Idris Elba delves into the 'heart & soul of SA’ in gig theatre piece, 'Tree'

The thing is, they don't want bums on seats. They want punters on their feet. So say the producers of a dynamic exploration into "the heart and soul of contemporary SA" which is to debut at next month's biennial Manchester International Festival (MIF).

The "gig theatre" concept, blending popular music and drama, is not exactly new, and the past few years have seen a number of shows that blur the boundaries between a gig and a play.

Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah's Tree will, however, be taking it a step further by getting theatregoers to join in the party; the audience will be placed right in the action, with the production unfolding around them.

The story focuses on Kaleo, a young, mixed-race Londoner played by Alfred Enoch, an actor who has featured in all but one of the Harry Potter films as Gryffindor student Dean Thomas. Kaleo knows absolutely nothing about SA, his parents' homeland, but will visit for the first time following a family tragedy.

It is, according to the MIF festival programme, a "journey of healing" and the young man will "confront hidden histories and right the wrongs of the past. But first he must face the present: a shattered family, fighting to hold on to what they believe is theirs, in a nation haunted by the ghosts of its own turbulent past."

So far, so ja well no fine, I think when I travel to Manchester to meet Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of London's Young Vic and Tree's director and co-writer.

The impetus for the production came from Elba. The actor was in SA in 2012 for the shooting of Justin Chadwick's Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom biopic, and later returned to work with local musicians for his 2014 album, Idris Elba Presents Mi Mandela (Parlophone/7Wallace).

Album project in the bag, Elba sought out Kwei-Armah with a proposal: "OK, how do we theatricalise this?"

Musically, Mi Mandela is an intriguingly gentle crossover blend of Western R&B styles and old and new African genres, from Zulu maskanda and Ndebele guitar to Malian balafon and percussion. Listening to the album, it does seem that Elba had some sort of narrative structure in mind when he put it together - but would it come across as a staged production?

"We thought about turning it into an event," says Kwei-Armah, "so it's kind of like gig theatre using the album as our inspiration but featuring South African house music right at the core.

"But really it's a story about how a young man of South African origin who's in London goes back to Bloemfontein and meets his Afrikaner grandmother for the first time. So it's a combination of that kind of story, grandmother and grandson try to come to terms with their family history, and it's set along to funky, funky physical theatre and South African house music."

Kaleo's father, Kwei-Armah explains, is black and his mother is white. In the story, she travelled to England when she fell pregnant, and never returned to her homeland. Her son now makes that journey, after her death, into the "heart and soul" of the country.

Which does seem a difficult quest, even for someone like Kwei-Armah, who has visited the place on several occasions and reportedly takes a keen interest in its affairs. What then is the heart and soul of contemporary SA?

"You mean, 'How do you as a black Briton know what the hell is going on in SA?' That's important to ask," he laughs. "But I think that reference - to heart and soul - is probably more about the music, in terms of the soulful house music that comes out of South Africa."

Not that we're all happy and dancing here. There is, of course, the ongoing debate about land and expropriation without compensation. As he puts it, "Actually, looking at land reform is talking, not just to the soul of South Africa, but also the soul of many of the battle lines that are being drawn in Europe and America."

In that respect, he suggests, Tree could well be regarded as a metaphor for Brexit.

"I would say that when I think about what is at the heart of our battle here with Brexit is actually a sense of who owns the land. Where do the laws come from? Who are 'we' in our land?

"The issue of freedom of movement was right at the core of many people voting to leave Europe, and I think about South Africa and I think about the cries and the discussions of those who would formerly have been known as the 'Bantu' talking about the overwhelming majority of the land and the wealth still remaining in white hands ."

He pauses, then adds, "I also think about the Khoi Khoi saying, 'Actually, both of you guys, the 'Bantu' and the white South Africans, both you guys have taken what's ours' ."

But, he says, this is not what Tree is about.

"I'm an Englishman who visits South Africa regularly, who talks to South Africans both black and white, and I hear both of those arguments. My job, as an artist, is not to give any answers, and I certainly wouldn't as a foreigner.

"I'm actually looking at the family, I'm looking at how someone from Britain, who perceives himself to be in the minority in England, who's dispossessed, how he arrives in South Africa, and, somehow, because of his connection to a white family, actually becomes a huge landowner. What do you do with that? What do you do with that personal dilemma?"

• The production runs at MIF 2019 from July 4 to 13. Its season at the Young Vic in London runs from July 29 to August 24.