Research & Development for our new theatre show.
We’ve had a brilliant two weeks working on our new indoor theatre show Windows thanks to funding from Creative Scotland’s Open Project Fund.
Our first week took place in June at Community Circus Paisley and we’ve just completed our second week at Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling. It’s early days in development, trying out different ideas, exploring themes and how we can play with visuals, story and aerial.
Images by Brian Hartley – stillmotion
Reflection from Windows director Jennifer Paterson :
It’s been brilliant to get into a room with the creative team and the performers and see ideas come to life. I love that you enter the project with ideas and gradually things develop or you go off on a tangent and you can end up somewhere completely different than where you thought you would go.
The ideas and concept has been brewing for a few years, and I was lucky to have 2 weeks as part of Magnetic North‘s Rough Mix in January 2022 to workshop some ideas. Now having the opportunity to get into the air with the ideas along with all the different creative elements is an exciting next step towards the aim of creating a new indoor performance.
Inspirations
The new work is inspired from artworks such as Avril Paton’s Windows in the West, Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Nan Goldin’s photography, to walking around the streets in the dark, and as many of us do (or not!) looking into people’s windows and what we see.
It’s the different lives that you see through windows, and the lights, lives and colours that radiate out from them. Dealing with themes of watching, what do we see and what is hidden, exploring the stories, characters, and situations that appear from the glimpses we gain of lives of others. We are interested in the connection between them, the loneliness that counteracts this, and where these themes lead us.
Windows in the West – Avril Paton
Girls in the Windows – Ormond Gigli
Photography by Nan Goldin
About the process with Windows performers:
On sound with Chrissie :
We’ve had Dave Boyd (composer) in and we’ve been working on polyrhythms. Layering different rhythms over each other so somebody might be working on a rhythm that’s a 5, somebody is on a 4, somebody is on a 9, somebody is on a 13, somebody is on a 8 etc, and how all the different paths all diverge and come together again. Some of them interact more musically (or rhythmically) and some of them are very much dissonant with each other. It’s this idea that we’re all living different lives – so each persons life has their own rhythm. It’s been quite challenging! We’ve been working with clapping rhythms or using ways to physicalise it and then trying to work it into the choreography that we’ve got with the equipment.
On the apparatus with Beverley :
We’ve just been finding our feet with the apparatus, Its the first time I’ve been on a frame like this, so we’ve been seeing what it can do and how it can be rigged in the space. We might be able to rig it in other ways or create some sort of dramatic effect with the rigging. I think there are still some questions about that and that will really restrict or change how we are manipulating the apparatus in the future.
On character with Itxaso :
We were talking about feeling safe and what that is in the context of being indoors, behind the window. Many of us were talking about being safe within the walls of your home – you can look out the window but you are protected. For my character, I flipped it a bit and thought of someone where her safety was not indoors but the other way around. The thing that was unsafe and terrifying, was inside. We started to play with a character and the set, where the space becomes smaller. Like the walls are closing in. In Spanish we say like your home is falling on you, that’s when you’re feeling like oppressed or feeling like it’s too much. We found that we could actually literally do that with the set. So we were playing with the idea of the space becoming smaller, more and more claustrophobic.
Photography by Brian Hartley – stillmotion
Creative Team
- Director : Jennifer Paterson
- Composer/Sound : Dave Boyd
- Designer : Zephyr Liddell
- Dramaturgy : Sandy Thomson
- Lighting Design: Kate Bonney
- Producer: Anna Hainsworth
Performers : Christopher McAuley, Itxaso Moreno, Danuta Ramos, Beverley Grant, Chrissie Ardill and Freya Jeffs
Rigging & Production : John Wilkie, Andy Pennycuik, Edd Muir, Conor Burgess and Rogine Babaei
