10 years ago we made this...
I am not quite 30. I turn 30 on the 9th April this year...it's rapidly approaching.
On the 24th January I opened a show I had long been dreaming about. NeverLand is a freeform immersive musical about JM Barrie, and about him writing and imagining the world of Peter Pan. It's a damn hard show and one I'm still not sure I have the right skills to finish, but I'm learning fast and trying damn hard.
Also on the 24th January I got a message of my very good and longstanding friend Jamie Wilkes - 'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'.
In our 2nd year at York University we made a version of Berkoff's Metamorphosis. We were pushing at something and we didn't know what, or how, but we were pushing and pushing and pushing. One night, late at night, Jamie and I were in the Drama Barn (the wonderful imaginarium of York University's drama society) looking at the space. We decided to rebuild the whole set at about 2am. We built a house - the dining room, a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. It filled the whole of the Drama Barn.
'Where do we put the audience?' we asked.
'They'll just have to sit in it all' was the answer.
And so, in that little moment of early hours delirium we hit something which has steered the last decade of my life. More than a 3rd of my whole life. And that more-than-third of my life has been amazing. And it has, for the most part, been because of and related to that decision. The life long friends I have made, the glorious memories I've stored, the things that have inspired huge decisions and risks and journeys.
There's a peculiar ven diagram. The last 10 years have, although by no means invented, seem to have profligated immersive theatre. And, somehow, York University crops up over and over in the people who make it. The titans of Les Enfant, the huge family of Secret Cinema and then, very often, those of us who came crawling out of the gorgeous run down incubator of York University's under resourced Drama Barn.
Metamorphosis took us out of university to the National Student Drama Festival. It took us up to Edinburgh to run a ridiculous amount of shows. It helped us build an idea, and identity, to imagine something we didn't know how to finish. But, more than everything to do with a theatre industry, it contained and convalesced so many people I hold nearest and dearest in all the world. That question - 'Where do we put the audience?' - has, genuinely, shaped a whole 10 years of my almost-30-years of life.
So underground in the heartwarming tunnels of VAULT Festival - surrounded by a festival full of amazing artists imagining things they need an incubator to figure out how to finish, in a venue that has housed another significant ring of the ven diagram, opening a show that I could never have even imagined 10 years ago - I get that message of my wonderful friend Jamie.
'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'
My stomach leaped for the last ten years, and also for the next.
The Drama Barn at York University is a wonderful place and, even though I'm sure those of us in it at 3am one morning moving around furniture don't know it, it is responsible for a huge amount. A huge amount of a niche section of a theatre industry, and a huge amount of a large proportion of my life and, surely, of other people's.
10 years is a long time. But I still feel like I'm moving around furniture, trying to figure out how best to tell a story with an audience in the very centre, surrounded by some of the nearest, dearest and best of people.
 |
| Metamorphosis, at York University, 2008 |
On the 24th January I opened a show I had long been dreaming about. NeverLand is a freeform immersive musical about JM Barrie, and about him writing and imagining the world of Peter Pan. It's a damn hard show and one I'm still not sure I have the right skills to finish, but I'm learning fast and trying damn hard.
Also on the 24th January I got a message of my very good and longstanding friend Jamie Wilkes - 'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'.
In our 2nd year at York University we made a version of Berkoff's Metamorphosis. We were pushing at something and we didn't know what, or how, but we were pushing and pushing and pushing. One night, late at night, Jamie and I were in the Drama Barn (the wonderful imaginarium of York University's drama society) looking at the space. We decided to rebuild the whole set at about 2am. We built a house - the dining room, a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen. It filled the whole of the Drama Barn.
'Where do we put the audience?' we asked.
'They'll just have to sit in it all' was the answer.
 |
| Metamorphosis, at NSDF 2008 |
And so, in that little moment of early hours delirium we hit something which has steered the last decade of my life. More than a 3rd of my whole life. And that more-than-third of my life has been amazing. And it has, for the most part, been because of and related to that decision. The life long friends I have made, the glorious memories I've stored, the things that have inspired huge decisions and risks and journeys.
There's a peculiar ven diagram. The last 10 years have, although by no means invented, seem to have profligated immersive theatre. And, somehow, York University crops up over and over in the people who make it. The titans of Les Enfant, the huge family of Secret Cinema and then, very often, those of us who came crawling out of the gorgeous run down incubator of York University's under resourced Drama Barn.
 |
| Metamorphosis, at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2010 |
 |
| NeverLand at VAULT Festival. Photo by Helen Maybanks |
'It's 10 years today since the first performance of Metamorphosis'
My stomach leaped for the last ten years, and also for the next.
The Drama Barn at York University is a wonderful place and, even though I'm sure those of us in it at 3am one morning moving around furniture don't know it, it is responsible for a huge amount. A huge amount of a niche section of a theatre industry, and a huge amount of a large proportion of my life and, surely, of other people's.
10 years is a long time. But I still feel like I'm moving around furniture, trying to figure out how best to tell a story with an audience in the very centre, surrounded by some of the nearest, dearest and best of people.
 |
| NeverLand at VAULT Festival. Photo by Helen Maybanks |
No comments:
Post a Comment