It's been a few years since their last Arcola residency and now minimalist theatre company simple8 resurface at the Park's main house. This time Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton have gone - in another bit of déjà vu after Complicite's
The Encounter - into the Amazon jungle with
Don't Sleep There Are Snakes, based on Daniel Everett's book about trying to convert a remote tribe to Christianity. Dan (Mark Arends) is chosen as the missionary to the Pirahã because he's also a linguist, and nobody has ever been able to penetrate the Pirahã's language before. After a few false starts - not least of all them trying to kill him after he tells a local trader not to give them alcohol - he actually manages to understand the tribe's language, and the way it's tied in to their unique way of life leads him to some radical conclusions about linguistic theory.
