In the moment when leaders and tankers are seized and sovereign nations are seen as up for grabs, as daily restrictions and infringements on the freedom of movement of people saturate our news and drench the lives of those fleeing war or famine or climate catastrophe or simply heading somewhere to work at making a better life, and when state-sanctioned masked men shoot whistle-blowers, the plight of a bunch of artists who live in the UK and would like to be in New York, pales into an insignificant glimmer.
And yet of course these things are connected.
Quarantine’s midday to midnight performance, 12 Last Songs, due to be performed as part of Under The Radar at La MaMa on Saturday, can’t happen. 10 of our 13 don’t have their visas – and it’s most likely not down to unlucky numbers. We still don’t factually know why – the US Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t tell us or anybody else why our petition for entry has been paused, perhaps indefinitely. It might well be because 2 of our party were born in Nigeria and that, despite their British passports, that fact alone is enough to put a red flag on the application since President Trump added Nigeria to the “restricted entry” list of 39 countries before Christmas. Or maybe it’s still sat on an impossibly large pile of applications that a USCIS worker is struggling to get through. Who knows. Nobody will tell us. That’s the way it works.
We’re incredibly frustrated and properly sad to not be able to present the work in New York. It’s a piece we love to make and we feel like it belongs in that city.
More numbers. We’re only making 12 versions of 12 Last Songs in total – hence the title – and New York was due to be the ninth. We’ve just spent 8 months working at out-of-sync hours with the brilliant, passionate and committed teams at Under the Radar – how do so few people achieve so much??? – the singular Working Theater and La MaMa: planning, measuring, organising, collaborating. We talked about labour that was visible and the work that wasn’t. The last 4 of those 8 months were focused on finding 30 workers in New York to do a paid shift during the 12 hours of the show. As much as being about work and how we spend our time, 12 Last Songs is an attempt to construct a situation that brings together people who might not usually share the same space. When we began making it in 2019, at a different moment when we’d thought we were at peak Trump (!) we imagined that creating a performance situation for what the political theorist Chantal Mouffe calls agonistic pluralism might be a useful thing. We feel that even more sharply at the start of 2026. The past 3 weeks have seen us in Zooms with – amongst others – midwives, astrophysicists, doormen, dog groomers, portrait painters, marching band leaders, wigmakers, community gardeners, ex-drug dealers, home organisers, subway conductors, bouncy castle technicians, sex workers, cooks, life models and, appropriately, an immigration lawyer….
In the middle of this coming week, leading up to the long day of 12 Last Songs, we always hold a dinner onstage for all the workers taking part in the show and the rest of the people who are helping to make it happen. The durational nature of the work means that this is the only time everyone gets to meet each other. It was due to happen at La MaMa tonight at 7 o’clock EST. I’ll be at home in England, asleep by then.
We’ve decided, with Under The Radar, Working Theater and La MaMa, that we will make something happen on Saturday – to square the circle, to honour the workers and the work put into it, to meet the audience. It won’t and can’t be 12 Last Songs, nor a diminutive version of it. 3 of our company – the live hosts of the work – have made it to New York, there on a different petition, because they’re categorised as ‘performers’. So, on the 17th, between noon and 2.30pm at La MaMa, we’re going to host a public meal – A Worker’s Lunch. We’d like to invite you to join us – workers, audience, artists, people of and people who are lucky enough to be in New York. Stop by for a few minutes or a couple of hours. There will be questions asked, good food eaten, and maybe even a bouncy castle. It won’t and can’t be 12 Last Songs, but the spirit of the work will remain as long as you are there to share it.
We’ve loved getting to know New York, at a distance, through its workers and the astonishing people at Under The Radar, Working Theater and La MaMa. Our work with Quarantine, across all these years, has grown into a form of mass portraiture. What a fascinating, beautifully chaotic portrait it would have been. Maybe some other time….
Richard Gregory
Director, 12 Last Songs
14th January 2026
