COMPANY
Performers: Carolina Valdés, Dominic Burdess, Leander Deeney
Animator: Paddy Molloy
Set Designer: Simon Daw
Projection Designer: Tim Reid
Director: Joseph Alford
A week ago we finished a fantastic and unexpected week at the National Theatre Studio. We went in with some very specific ideas – all very technical and very much geared towards making a dark children’s story. Paddy spent 2 weeks prior to the company week making short animations based on video footage that we shot. Dominic had constructed a simple and beautiful set that Simon had designed. Tim was wending his way down from Orkney and we were all excited to try out the ideas that we’d been emailing each other about for a month or so.
Within a few minutes of starting work with the beautiful animations Paddy had made, we realised that things were not going to work how we’d imagined and that it probably wasn’t going to be a children’s story. This was our first experiment really playing with animation and projection and integrating it with live performance. In almost every case of finding our initial ideas scuppered, we were able to uncover something unexpected which in turn generated new ideas which we were able to get to work on.
One of the most surprising things to come out of the week was a narrative. On the Wednesday we experimented with some ideas that immediately suggested a very distinct story which we were then able to apply to the other scenarios we had played with. The rest of the week was guided by the characters and story that had revealed itself.
We were all very inspired by the very rough first steps that we’d taken and feel strongly about taking it further. Although the story needs a lot of time and development, it feels that this is a project that has to evolve ‘in the room’. In order to integrate the animation, rather than impose it, we need to treat it as if it were another actor in the devising process; it needs to develop in the organic process that all devised work demands.
We invited a few friends and family along to see what we’d been up to and the feedback was very positive and inspiring – so thanks very much to all of you who came along.
In other news; Carolina, Dominic and Eva are all converging on Barcelona to begin our two week workshop on devised theatre, which starts on Monday. We’re very excited about that and also about the London workshop which takes place at the end of August and is filling fast (click here for details).
May the summer be with you
theatre O
Founder and Artistic Director of theatre O