 theatre-rites
a
company profile by Dorothy Max Prior
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I
am rushing down a corridor in Mayday University Hospital;
along a fawn coloured walkway, up a stairwell, through double
doors that swing back at me… and into an anteroom to await
the start of the operation. No, not a medical emergency –
I’m here for the press performance of the new theatre-rites
show Hospitalworks and I’m running a little late…
‘It has been the most difficult of our shows to get off
the ground’ says company director Sue Buckmaster. The
difficulty is not a reference to any problems with her collaborators,
co-director David Harradine of Fevered
Sleep and installation artist Sophia Clist, as this
has been a harmonious and fruitful relationship. The difficulty
has been finding a real working hospital willing to allow a
site-specific performance piece for children age 3-6 to be enacted
in its midst! But after a long search, Mayday Healthcare NHS
Trust has come to their aid. The opening of a new wing at Mayday
has meant that a block of old Victorian wards has been vacated
awaiting renovation – and so in step theatre-rites with
their latest site-specific work, a promenade performance in
and around the wards that mixes physical performance, installation,
object animation and sound design which, in the company’s
own inimitable way, hangs together with a light and easy touch.
We are taken into a ward where there are no patients in the
beds because the beds themselves are breathing, heaving patients
with audible heartbeats. The hospital equipment has a life of
its own – Anglepoise lamps twist and turn, pillows become
babies and lights flash on and off. Curtains dividing beds are
used to change the dimensions of the performance space –
and to create different theatrical possibilities such as shadow-screens
and the walls of a labyrinth (trips through labyrinths being
a recurring feature of theatre-rites work!). There is a wonderful
moment where there is an extremely gentle and beautiful portrayal
of the inevitable deaths that occur in a hospital, as a trolley-bed
decked with real flowers is slowly wheeled through the ward.
We move on into other spaces where we encounter a bed with bones,
a loud and grumbly toilet and a room full of drip lines, amongst
other delights.
Hospitalworks, like other pieces by theatre-rites, offers children
the opportunity to experience a theatre of sight and sound where
space, site, animation and the physical embodiment of ideas
is at the heart of the experience. Hospitalworks is the latest
in a series of site-specific pieces that have included Houseworks,
Millworks, Cellarworks and Shopworks, many of which have been
performed as part of the London International Festival of Theatre
(LIFT). One such example was the LIFT 2003 show Shopworks, sited
in a disused shop in Tooting. This later transferred to a similar
site in Vienna. Hospitalworks is also a European collaborative
co-commission – in this case Polka Theatre in London with
the Stuttgart Theater der Welt, Germany’s largest theatre
festival.
In Shopworks, we meet shopkeeper Mr. Brown (who is close to
retirement and reluctantly and wistfully finding ways of letting
go), and his team of brown-coated shop assistants, who breathe
life into a motley assortment of objects - coffee pots, brooms,
vases, overcoats – which take on the personae of past
customers. The constructions (created in collaboration with
Lyndie Wright and others at Little Angel) are of the highest
level – there is no conscious suspension of disbelief
needed to truly believe that this animated vase or coffee pot
talking to us is a real personality!
Musing on his experience of working on Shopworks, assistant
director Mervyn Millar had this to say:
‘For all the joyously lunatic logic of Sophia Clist’s
shop installation, teeming with surprises and details, the object
aesthetic of this show was rigorous, and the whole story of
the show grew out of the objects in the shop… Slowly,
over a long and thorough development process of more than six
months, more and more of the paraphernalia of the shopkeeper
was given meaning and started to coalesce into the puppet characters
from the shop’s past.’
Theatre-rites was founded in 1995 by the late (and much-missed)
Penny Bernand, and works under the artistic directorship of
Sue Buckmaster. The original mission was - and remains - to
create theatre work for young children of the highest standards,
the company believing ‘that children should be offered
work that is challenging and inspirational’. Mervyn Millar,
Sophia Clist and David Harradine are some of the many artists
who have been brought into the theatre-rites fold: the company
works with puppeteers, visual theatre-makers, sculptors and
installation artists (amongst other artists), aiming to ‘present
children with unusual contemporary imagery and to push the boundaries
of theatrical form’.
Creating site-specific performance work is one aspect of the
company’s work. The two other main strands are: small-scale
touring shows and exhibitions/installations (without any performer
presence).
A recent example in the former category is In One Ear (seen
at Lyric, Hammersmith in December 2004 with a tour being planned
for 2006). This was a collaboration between theatre-rites director
Sue Buckmaster, visual artist Sophia Clist and composer Evelyn
Ficarra. It is a 'play' in the purest sense of the word. Four
musician-performers spend an hour playing: with the space, an
empty stage with a series of beautifully-lit sliding screens
at the back; with each other through simple mime and clowning;
with a series of ever-more intriguing objects which include
cylinders and balls, an enormous hat-box that somehow moves
from solid construction to a pliable loop, and some impressive
musical instruments including a cello, an organic-looking harp
and drums of all shapes and sizes. There is a very simple narrative,
but this is principally a series of games and vignettes, full
of visual and musical delights. Performers appear and disappear
from behind the screens, call and response rhythms abound and
there many lovely moments of simple but highly effective animation
as two hands and a couple of wooden balls become puppets, or
a little walking figure suddenly evolves from a drum hoop.
Past touring shows by theatre-rites have included The Lost and
Moated Land, Catch Your Breath and Sleep Tight – which,
like Hospitalworks, features animated pillows.
Exhibitions and installations include the wonderful Taking Shape
that occupied the Theatre Museum for a year from May 2001 to
June 2002. Visitors could just take in the visual delights on
offer – or if feeling brave, pop their heads through holes
to become ‘humanette’ puppets, bounce around with
the squidgy pillow-people or enter transparent labyrinths of
light. Other installation/exhibition projects have included
Finders Keepers at the Livesey Museum and Outside In at the
South Bank Centre.
New for 2005 (opening 20 May and running until 2 October) is
Hans Christian Anderson, an exhibition commissioned by The British
Library.
It marks the bi-centenary of Andersen’s birth and is a
new-style exhibition for the British Library - theatre-rites’
puppets, pulleys, projections and paper-cuts complementing more
traditional historical material – not least of which is
a twenty metre-span swan flying above it! The installation/exhibition
is being created by Sophia Clist who is being assisted by puppetmakers
Simon Auton, Lyndie Wright, Jan Zalud, and Peter O'Rourke. Theatre-rites
are also creating free accompanying performances, inspired by
some of the best-loved moments in the writer’s tales,
for ages 4–8 years and their families, which run throughout
July and August.
Future plans for the ever-busy theatre-rites include a Barbican
BITE/ Young Vic commission which is on the cards for October
2005. Called The Thought That Counts, it will be an exploration
of genius that takes as its starting point the idea that a genius
is someone who asks the questions that children ask. It will
combine physical performance/dance with puppetry, animation
and video.
If you haven’t yet experienced the work of this innovative
company, there will be plenty of chances over the coming months.
If you have a five-year-old to tag along with, fine, but if
not, brave it alone – no reason why the kids should have
all the fun, and otherwise you’ll miss out on one of the
best visual theatre and object animation experiences on offer
in the contemporary theatre world!
Hospitalworks at Mayday Hospital,
West Croydon runs until Sat 28 May 2005. For ages 3-6. Advance
booking essential. To book tel: 020 8543 4888 or see www.polkatheatre.com
Hospitalworks, Stuttgart: Tuesday 21 June - Saturday 10 July
two performances daily: www.theaterderwelt.de
Hans Christian Andersen, British Library.
Exhibition for all ages: 20 May - 2 October. Free. For full
details of dates and times, see www.bl.uk
Unfolding Andersen, performances to accompany exhibition, for
4-8 year olds. Free but booking necessary.
For performance details tel 0207 412 7797, see see www.bl.uk
Further details of theatre-rites work at www.theatre-rites.co.uk
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