conversations that might form between unfamiliar voices, reading them over and over, imagining the scene, the smell, the feeling each time. Questioning and challenging each other, setting our own rules. The whale isn’t ours, we don’t own this beluga, and the words aren’t ones we invented. But it feels like the warmth of our own questions is what held everything together. I love that warmth.
Iraz: Definitely the experience of creating this work with/inside this beautiful collective. I discovered how joyful, playful and freeing theatre-making can feel when there is genuine care, trust and space for everyone in the room. We were able to question each other, support each other, disagree, experiment, fail, laugh, and keep finding the work together. This sense of solidarity of ours has become inseparable from the piece for me. I feel incredibly grateful to my team, and I know I will carry the path we have walked together, and everything they have taught me along the way, with me for the rest of my life.
How Do You Bury A Whale? opens Friday 14th August at WAC Arts. Many thanks to Iraz, Yi, Ziyue (Murphy) and Junzhu (Abby) for answering our questions. Book your tickets here!
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