Melting Pan Productions Me You Us Them comes as a personal response piece to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Written and directed by Andrea Montgomery, It was based on hours of off-the-record conversations with people across Northern Ireland about race and modern relationships. The play sits at the centre of Irish relationship-driven drama. It explores real stories of racism, identity and sense of belonging in Northern Ireland. It’s about the “craic”, the heart, the way language sings, but it’s Irish drama with a difference because it’s also about race.
Me You Us Them will be released for an online run from on 24th of January 2024.
The Artiscape spoke to Chris Mohan who plays Ryan, Kyle, and Samuel in the production.
Can you tell us about this project?
Mohan: ME YOU US THEM was a project developed by Terra Nova and Melting Pan Productions over several years with an aim to illustrate an accurate depiction of the issue of race in modern day Northern Ireland. It was created carefully and sensitively using the voices and experiences of people from all ethnicities, religions and cultural backgrounds in order to try to effectively reflect the individual, every day challenges being a person who doesn’t fall into the traditional groupage of ‘white Protestant’ and ‘white Roman Catholic’ deals with.
This project began it’s development pre-Covid, and was successfully and painstakingly filmed in the midst of the pandemic world in September 2021 as a piece of filmed theatre, where strict guidelines were still being adhered to and people did not know if yet another lockdown was on the horizon.
In the midst of this chaos, a very special group of creatives were able to get together and create a piece that is, in my opinion, one of the most relevant and important touchstones of Northern Irish society that has been created in any forum in recent years.
You play four characters- what are the challenges for you in acting more than one character?
Mohan: The challenges were plenty and I certainly felt the pressure to portray each character as truthfully as possible, each with their own vulnerabilities and particular quirks.
I had a short window of time to accurately portray (for film) an early 20’s Donegal university student, an impulsive East Belfast street lad, an embittered grandfather towards the end of his life in a care home and an upper-middle class gossipy middle-aged woman.
While a daunting task, what helped me through it was that I had met variations of all of these people growing up in Northern Ireland, so I had strong base material to refer to. And through sensitive exploration with my director Andrea Montgomery, I learned that as unlikeable the words of actions most of these characters were… There was something to love in each of them. Each of them had a heart in them, a reason for being the way they are and an individual motivation and purpose it was my job to portray.
Some scenes were certainly a lot more difficult than others. Filming Samuel’s scene was a particularly heavy experience. But I did my best to find the truth, the individuality and the heart of each of these characters. And I believe that a lot of beautiful moments were found along the way.
What attracted you to the script?
Mohan: I was born and raised in Belfast. I know that Northern Ireland finds itself in a curious place where so much of it’s historical energy and reason-to-be has been channelled politically, socially and often violently into whether it is Irish or British.
What has quietly happened in the background, particularly evident in a post-Troubles world, is that an entire society has evolved that is rich in diversity and multiculturalism, and there are is an increasingly large number of the community who simply do not fit into the stereotypical, binary divide of white people who describe themselves as either Irish or British.
Sadly, far too many people in this society have failed catch up with the times and often express attitudes, whether subtly or vocally, that are racially ignorant and downright offensive to their neighbours. Living in England for five years was a massive wake up call to me personally about how behind the times the place I call home still is when it comes to diversity, multi-cultural education and acceptance of integration.
I have found this a hard reality to come to terms with as a white man from this place, but upon hearing the accounts of my non-white friends who have experienced embarrassing levels of racism, it became even more viscerally clear to me that my country needs to do a lot more to address it’s ignorance to race.
Once I saw the beauty and naked honesty of the individual accounts in this script, however painful they may be, I knew that it was a project that I deeply desired to be a part of in order to help paint the picture of what has been going on in the place I come from, behind the noise of sectarianism.
What do you feel an audience will enjoy about this production?
Mohan: I have yet to see a piece of theatre, television or film that so courageously tackles the subject of race in Northern Ireland in a way that ME YOU US THEM has done. I feel that I, personally, have learned an invaluable amount about the lived, individual experiences of people from other cultures and backgrounds from the same place where I live through this film, and I know that so many others can as well.
Northern Ireland has had such a painful past that in many ways, it is easier to put a bandage over sensitive issues rather than truly dealing with them. But in a society where we have the highest suicide rate, the highest levels of poverty and an increasing number of hate crimes, it is so important that we really start to take a hard look at our problems so that we can truly, effectively deal with them.
ME YOU US THEM stares a hole right at our problem with racism, and does so with humanity, sensitivity, relatability and grace. I think that there is someone that everybody in Northern Ireland can relate to in this film, and through looking at this mirror, we can help educate ourselves to be better so that we can transform Northern Ireland into the beautiful, multi-cultural, thriving place that it can and should be.
Chris Mohan theatre credits include Good Vibrations (original Lyric Production, Irish Arts Centre NYC), Aladdin (GBL, Waterfront Theatre), Bollixed (Accidental Theatre), Darling, It’s Not About You (Tristan Bates Theatre, London), The Miami Showband Story (GBL, Irish Tour), Peter Pan (Courtyard Theatre), Macbeth (C21, Irish and Scottish tours), Tom (Theatre At The Mill), Blackout (Liverpool Everyman), Chelsea’s Story (Alter Ego CS), Little Red Riding Hood (C21, Tour), Herons (Mac Theatre), and Operation Blitzed (Big Telly Theatre Company). His television credits include Hope Street, MotherFatherSon, The Athena, Toxic Masculinity (BBC web Series); and for film KNEECAP, The Last Girl, and Me You Us Them.
