From Spain in 1492 to today: The Telling tours Clare Norburn's Into the Melting Pot

Clare Norburn: Into the Melting Pot - The Telling

Into the Melting Pot, Clare Norburn's latest musical drama, to be premiered by The Telling as part of a UK tour from 17 to 24 May 2023, looks back to Spain in 1492 and the expulsion of the Jews by the Catholic Monarchs, but it has an extraordinary relevance to the present day.

Into the Melting Pot follows Blanca (played by actress Suzanne Ahmet), a Jewish woman facing expulsion from Spain and setting sail for an uncertain future after the Jews expulsion from Spain in 1492. At twilight on her final night in Seville, Blanca tunes into voices of a community of Jewish, Christian and Muslim women from across the Spanish peninsula. 

As Clare Norburn points out, "Into the Melting Pot may be set in the past, but it's extraordinarily relevant to contemporary issues right now. Somehow by looking through the camera of the past, I hope we might be able to see the present more clearly. The story of a Jewish woman forced to leave her home in 1492 is startlingly contemporary; it is has echoes in issues people face right now: the rise of Anti-Semitism, how members of the Windrush generation have been treated and refugees fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan. My character Blanca cries: 'This is our home! My family, my roots in Seville go back hundreds of years. Just where do they think they are sending us back to….?'"

Into the Melting Pot opens at JW3 on 17 May and then tours to Bedford, Conwy, Richmond, Hove and Cardiff, alongside another programme, The Telling Unchained. Full details from The Telling's website.