Writer: Dan Giovannoni
Co-Directors: Kouhei Narumi (Dainanagekijo) / 鳴海康平（第七劇場）& Sam Routledge
Designer: Ayami Sasaki (FAIFAI) / 佐々木文美（快快）
Shadow Puppet Designer and Maker: Greta Jean
Composer: Dylan Sheridan
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Associate Designer: Yumemi Hiraki
Cast: Rino Daidoji, Mayu Iwasaki, Marcus McKenzie
Residence Coordination and Cooperation in Japan: Aichi Prefectural Art Theater
Residence Coordination in Japan: Chiryu Public Theater
Stage Manager: Mads Hillam
Production Coordinator: Liv Vermey

What role might theatre (and theatres) play in times of increasing calamity?

Of course, we’re not the first to ask it but in making Goldfish some answers have emerged. Disaster recovery organisations have been consulted about essential items in their work and we’re donating them after the season. We’ve used the technical stock of a typical theatre as a skeleton for the set design to eliminate freight, reducing carbon. Flexibility in the required production resources was also agreed. While you are experiencing Goldfish in the theatre with a lighting design, it will also tour to Tasmanian schools without any lighting design at all.

In conceiving these values-based parameters, joined by an audience rule–relevant intergenerationally, more questions lurked.

Doesn’t art inherently do-good with no need to do-good outside of the work itself?

If we draw attention to the value of the social impact of a work, are we admitting defeat about its inherent value as a work of art? How useful is this binary for the theatre today? If we don’t like the show, do we feel better that at least they’ve given some kit to the SES?

And finally is it ok to platform Nestlé onstage if the Milo is going to a family in need afterwards?

To work in two languages, with self-imposed restrictions on materials, whilst being expansive and not reductive in our storytelling ambition, has required an enormous amount of collective imagination, nerve, verve, resourcefulness, flexibility, patience and concentration. Deeply human, collective skills. We’ve had the right people in the room. And the right people outside the room; those who championed an international co-commission for major arts festivals that imagines a new way. To everyone that has supported the idea, from big actions to small conversations, thankyou.

I’m really happy to have created this work with Terrapin and to be able to premiere and tour this work in Japan.

All members of this creation team believe in the power of fiction. The power to believe in this fiction is the power to believe in the invisible and intangible, the power between humans, and the power to imagine and feel close to someone you have never met.

This power is effective for enjoying life more, and at the same time it is useful when overcoming suffering and sadness. This power also helps us when we have no choice but to stand dumbfounded in front of the overwhelming wildness of nature.

Currently, various disasters and environmental changes are occurring all over the world. We cannot control nature and prevent them completely, and when they occur they are always painful. However, in order to alleviate the pain caused by disasters and environmental changes that have occurred, and to overcome them, the power of fiction, the power to believe in the invisible, can give us courage. It is important to become aware of the pain that we and nature are unknowingly carrying in order to protect ourselves, nature, and the future.

This work is full of the power of fiction. I sincerely hope that this work will help protect both the audience and the nature that sustains us.