With the question “Where do I belong?” more pertinent than ever, Pepper and Honey – on at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre on Tue 22 Mar – deals with belonging, change, cultural differences, heritage, homesickness, identity, love, loss, migration and tradition. Rhonda Lee Reali spoke to its creators, Tina Hofman and Kristina Gavran.
Tackling shelter and another basic need, food, are two main concerns of Pepper & Honey, a joyful and funny yet bittersweet play that will warm your heart and stomach. Created by the Birmingham-based Notnow Collective and led by theatre-makers and founders Tina Hofman and Kristina Gavran, the work is performed partly in their native Croatian, with translation into English through captioning. Gavran, who penned the work, and artistic director/producer Hofman are both Zagreb natives.
“Food and recipes constantly cross borders. These 16th century Croatian biscuits have Indian spices inside”
“Food and recipes constantly cross borders. These 16th century Croatian biscuits have Indian spices inside”
Kristina Gavran
Please tell me a little about Pepper & Honey. I’m an immigrant and know the pull of home is always strong. Being torn between two countries – your alliances, you miss family. And of course, the politics of immigration.
Kristina Gavran: Tina and I had a lot of conversation about our position as migrants, and we don’t know many Croatians in the UK. Maybe it would be easier if you’re a Polish or Pakistani migrant and you have your culture here, but when you don’t have anybody, it can get very lonely. Also, the way we migrated – it was our decision – we liked something about England. We liked to live here but still this longing for home.
When people are asking us questions, “Can you compare this or can you compare that?” it’s almost like you have to choose which one you like better and what is better here and what is better there, and you want to say, “I love both. I feel belonging to both.” I’m constantly in-between, and I don’t think that will ever stop. That will last forever.
In this play, I wanted to explain that feeling, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be across countries. It can be you move from one village to another, but you feel the longing for your own village. Yes, that feeling of being displaced from your home place.
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When people talk of food when they talk of their homeland, everyone says they’re so connected, and it’s such a family thing, but you can say that about every culture. Every culture comes together through food. No one has a monopoly on coming together through that .
Kristina: That’s interesting what you said about food, and I completely agree. When we think of family and food, we always think that ours is the best. [Laughs] Our family connections are the best, and our receipts are the best… but still, we all like to try our Chinese, Indian curry, Italian pasta. We enjoy tasting new foods.
We love to travel and explore, so that’s why I think food is a great metaphor to explain migration and how you feel to people. How you miss your food or how you enjoy sharing the food. I think that was spot on to use that metaphor for Pepper & Honey.
Also, the food, the recipes, they constantly cross borders. Borders don’t exist for recipes. I use pepper biscuits in the story because they’re traditional Croatian biscuits from the 16th century, but they have Indian spices inside. So, you immediately see, even [then], we say this is traditionally Croatian. Yes, but how did cinnamon, pepper, everything come to this biscuit? It’s not completely Croatian, and we have to acknowledge that migration was happening a long, long time ago. It’s not a new thing: we were constantly migrating, and we were influencing each other in languages, music, recipes and so on.
I wrote a short story called Pepper Biscuits, and Tina read that book and really liked it. We started talking about how this biscuit connected to migration. We were working on a play for a long time – me, Tina and our director, Tilly Branson. She was included in the whole process from an early start, and that was so beneficial to the play just to have somebody from also the inside eye, not only us Croatians being in our own space. All the conversations and everything we did helped to develop this play to the best possible result.
It takes courage to move from home, and it also takes courage to welcome newcomers. Whether you are moving from one village to another, one country to another or across continents. It is important to find commonalities while respecting differences. We all love trying new foods and recipes, and we are proud of our own. That is why the story of Pepper & Honey reveals itself around baking paprenjaci.
Tina Hofman: We did several ‘scratch nights’ where we’d offer a part of the show and test it, and on one of those nights we played around in this cooking scene, which I can’t remember. I have a feeling Christina would have brought this cooking scene because she said this is the recipe. We then said, “How about if this cooking scene is delivered by the character grandma, who talks in Croatian, and she brings people onstage and talks Croatian to them?” [Laughs]
It’s what happens when we don’t understand each other, but something on the table in front of us is a common experience and knowledge: it’s quite easy to call flour in Croatian and point to it, and then people go, “I understand! We celebrate, yeah, it’s all the same thing!” That causes a lot of happiness among people, the feeling of togetherness. It’s that age old thing – we have much more in common then what separates us.
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Tue 22 Mar. Tickets: £12/£10. Info: here
words RHONDA LEE REALI