Photos: Brian Slater
Ensemble Projects
These collaborative ensemble projects represent a varied mix of styles and genres. All of the projects have been party devised or collaborated by myself with input from other performers and artists alike. These projects are non-tourable performance pieces but they all contain a video link so don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, feedback or insights about any of the work.
See Her
‘I Imagined what it was like to be famous… then I un-imagined it’
See Her delves into a world inhabited by aliens: the famous who have no desire to be famous. Balancing notions of anonymity and fame, See Her questions the oxymoron of the masked celebrity, the introverted alter-ego, the faces that are hidden in the most public of places. 8 performers construct, then deconstruct, the boxes, the masks existing around the faces of the famous, concentrating on the relationship of what is seen and what is hidden and are ability, as humans, to project our own images on to the canvas of the famous. Questioning why we are so interested by them? Who are they? What’s hidden behind the make-up and under the hair? Who is Her? We will ever See Her?
10 Days
10 Days would later evolve into Concerto. 10 Days was a collaborative group project working with 14 students studying at MMU and renowned theatre maker and artist, Michael Pinchbeck. An orchestra assembles to play out a series of inter-connected narratives, weaving together the composition of a piano concerto, an assassination of an archduke and the loss of his assassins arm. The narrative of conflict is physically played out within the musical score enhanced by the sound of raging gunfire and the accounts of real life stories. The company physically unravel narratives like piano wire, using poetic, powerful imagery to stimulate and mesmerise those that watch. A tapestry, where threads of music, violence and war are neatly sewn together by one left hand.
Evolve
Evolve was a collaboration with theatre company Verbal Diarrhoea. Centring on the inter-twining relationships of the 4 performers, Evolve used the constructing of images to deliver a stimulating aesthetic and experience for the audience. This seductive, sometimes funny, piece fused popular culture and auto-biographical text to take audience to a familiar yet unknown world. The pristine whiteness surrounding them is covered by the chaos of colour within 20 minutes of performance.
The Cherry Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Cherry Orchard is a deconstruction of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. It picks apart the text of a Russian classic to reveal an absurd loop on a constant run. The Cherry Cherry Orchard has less to do with cherries or cherry trees and more to do with cucumbers and cucumber… trees. This fun, light-hearted piece resonates with the dark political undertones that are present in all of Chekov’s work.