The Yellow Canary

The Yellow Canary has been a bit of a passion project for me and I have been developing it on and off over the last few years. 

When I was growing up my dad had a little paper photo album with black and white photos in it. The photos were of his family – my grandpa’s mother, father, brothers and sisters, who he had never met. I remember being fascinated by the photos and the fact that the children in them looked so much like my brothers and I. 

I grew up surrounded by stories from my family about the Holocaust, but until 2014 I hadn’t heard the story of The Yellow Canary. It was then that my granny’s cousin Bernard told my family about his experiences as a child during the war and how his parents allowed him to take his pet Canary with him as they fled their home. He said he was able to cope with the things he was experiencing because he had his Canary with him. It really made me think about transference of emotion and how children experience and process traumatic things. I was fascinated that his parents let him take a bird with him during such a dangerous time and it made me think about what I would say if I was faced with the same decision as a parent. I then came across some pictures of children fleeing modern day war zones with their pet cats and dogs and it put the story straight into a modern context for me and I wondered what it would be like to bring the story to life.  

Since having my own children I’ve also started to think a lot about how I start talking to them about their family history but also about the current refugee and migrant crisis. 

At Glass Performance Jess and I make autobiographical theatre and performance where we work with people to tell their own stories, but this is the first time I have made a show about my family. My cousin Will and I started to work with Ross just before the COVID 19 pandemic and as we went into lockdown Ross began to draw the story as Will and I pieced it together from our separate bedrooms and presented versions of it on Zoom. This year we have brought together a larger creative team to present it in person as a mix of live storytelling and animation. Bernard’s story is one of survival but this show is a tribute to all of our family members who were not so lucky and who we carry with us in the names of our children, the food we eat, the way we laugh and the stories we will continue to tell. 

– Tashi