Brighton Festival 2025
Earth Teeth
ThirdSpace Theatre
Genre: Devised, Experimental, Fringe Theatre, Theatre, Youth Theatre
Venue: Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
Festival: Brighton Festival
Low Down
“It’s about young people’s place in the world, a world that they did not make but that they find themselves in now… the lead character wants to do more than just protest. She takes on the idea of giving something to the earth and… the earth having its own voice.”
Tanushka Marah – ‘Earth Teeth’ Director
“We are all individual beings – but we can act together – collectively – for the benefit of all of us.”
‘Earth Teeth’ character.
Review
Certain Native American tribes, such as the Cherokee, throw a fallen baby tooth onto the roof while calling to a beaver to give them a strong new tooth. Other tribes, such as the Dene Yellowknives, put their baby teeth in straight trees, encouraging the new tooth to grow in as straight as the trunk. Cultures all over the world have sacrificed a baby tooth to actual animals by leaving the tooth by a mouse hole, a beaver dam, or the home of another strong-toothed creature. These traditions all hoped to exchange this magical little token of childhood for strong, healthy teeth.
A confession – I’d never really considered the giving up of teeth as some kind of sacrifice to ensure a better future, or as a test of bravery – a rite of passage into adulthood. But ‘Earth Teeth’ writer Sarah Leaver has made it a central feature of the production.
The show is about how young people find themselves in a world beset by political and economic forces that they can’t control, against a backdrop of environmental catastrophe that threatens us all. And none of it is their doing – they just have to find ways to survive it.
In ‘BAKKHAI’, ThirdSpace’s 2023 production, young people had bonded together into different ‘tribes’ to protect themselves against global water shortages and the depredations of the big Corporations. In ‘Earth Teeth’, we meet just one group of teenagers, at the end of a protest against the environmental horrors of fracking. Angela El-Zeind’s scenic design had littered the stage with their tents, and their home-lettered placards – “FRACK OFF” , “NO JUSTICE – NO PEACE”. They’ve obviously been there a while, and every so often the authorities (landowners?, corporations?) broadcast loudspeaker demands that they pack up and leave.
But they don’t. They decide to stay – bonding in an act of defiance and solidarity.
A powerful illustration of how ThirdSpace itself operates – young people working together, developing their personal skills alongside experienced theatre practitioners, to create ambitious theatre that’s rooted in social change. The great majority of the actors are teenagers – obviously not seasoned professionals – and for a number of them it may have been their first time in front of an actual audience.
So at the start there were just a few of the inevitable nerves, leading to some less audible lines, and a couple of speeches delivered too fast – but it was wonderful to see how quickly they grew in confidence as the evening progressed, giving us a powerful rendering of the story. They have obviously done a great deal of work as a team, and it showed!
The story was a blend of traditional religions and modern environmental science.
The young people began by being solely concerned with their emotional and sexual relationships, and their commitment to continuing the protest – but then they meet a shamanistic figure who tells them that their campsite turns out to be located on a ley line – part of an ancient network focussing mystical power and energy.
Sarah Leaver’s script develops the theme, as the characters discuss how all living things are connected in networks of energy – feeding off each other and providing habitats and protection for each other. It might sound rather New-Age, but we were told about the most up-to-date scientific findings about Mycelium fungi. These transmit nutrients and chemicals between trees in a forest, sometimes for miles under the ground, and even seem to allow the trees to communicate with each other in some fashion.
As well as the human characters, their ley line location also seemed to be home to characters who might have been trees themselves – clad in white, with blackened hands whose thin pointed root – fingers extended at least a foot. They sang, too: haunting ululations that seemed to foretell the coming destruction of their forest.
But it seems that we are ALL connected, and the environmental protesters come to feel that their commitment to the natural world would be best demonstrated by the offering – or maybe the sacrifice – of a tooth. One of the young people starts this, pulling a molar out with pliers (I saw some fellow audience members wince) and soon the whole group were doing the same.
Watching this was an unforgettable experience! People shrieking in pain and bringing bloodied hands away from their mouths required great acting skill for it to be believable – and these young people had it. But that wasn’t all … after the ‘extractions’, the teeth were buried in the earth as offerings, and this is where we were treated to the creative projection and lighting skills of Giles Thacker and Jules Deering, as The Earth responded. Bold patterns of brilliant white light, irregular shapes like the Mycelium networks, were projected onto the cast.
Amazing! The lights transformed the actors into beings that no longer seemed human, and after a few seconds the patterns on their bodies morphed into points of light, as if we were looking at people made out of stars.
Which, of course, modern science tells us is exactly the case.
Mysticism and cutting-edge science, and also the indomitable human spirit – this production had them all. With eighteen actors on stage, and another fifteen in the creative and technical teams, there are too many to mention by name – but they should all be immensely proud of what they have achieved. The thunderous applause at the end was very, very well deserved.
