Scenes from a Repatriation

Joel Tan’s sold-out debut at the Royal Court Theatre centres around a fictional bodhisattva statue in the British museum; Unfolding across the statue’s journey from China to Britain and back again, the play questions who can claim cultural artefacts – and why.

Through R&Ds, fieldwork, and discussions, the creative team landed on framing the performance as a funeral being held at the mausoleum that is the British Museum. We transformed the flexible studio space into a traverse, axial gallery extended infinitely by mirrors on either end.

Beneath its apparent simplicity, the design draws on the language of museum artefact display and storage, buddhist temple spatial logic and practices, and contemporary sculpture.