Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of Split Britches sit down and tell us more about their latest show, Unexploded Ordinances (UXO) which comes to ACCA on 13-14 March. 

What inspired you to create UXO?

L: Two things, really. The first thing was we came across this term “unexploded ordnance,” which is a buried explosive left behind in an area of conflict. Sometimes a mine is called an unexploded ordnance. We came across this term, and we have been working with elders because we ourselves are elders. We try to work through our own questions about life in performance. We thought, “Oh, that’s a good metaphor for unexplored potential, especially in elders.” So we started playing around with that idea, keeping in mind that it had a military kind of influence. Then Peggy got obsessed with the film Dr. Strangelove, and so we thought, “Oh, let’s use Dr. Strangelove as a kind of spine, and we’ll build some of these other ideas around it.”

P: I think the other thing is that we hadn’t been in a show together since before my stroke in 2009. So we wanted to make a new show together because we had both been doing solo work. That was our initial reason for doing the show. And the other one came easy once we went to Governors Island and came across the rules that you couldn’t dig in the soil because there might be a Civil War cannonball buried underneath. It was kind of compelling.

The staging and performance of the show draws on the cult Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove, how did that come about? Are you film buffs, or Kubrick fans in particular?

P: I would tell them it’s a show combining social engagement with performance, and some people will be involved in it, but it’s not a difficult process, it’s a new form of getting the audience to be part of the performance. And it’s concentrating on elders.

L: Over the years we’ve created a way of looking at things in performance. I would say it’s a funny take off on Dr. Strangelove that also seriously looks at all the issues involved. And we parallel that with what it means to get older, to have a short period of time left in your life as an older person compared, to what it might be like to have a short period of time left in your life if there’s a doomsday situation. And so that’s humorous, and it’s also serious, and it’s also inclusive. And it’s visual. And those are all the things Split Britches have always woven together in this multilayered kind of performance.

P: I feel like, when the audience comes in, already they’re a part of the situation and they see the three maps on the wall and they’re moving and they’re bleeping and because of the lights and the way the audience are set up, that they already feel part of the show, that they’re actually in a room where there’s something going on. And it’s all about time, and they know that they show is only going be an hour, or 59 minutes, and they’re constantly thinking about time, and that there’s always time.

L: But I also think that one of the things we do is that we combine entertaining, ideas about entertainment, with an opportunity to think about serious issues.

P: I feel like what we are is kind of obsessive people, and when we’re working on a project, when something enters our brain it becomes part of our process. And Dr. Strangelove for some reason entered my brain and I wouldn’t give it up. It was so beautifully acted and it was so funny, and it was so much like our work in a way, and there were so many ideas in it.

 L: You’re right about the obsession because you were the one who saw the movie because you watch a lot of movies, but one of the things that you do is that you like to trawl the internet and look for references or ideas in the same way that we used to trawl.

 P: Thrift stores-

L: - thrift stores looking for old record recordings or whatever looking for ideas. And you came across this and you thought “I want to do this!” and that often that happens and I go “what is she talking about how are we ever going to incorporate that into the work.” But there was something about wanting to talk about the militarization that we stumbled across when we heard the term unexploded ordnance. We wanted to talk about the military in some way, and war. And how that relates to climate change, for instance, what would happen if some of these unexploded ordnances were uncovered by natural disasters? And then when we actually sat down and looked at it we realized the comedic potential… and we always follow our great fantasies about what we want to do on stage, and you wanted to be, or play, or play around with George C Scott (the actor who played General Buck Turgidson in Dr Strangelove).

P: It was also at a time before the presidential election in New York and Hillary Clinton was considered a shoe-in, so Lois having the same birthday as Hillary Clinton and being the same age, would play the president, and it would be a woman president.

L: Yeah so we thought those were fun things to work with.

Stanley Kubrick’s film was made in the 1960s during the Cold War. Do you think there’s relevance to what’s happening in the world now?

P: Yes. Of course. It’s Russia. And the jokes about Russia, and the knowledge we have about Russia is not all that different than it was during the Cold War. I feel like the stereotypes are still there; the spies and the deaths.

L: And the arms race.

 P: And the arms race, suddenly we’re in an arms race again and suddenly we have a lunatic president who could press the button at any moment.

L: But the interesting thing is we don’t we say the word Russia at all in the performance. One of the reasons is that when we made the piece, it was before Trump was elected and it was before this whole Russian thing had come back into our consciousness, so we wanted to make it about a generic, if there is such a thing, nuclear fear. And in 2016 before the election, that still felt remote. Something that we grew up with in the 50s and 60s, but we hadn’t yet thought about it in the same way as we are thinking about it now because Trump is such a madman and has his finger literally on the button. So all of those references to a mad person bringing us to the brink of nuclear disaster is now real, but it wasn’t real when we started the performance.

 P: For example, in Hawaii recently, they set off an emergency on the whole island that a nuclear bomb was about to blow up and it turned out the guy had heard it wrong. There is no failsafe or.

 L: Yeah, but even the fact that we went now to that moment where it was believable, I mean two years ago, if that had happened people would’ve said something must be wrong, but now it’s completely plausible because of Trump. So, it’s absolutely what’s happening and even in the last few weeks, Trump has reiterated his commitment to building our nuclear arsenal, so it is the kind of fear we a lot of us used to have as kids.

 P: And (in the show) we play on those fears by reshowing the pathetic procedures they had for what happens in a nuclear attack, like hiding under your desk or covering your face or… so we point to those… because in Hawaii when that did happen they still had no process.   

 L: No emergency procedure.

 P: No emergency procedure, it was the same as duck and cover.

The show involves some members of the audience taking part in the show. What would you say to anyone coming to the show but not sure they would like to take part? Although you’re New York based, you have a long history of performing in the UK – when did you first come to Britain?

P: It’s not necessarily for anyone to take part. We make it so easy for people that they actually get disappointed when they’re not going to be the one at the table because the process is so organic. They’re all up there and then suddenly they’re asked to sit at the table and in fact, everyone wants to do it and they don’t all get to do it. We try to get all the elders in the room. It’s not always the most elderly but it usually is because people have a lot to say right now.

L: I think that’s right. We’re not asking people to get up there and perform. In fact it doesn’t work when people do that. We’re just asking people to get up and be with us on stage. We just ask people to be themselves and respond to questions. Nobody’s trying to catch anyone out or seeing who’s the cleverest, it’s just about mining, you know, what’s inside an everyday person, which is all of us.

P: It comes from trying to find the truth, rather than what we’ve been told is going on in the world. We just did a three-week run at La Mama in New York and every night everything everybody said was different. So, you get to find out what the truth is, how do people feel. 

P: Well I first came to London in the early 70s with Hot Peaches and I then went to Amsterdam, and that’s where I ran into Lois and Spiderwoman and-

L: But you have a great history in London when you started out, and Hot Peaches came to come and do gay theatre in Europe.

P: Sure. It’s like ‘oh let’s do a gay tour of Europe’ was the attitude, so we just did it and called it that and we had no bookings we just came to London with nowhere to live and we just did the tour-

L: Where did you first perform? 

 P: At the Oval Theatre in London. Everyone first performed at the Oval Theatre in London.

L: So did we with Spiderwoman. I first came to London in 1977 with Spiderwoman Theatre because we had been invited to a festival in Nancy, France and someone saw us and said ‘why don’t you come perform at the Oval?’ so we came in 1977 and then over the years came back as a company, Spiderwoman Theatre, and sometimes the whole company, some part of the company, and just kept performing there. And then when you – go ahead, you want to say something else?

P: Well the reason we kept performing there is that there were many festivals in Europe, unlike New York.

 L: Well, there were venues, we didn’t have any venues in the states at that point that could accommodate a touring company that did any kind of experimental theatre or alternative performance. Then you and I started going to the women’s festivals in Europe when we were both in Spiderwoman in ’79. We experienced a culture of theatre and performance that just didn’t exist in the states and a lot of companies went there to survive, really.

 P: And we wanted to bring that culture to New York, because there was nowhere for lesbians and women to perform in New York separately from men. So we decided to create that for ourselves.

Any outstanding memories of performing here?

L: As Split Britches we performed at OvalHouse and then we performed at the Drill Hall. We took our Dress Suits to Hire there and Drill Hall was the site of real queer performance, lesbian and gay performance, so it was great to be there. We created Belle Reprieve with the Drill Hall, those were great experiences.

P: We did one off performances at the Drill Hall, like New Year’s Eve, or people would work up bits to do them at the Drill Hall it was a very exciting queer venue.

 L: And it was our home for a little while, it was our home from probably about 1988 to I would say 2005, which is when I did my show What Tammy Needs to Know, and then you did Menopausal Gentleman, and I did Faith and Dancing I think and then –

P: You’re Just Like My Father

L: You’re Just Like My Father – and then we also went back to back there with Dress Suits to Hire. We did it there first in 1988 and then we did it there in 2005, when we did the revision.

P: We did?

L: Yeah. I think we spent a lot of good times in the UK. It was the first time that I realized that I could be in a theatrical community where you had access to loads of different kinds of talented people. Whereas I felt like in New York people were very compartmentalized and isolated. And it felt like when we went to London we had the opportunity to set up some great collaborations: Lackadaisical, and Kate Owen, Annabelle Lee who was our set designer. The other thing we got excited about when we first came to the UK was that people liked to talk about politics. And one of the things that had happened in the U.S is that you couldn’t disagree with anybody. If you disagreed with somebody, then you were a communist. And I remember when we would sit around a dinner table at women’s houses in London, people were really disagreeing with each other, and it was so refreshing because here, in my experience anyways, people either agreed with you or didn’t, a kind of love you or leave you attitude.

P: And it’s very interesting you say that because I also feel like in London people were very afraid, at that time, to laugh at the wrong place, and in New York people were totally prepared to give up their laughs to laugh at something. And they weren’t worried about being correct or that they were laughing at the wrong place.

 L: That goes into what I was saying earlier, you know, in London, people are really committed to the theatre, which is fantastic, but as a result they’re realty committed to a narrative, a story to follow, and we were never committed to a story, we were doing kind of nonlinear performance from the moment we started, and I think that was kind of baffling to an English audience when we first started Split Britches in the 80s, people wanted to know what the story was. And they were embarrassed or worried if they didn’t get it.

Any memories of performing in Brighton?

P: I often think of the old days in Brighton in the 70s when it was not so queer. It was pretty rough and there weren’t very many venues and we wouldn’t get paid and we would stay in places that smelled like oil burners in the basement, always in the basement, and we’d never have money to get the train fare even. But now Brighton is different because of the Marlborough and because of making sure that we’re well taken care of when we go down there.

 L: Now there’s so many fantastic venues and it’s such a vibrant place for creative work, so I’m really excited to go there. 

As part of an ongoing series, we are catching up with various members of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts team so you can get a feel for what goes on behind the scenes in our venue and how we make the magic happen. 

Meet Beth O’Leary, our Senior Technician. 

What is your job title and what does it entail exactly?

I am Senior Technician here and I work with Greg, who is the Production Manager. It’s a bit cheesy, but I guess I facilitate other people’s dreams. I translate shows through light and design and I am also a point of contact for the technicians, so it becomes easier to leave the team do the event in the auditorium and I do all the running. It is a nice system!

What is your favourite part of working as a Senior Technician?

I love working here with the artists in residence and I get to work with things that are not already made. You get to participate and feed into the creative process. 

What’s challenging about bringing a performance to life by the use of lighting and sound?

Just by putting a spotlight on a dark stage, it creates an atmosphere, and it sparks people’s imagination. Lighting can highlight nuances in a play or in an event. By placing light on the human body, it changes depending where they are lit; from underneath they look scary, dead from the top they look very shadowy, from the side you pick up on people’s muscles. It changes what people feel about a piece depending on the different colours of light used such as warm, cold or LED lights.

Here, learning about our sound has been a massive learning curve for me, as it is done through DANTE. Which is an acronym that stands for: Digital Audio Network Through Ether. It gives us a fail/safe system, completely different from analogue. So, it has changed how I work with sound which has been very exciting.

What’s special about our theatre?

ACCA is very new technology-wise, which is great. Audio-visually we’ve made it so you can do anything anywhere in the building. This is handy but every time you do something there are also a lot of things in the background that need to be plugged in!

In terms of what makes our venue special, our theatre has an exceptionally large stage for the size of shows that we host which makes it a brilliant place to see work or be part of a piece being created or performed here.  

What’s the last thing you do before a performance runs and the curtain goes up?

Several things.  I usually have an emergency wee because there is nothing worse than starting a show and needing the toilet!  I then make sure I have my radio on and my bum bag on -  as long as I have my technical bum bag I can do practically anything. And the last thing I usually do is a panic check that my mobile phone is on silent and then I’m set. 

Zoe Svendsen, Director of METIS is currently in residence with us, creating her new work WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE. The project explores the idea that to change the future, we need to imagine it collectively. Public workshops take place 14-20 February,  details can be found here. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be working here at ACCA?

I came to be working on this project because from 2016 to 2017 I was an artist in residency at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts with the Cultures of Climate Change project, exploring future scenarios. It was an unusual kind of residency because instead of being based in a particular place instead it was a kind of network where we were encouraged to meet people all over the place, to talk about future scenarios. Having previously made a piece called World Factory, I was really interested in the way economics shapes the decisions that we make around green issues. By economics I mean everything from the organisation of money, to the price of things and services, and who gets to have what. Increasingly I’ve come to feel that the form of capitalism that we have currently won’t enable us to move beyond the carbon-dependent culture the West is addicted to - even though there’s an urgent necessity for it.

What are you currently working on with us here and how can people get involved? 

From the research, I am developing an interactive system for engaging people in small-scale conversations about what kinds of things might be done and how as part of my research, I’m doing ‘research-in-public’, and on Tuesday evening (20 February) will be holding a conversation in the café with Peter Newell who is a Professor of International Relations - and whose book on globalization, the environment and capitalism I’m currently reading, and Andrew Simms (who co-founded the New Weather Institute, and worked for many years with the New Economics Foundation). Among other things, together they have created an incredibly inspiring pamphlet on the idea of Rapid Transitions, demonstrating the way that change is possible - and how we get used to new ways of doing things very quickly. I’m really excited to be asking them what they see as the most effective alternative economic structure for dealing with climate change - and I’ll be testing a new phase of the project with them, emerging out of workshops that took place last week.

How has the first workshop gone, any interesting outcomes so far? What is still to come over the next few days? 

Last week we did a workshop with students from all over the university studying an absolutely impressive array of subjects, many to do with economics, development, sustainability and justice. It was incredible to have them in the room, engaging with the topics (and discussing from the perspectives of different disciplines). It was also very interesting to me to realise that their ideas, wishes, and solutions are not necessarily a million miles away from what a general public’s ideas might involve. Then the following evening, I held a café conversation in which Sue Riddlestone, of Bioregional, talked about their design of BedZED, the first large-scale zero carbon community (in London) - here was the dream in action. 

What is increasingly clear, is that there are a series of common sense actions that would make it a whole lot easier for everyone to work together towards a faster, and more globally just, rebalancing of the planet’s ecosystems - and human relations to it. It wouldn’t be perfect, but at present things are clearly going very much in the wrong direction.

It would seem as though the idea of exploring ideas for how to create a better future wouldn’t be controversial, but interestingly it creates quite a lot of heat, coming from many different positions on the political spectrum. I am fascinated by this - and what the reasons for it might be…it shows that the project is really touching a nerve.

What do you hope to take away from your residency? How will the research feed into your new project, opening at the Barbican this year?

This time at ACCA has been immensely rich and rewarding - I’ve got a couple of performance studies students working with me this week to go into more detail on the ideas, and on Wednesday (21 February) there will be a drop-in time (2-5pm) for any other academics or interested students who want to share their thoughts/explore the project - people will be able to come and look around the studio and see what we are working on.

When making interactive work, it is impossible to make without involving potential audiences from really early on in the process - so these workshops are invaluable in enabling us to understand better the different kinds of engagements - and challenges - we face when dealing with this very directly political subject matter.

Thus the work here at ACCA will feed directly into the structure of WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE which will open at the Barbican in early September 2018.

ACCA will host and co-produce an eclectic and engaging mix of performance, film, music, and poetry during the month of May for Brighton Festival 2018.

Highlights include a film inspired by Cuckmere Haven, East Sussex, accompanied by an original orchestral score composed by the University of Sussex’s Head of Music, Professor Ed Hughes. ACCA’s Brighton Festival programme also boasts a major new production by internationally acclaimed arts collective Gob Squad, which has been developed at and co-commissioned by ACCA, with a range of national and international partners.

Laura McDermott, Creative Director, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, said, “The range of events taking place during Brighton Festival 2018 at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts exemplifies the diverse and multi-disciplinary nature of our programme, and its connection to the politics of the wider world.  This year, it includes a story set in the Russian Revolution, a discussion on environmentalism, and a selection of Lemn Sissay’s incredible poetry, spanning 30 years.  Commissioning new work is an important strand of what we do at ACCA, so we are delighted to be premiering Gob Squad’s Creation (Pictures of Dorian) to UK audiences, a work that was partially created in our building. We are also thrilled to be hosting the world premiere of Cuckmere: a Portrait, with music composed by one of the University of Sussex’s own academics.”

The programme is now on sale to members via the Brighton Festival website - you can buy tickets from us for our events from 23 February.  

We are pleased to be able to share our new podcast channel with you. 

Visit this link to find out the latest behind the scenes info, enjoy Q and As with our performers and to hear longer conversations with academics, thinkers and makers linked with ACCA. 

In Place of a Show is a performative lecture given by Augusto Corrieri, artist, performer and University of Sussex academic, focusing on what happens inside theatres when nothing is happening. Ahead of its appearance at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on 27 September, we caught up with Augusto to learn more.

You talk about non-human entities inside the theatre, what do you think about the physical position of spectators inside a theatre which has differed through history?

Whatever the positioning of audiences - close to or far from the stage, ‘involved’ or ‘detached’ - spectators occupy a central place: without a spectator, the show can’t go on. So the presence of spectators is what makes theatre, it is what inaugurates the situation of theatre: on one side someone does something, on the other side someone observes. This co-presence, historically, is what I would call the situation of theatre.

What made you focus your work on the non-human elements that characterise the theatre? Do these historical features of the four theatres you discuss on your lectures have something to say about today’s theatre?

I firstly got interested in theatre buildings, particularly what we might call ‘traditional theatres’ (with a raised stage, curtains, balconies, etc) because of the strange absence they seem to produce. Stand inside an ‘empty’ theatre, and it is striking just how much the human element is in fact really present. It is like laying out a set of clothes (a shirt, trousers, shoes, etc), with no body wearing them: the human is in fact very present, through its absence. So then I started to think: hold on, but what about the actual space itself? Surely the theatre’s material components are more than just cyphers of something that is missing? What are the buildings up to, what are they doing? In a sense the background became the foreground, and the human element lost some of its centrality. There is this shift, if you will, from an anthropocentric perspective, to an ecocentric one.

You primarily focus on the visual non-human elements that make up the theatre such as the curtains, seats, walls, doors… Do you think non-visual elements, like sound, can also have an impact when examining what happens inside theatres when nothing is happening?

This is very interesting to me, and I haven’t focused so much on this aspect. I have wondered about ghosts a lot though, since whenever I tell someone about my research into empty theatres, inevitably the subject of ghosts comes up. It strikes me as deeply problematic that a sound in an empty theatre should be attributed to, shall we say, ‘human ghosts’. It shows just how much we’d rather attribute agency to humans (present or absent), than to the possibility of other forms of life or matter inhabiting this space. What is mysterious to me isn’t the ghost or the supernatural: it is that you might have forms of plant life living in the theatre; or that you might have a termite colony (this happened in the theatre I visited in the Amazon, the Teatro Amazonas, which at one point almost got eaten up by termites). There is an ecology of non-human sounds here, but when faced with any acoustic evidence - a thud, a scraping, an unexplained high pitch sound - our brains seem to go to the supernatural for an explanation. Amazing, really.

What made you pick these four theatre buildings to discuss in your lectures? (Vicenza Teatro Olimpico, Munich’s Baroque Opera House, London Dalston Theatre, Teatro Amazonas)

They all are representative of what has been called the Italian theatre model, or the proscenium arch theatre. All bar one (Dalston), they are presently standing, though they function a bit like museums: people largely go to visit these theatres, as theatres, not as places used for shows. And this project looks at what else theatres are for, what else they might accommodate, or ‘do’, other than putting on a show. The four theatres also seemed to volunteer themselves, or if you like impose themselves, as I was researching the topic, partly out of accident: Dalston Theatre, now demolished, was literally where I was living when I started the project. Amazonas was a bit of a dream project, after seeing Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo years ago.

Do you think it is important to deliver In Place of a Show in both academic and non-academic scenarios?

I don’t know that it’s important to do so, but it certainly has been interesting to cross these worlds a bit, showing the lecture one week at Sadler’s Wells, and the next at an academic conference, without changing the language or the address etc. I’m a big fan of essayists who seem able to collapse the academic and non-academic register (think Susan Sontag, John Berger, Maggie Nelson), bringing philosophy into conversation with quite accessible literature and ideas. I’m not saying I’m doing that, that would be a bold claim, merely that I’m a fan of those who do. It is a strange or hybrid art form to me: even just showing a photograph, quite alone, can ‘do philosophy’, but it sort of needs the right framing, or the right silence, or playfulness, in order for it to come alive in a certain way… I’ll tell you more once I figure it out!

Ahead of a European tour taking in a show here on campus at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Haley Fohr spoke to Tom Furnival-Adams about what inspired her latest record, and why making music is more complicated than it used to be. 

Reaching for Indigo was inspired by a moment of realisation that fundamentally transformed you. Does that experience continue to shape you?

Yeah, absolutely. It was a pivotal moment and a special moment, so for that reason I am grateful and glad that I created this totem towards it. I didn’t really have a moment of affirmation that some people get in their early twenties, and it felt like the first time in my life where the world was like: “yes, this is what you’re supposed to be doing; this is where you’re supposed to be”.

When you released the album, you said “Something about expression feels so risky and sobering these days.” Can you explain what you meant by that?

In today’s climate, art is almost the most important thing, but at the same time, with all the civil rights issues that we are dealing with - in America, especially - it can feel so frivolous and loaded. Everything ripples in ways you don’t expect, and making any sort of charged statement feels pretty risky.

How do you approach songwriting?

I utilise different techniques depending on the record and where I am in life. With this album, I actually wrote every song on guitar and vocals, and then my good friend Cooper Crain helped me recontextualise them on other instruments, and helped with the accompaniments and arrangements. We spent a lot of time trying to expand the record’s sonic palette. But my voice is my main instrument; I use it a lot when I’m writing harmonies.

Are you familiar with Brighton?

I have been to Brighton, but only opening for other bands, like Julia Holter and Bill Callahan. I’ve met some really nice townfolk; just strangers after the show, gotten some pizza or fish and chips and had a fire on the beach. Brighton is so nice and accepting, and open, which I really appreciate.

Have you started thinking about the next project or album?

Reaching for Indigo feels like my magnum opus in a lot of ways, and I don’t think I’ll have a Circuit des Yeux record out any time soon. But I feel really good and healthy creatively - songs are pouring out of me all the time - so who knows?

Circuit des Yeux performs with us on 13 February.

Tickets available from our website. 

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts presents Jenny Minton’s immersive installation: Interlude. Ahead of the show, we speak to the composer about the creative processes behind making this intimate and interactive experience. 

Why make Interlude an intimate experience by having one audience member at a time? 

Being alone in the space is absolutely integral to the piece. I want to give people a moment to themselves, and for them to feel completely uninhibited. This is your space to play, you are the audience and the performer all at once. It’s just an empty stage without you and you’re in control. And by choosing your own route around the space, you are making your own unique musical arrangement. While it’s still ‘audience participation’ this time it’s not so scary, you can feel completely free in there, it’s just you and no one is watching! 

How would the audience move around the space? 

Well, we don’t know! But people have told us they’ve danced, skipped, ran… Some people move very slowly between the lights and listen to each vocal line one at a time, some people might turn all the parts on very quickly and listen to all the singers at once, some may even stay still. It’s completely up to the individual and the resulting piece of music is different for everyone. 

For you, in what ways do light and music interact? 

The music is composed and arranged in such a way that it doesn’t matter how the audience member moves around the space, and in what order they visit the lights, all combinations of the composition fit together. There will be infinite different possible arrangements from a single lone voice to all the voices joining in, in different sequences and at different times. The lights and sound interact entirely, but only at the ‘command’ of the audience member, by their movement in the space. 

What is the significance of naming this installation Interlude? 

It’s about having a moment of pause for yourself, a bit of breathing space, an interlude in your day. The singers are singing the words of Rupert Brooke, W.H. Davies, A.E. Housman and Edward Thomas, words that reflect solitude, peace and renewal. I hope Interlude is a unique, playful and uplifting experience for audiences.

Created by Jenny Minton and Steve Wald.

Tickets are available on our website here.