Arena — Season 1, Episode 168: Let Them Know We're Here
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
When JOINT STOCK began their latest project four months ago, they had a writer but no script, actors but no roles. Borderline, by award-winning young play-wright Hanif Kureishi, finally emerged out of the remarkable working process unique to the Joint Stock company. Kureishi wanted to write a play about the problems faced by the Asian community in Britain, and his final script was the result of research, workshops and improvisation involving the whole company-writer, director and actors. They began the project in Southall just before the riots earlier this year, meeting the local people and finding out about their lives first hand. Arena was with them throughout that period, from original idea to the first programme.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.