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londontheatre · 7 years

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DH (Deaf & Hearing) Ensemble’s People of The Eye at the BAC

After a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of Northern Stage’s programme at Summerhall in 2016, The DH (Deaf & Hearing) Ensemble are taking People of the Eye on tour this Autumn.

Writer/performer Erin Siobhan Hutching grew up with a Deaf sister and so has been communicating with sign language all her life. When her sister Sarah was diagnosed with profound hearing loss at the age of 18 months, doctors told her parents not to use sign language as they believed it would impair her ability to learn speech. This advice, commonly given to hearing parents of deaf children in the 80s and even today, has been refuted by many studies demonstrating the benefits of being bilingual. It was attending Sarah’s wedding in Erin’s home country of New Zealand, attended by both Deaf and hearing guests and interpreted through sign language, that inspired Erin, who learned to sign at a very young age, to start using sign language in her own performance.

With People of the Eye, Erin has created a story about a family navigating their way through the Deaf world based on her own experiences, incorporating sound, visual projections, mime, creative accessibility and real-life home movies of her family, coming together in a beautiful piece about memory, feelings of isolation, and finding the joy in difference.

People of the Eye aims to be accessible to both D/deaf, hard of hearing and hearing audiences. As well as the piece incorporating sign language, the ensemble worked with award-winning Deaf filmmaker Samuel Dore to create accompanying visuals to enrich the piece and sound designer Emma Houston who has layered the piece’s score with bass and infrasonic tones that can be felt, as well as heard. Through an interpreter, Emma described her soundscapes to Sam, who then created projections to visually represent the sound. The idea is that both D/deaf and hearing audiences will be able to enjoy and appreciate the show on their own terms.

Director Jennifer K. Bates: “A huge part of our ethos is that each artist has an equal voice in the rehearsal room and that the performances themselves provide equal experiences for D/deaf and hearing audiences. So often the balance is skewed. If a performance is accessible the majority of the time it is due to a Sign Language Interpreter being positioned at the side of the stage (often dressed in black), thus separating the language from the action of the play. The Deaf audience member then ends up feeling as if they are watching a tennis match and must choose which to concentrate on. In our work, we like to play with the forms of access that we use and each decision has been thought through, whether it be because it makes most sense for the character at that time or how we want the audience to feel in that moment. We have found that actually, the boundary of making our work accessible has opened up a whole new playing field. Theatre is communication. People are communication. It makes perfect sense for us to mix it all up and play with it on different levels. And what happens when that communication breaks down? So often the usual power balance is placed in favour of the hearing person, what happens when we turn that on its head?”

The show has been developed over three years with a series of different actors and currently stars Deaf Eritrean actress Hermon Berhane alongside Erin, bringing in Hermon’s own experiences of Deafness and sisterhood into the performance.

About The DH Ensemble The DH (Deaf & Hearing) Ensemble encourage a shared experience for Deaf and hearing audiences. Formed in 2013 out of a week-long project with the Royal Shakespeare Company, looking at the relationship between Shakespeare’s language and Visual Vernacular/BSL, they are comprised of talented Deaf & Hearing artists, each with an equal voice. They were Forest Fringe Company in Residence in 2013 and performed at Forest Fringe and Northern Stage’s Bloody Great Border Ballad Project, which won the Spirit of the Festival Award. They have performed at Pulse Festival, Forest Fringe, Shuffle Festival, Northern Stage and The Roundhouse. They were commissioned last year to create a new piece for Liberty Festival and reached the final two companies shortlisted for the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award through the Barbican. People of the Eye was selected for NOW’16 from over 200 hundred applications for a double bill with award-winning theatre maker Ira Brand at The Yard, voted #2 theatre in London by Time Out readers.

Listings information The DH Ensemble: People of the Eye Tuesday 17 – Thursday 19 October, Battersea Arts Centre, London https://www.bac.org.uk/

Saturday 11 November, Wiveliscombe Community Centre, Somerset

Thursday 16 November, The Seagull, Lowestoft

Saturday 18 November, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester

Monday 20 November, Stamford Arts Centre, Stamford

Friday 24 November, Old Fire Station, Oxford

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marstarrab-blog · 7 years

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Rachel and nat in conversation with the Barbican.

Rachel Mars and nat tarrab present their new show this autumn as winners of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. We go behind the scenes with the Mars.tarrab duo for an insight into the making of ROLLER … and much more.

Where do you find inspiration for your shows?

Rachel: The urgency to make a show comes when an internal offer suddenly chimes with something going on in the world. With ROLLER, we find ourselves thinking about our bodies, ageing and our space in the world, as issues of female visibility and power are in the ether in a critical way.

nat: and often these come from things that make us cross, injustices, voices that are not heard and experiences not traditionally in the spotlight. We know we’ve hit upon a good idea when it feels so impossible and so necessary that it makes us feel nauseous to even attempt it.

How much of your own personal experiences do you draw on?

R: A lot. That’s always the starting point. We think the personal is a great way in to think about the political.

n: and that personal is always densely interspersed with research from a broad range of sources and other peoples’ experiences, pop culture, found words … these all combine to create a whole.

What are some of the themes that keep popping up?

n: the workings of the body, gender trouble, female voices, female relationships, questioning voices of supposed authority, striving, queerness …

R: Tootsie.

n: always Tootsie.

R: I mean, that sounds flippant. But actually when we first met, we found we both had this deep love of that film from when we were children. And it absolutely addresses gender trouble, striving and the female body.

Can you give us one example of how you researched ROLLER?

n: we loved our time with the Brighton Rockers roller derby team, hanging out in a sports hall surrounded by ferociously fit and passionate women learning strategic ways to slam their bodies together.

R: We spent one evening strapped into every type of padding you can imagine being taught that the way you stop yourself rolling forward when on roller skates is to send weight down into the ground through your vagina.

n: that was never in my physics lessons.

We’re both really interested in risk-taking in theatre but we come at it differently

Do you ever argue vociferously in the middle of the creative process?

R: I’d like to say ‘yes’, that we’re always fighting and throwing humous at each other. But generally no. It’s a process absolutely powered by debate and conversation but it has never tipped into arguing.

n: sometimes in the heightened atmosphere in the few days before opening a show, our differences can lead to tensions that sometimes leak out. We call it ‘paper cutting each other’ and we have become quite adept at noticing, naming and stopping it.

You’re a theatrical double act – tell us about your individual approaches to performance and how they come together in Mars.tarrab?

R: We first came together because we were both working on our first solo shows and were nervous about presenting them. Instead we created a mash-up show. And we liked it.

n: you also work as a solo performance artist whereas the solo work that I do is visual art. So when something in the world shouts to both of us for attention, we come together to make work. One example of where we differ is the way we employ risk. We’re both really interested in risk-taking in theatre but we come at it differently. I’ll always want to bounce really high, skate really fast, balance really precariously … I find physical risk thrilling and key to theatre being absorbing for an audience.

R: Whereas at the moment I’m interested in taking risks with theatrical form. Which is infinitely less terrifying for my body. And my mother.

n: As we head into this show exploring roller derby, those differences will most probably get some air time.

What double acts have inspired you?

R&n: The Two Ronnies, Morecambe & Wise, French and Saunders, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall.

n: and Cagney & Lacey.

R: … for you.

How important are strong visual elements to your shows?

n: historically we have always made images from our bodies – one short, one tall – and exploited these similarities and differences. Wherever we work, whether at the Barbican or in a bathtub in Islington, we’ve always got that starting point.

R: The visual element is the guts of our work. You being a visual artist and theatre designer as well as a performer makes the visual aspect of the work integral to the making. Left on my own, it might all be words, and I think people tend to remember images more than words so we are rigorous when constructing them.

n: we take complex cerebral concepts and figure out ways to transform them into arresting stage pictures. We seek to represent something but also critique it from within the image.

R: For example, in our last show about the 1980s (The Lady’s Not For Walking Like An Egyptian), we were wrangling for days with the free market economy. We finally translated it into an image involving the two of us, a huge unstable ladder, a handbag full of edible money, a Margaret Thatcher wig and lots of Lycra.

n: that’s an image that audiences say they remember.

What does it feel to be putting on a show at the Barbican?

n: it feels like a great invitation to innovate and extend what we do and how we do it.

R: An honour, knowing all the influential artists that have performed on those stages before us.

n: we’ve not worked with such a large organisation before. There’s a certain pressure in that and we are excited about what might arise – it may release us into a new kind of creativity.

R: What happens when you bring a hitherto DIY queer aesthetic into a bigger more mainstream establishment?

n: we’ll tell you in November.

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vileart · 7 years

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Our Carnal Dramaturgy: Rachel Mars @ Edfringe 2017

Rachel Mars presents

Our Carnal Hearts

EDINBURGH FRINGE PREMIERE

Live choral surround singing, storytelling and physical theatre merge in this hilarious, incendiary show about the hidden workings of envy and the dark side of human nature.

Devised and performed by Rachel Mars | Original music by Louise Mothersole (Sh!t Theatre)

The Dissection Room, Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL, 16 - 26 August 2017, 11:00 (12:00), 14+

“Envy is a directed emotion. Without a target, it cannot occur.” Sociologist Helmet Schoeck Four belting singers create a wall of sound in this thrilling, energetic and ritualistic celebration of desire, competition and how we screw each other. OUR CARNAL HEARTS What was the inspiration for this performance? The show interrogates envy, competition and the way we relate to each other when we are in a society that promotes both. Going back, I think it was first triggered by the London riots in 2011. I was interested in how people's genuine anger tipped into looting and the accumulation of 'stuff'. That led me to think about the drivers we have to own things. Plus, I'm very interested in feelings that are taboo. Envy is something people don't feel comfortable talking about because you are often envious of people very close to you. I wanted to make a public space to explore these very personal,

shameful feelings and unravel them from capitalist doctrine about envy. I also remember listening to the language around David Cameron's 'Big Society' period, 'we are all in this together', all of that. It was at the time when joining choirs suddenly became more fashionable again, and I wanted to think about the tension of singing together about shameful, solo things. I was also feeling that an artist, I am constantly pitted against other artists who are peers, friends. We're competing for funding, for slots at festivals. As we are fed this culture of scarcity, we can double-down on that competition. I am interested in how we can remain a community in these circumstances. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? Yes, I definitely think so. I think, when it's working best, the liveness means audiences really feel invited to hold their own ideas up against the ones in the shows. With this show, people stay around afterwards, or email to say the ideas in it were provocative or comforting. We were performing it in Boston and opening the night after the US election. When we got booked, no-one thought the result would go the way it did. The nights following, you could really feel there was so much desire to be in a place where other people were and the show space became one of assembly. The show could be viewed through those turbulent recent events and it gave people a focus to express their ideas and worries for the future.

How did you become interested in making performance? I come from a small but loud family, where joke telling and story telling always happened around the table. If you wanted to be heard you had to have a good story. So, I think I've always been interested in the performer/audience relationship and who is which, when. I watched a lot of stand up and comedy on TV growing up - French and Saunders, Billy Connolly, Richard Pryor - and I got really into the rhythms of it, the surprises - what gets an audience response and what doesn't. Then, after university, I started encountering the performance art world and all the possibilities of that form and began testing small ideas at underground London nights. Is there any particular approach to the making of the show? I worked on the show on my own for a long time, creating a core of writing and visual ideas that I brought to the rehearsal room. I always knew I wanted a choral score in the piece, so then I worked with Louise Mothesole (composer) in quite a rapid way, bouncing around ideas for the sound of that - pop, classical influences. She came back with some brilliant music and we headed into a first draft performance. The real make of the show happened when all the singers, myself, Louise and director Wendy Hubbard got in a room and stared pulling the work together. It was important that that space was open, honest and collaborative. Especially for a show about envy, competition, capitalism and F*cking each other over - the all female, generous, and loving space of rehearsals felt quite radical, like a resistance.

Does the show fit with your usual productions? It's a much bigger beast! Usually I've worked in solo or duo performance. This is also the first time I've worked with live music - this show is performed by me and four brilliant female singers, performing a surround sound choral score. It's also the first time I've worked in the round, - it has very deliberate staging and design choices that are different from my other work. Our Carnal Hearts has the direct address, the edgy humour of my previous work, but it's also much darker, perhaps responding to the uncertainty of politics at the moment. I do think all of my work is researched across politics, sociology, psychology and then spun through wicked entertainment. This show is powered by a political or social question - and asks how that political question plays out personally for people, so in that way it fits with other shows. What do you hope that the audience will experience? It is a collective experience but also a personal one. I think the show invites you to think about your place in your community, about some of the grubby feelings we aren't normally allowed to express. I also hope that it is funny and entertaining. The shape of the show moves towards a potentially cathartic but also energising finale, but one that is deliberately murky. So I think it is an invitation to be in that complexity of feelings, all while people are brandishing rubber chickens and singing Spandau Ballet.

vimeo

Our Carnal Hearts Trailer from Rachel Mars on Vimeo. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? The staging choices are very considered, we are on a four sided stage with the audience banks facing each other. This shapes the experience of the show at times feeling like a community, at times like a show-down. The whole look of the stage, the design choices give a semi-religious, ritualistic feeling to the space. It should feel like we all just rocked up for some off-book, semi-illegal service. The singing - and the occasional invitations for the audience to join in - also shape this experience of being together whilst questioning the genuineness of that being together at exactly the same time. Award-winning live artist, performer and comedian Rachel Mars explores what lurks in the darkness of our psyches, exposing the monsters within and without and joyfully embracing our rage at the situation our political landscape has left us in. As collectivism moves towards individualism, inequalities deepen and the Brexit vote reveals the extent of disquiet in the UK, we are all looking at people who are like us... but a little bit better. With influences including Spandau Ballet, a Hungarian folk story and a Guatemalan tribal ritual, this is a performance exploring this great taboo. It’s about secretly choosing the bigger slice, even among your friends and family; imagining accidents; stealing other people's ideas and telling yourself you were just inspired by them. Rachel Mars said of Our Carnal Hearts which comes to Summerhall following sell-out performances in the UK and US: “This show is a symphony and an exorcism, it’s a big, epic, murky and hilarious ode to our f*cked up times. It’s a place to let it all hang out and address the things that are taboo and shameful about envy and competition, with transcendent original choral music. Audiences can expect an uproarious, raucous and visually beautiful show.” Rachel Mars is an award winning UK based performance maker with a background in theatre, live art, and comedy. Her work often interweaves personal reflection with universal questions of politics and place, and explores the way we, as people, are just trying to figure it all out. Our Carnal Hearts is her latest show, which has been touring the UK and the US (Fusebox Festival, Austin and A.R.T Boston). Her company with nat tarrab, Mars.tarrab is the winner of the 2017 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award for their new show ROLLER at the Barbican, London. Other solo and collaborative work includes The Way You Tell Them, Story #1 (with Greg Wohead) and The Lady’s Not For Walking Like an Egyptian, which have toured to the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. Her work has been featured at South Bank Centre, Tate Modern, Forest Fringe, and Brighton Festival. Recent commissions include Royal Court Tottenham, Fuel Theatre, Home Live Art and Ovalhouse. She is a fellow at the Birkbeck Centre of Contemporary Theatre and has developed work with the support of organisations like the Arts Council England, The Wellcome Trust, Cambridge Junction, Playwright’s Workshop Montreal and The Orchard Project, New York. Rachel is a regular contributor on BBC Radio’s ‘Pause for Thought’ where she pretends to know things about faith. She has also written for The Guardian and The Stage. Louise Mothersole is a performance artist and one half of award-winning duo Sh!t Theatre. She is also a lighting designer, theatre technician and freelance composer. She has written songs and music for Stacy Makishi, Lois Weaver, Duckie at the Barbican and for a project with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Rhiannon Armstrong is an interdisciplinary artist making work with empathy and collaboration at its core. She learnt to sing from a Welsh man and play the violin from a Yugoslavian woman. Orla O’Flanagan is an artist, singer and co-founder of ActiveArt, which creates innovative and participatory art for egalitarian social change. Rachel Weston is a professional freelance singer and workshop leader, with a particular interest in traditional and contemporary Eastern European Jewish folk and art song. Co-commissioned by The Junction, Cambridge and CPT. Developed with the support of Arts Council England, South East Dance in partnership with Jerwood Charitable Trust, Orchard Project (NY), Ovalhouse, Shoreditch Town Hall, American Repertory Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre and Playwrights' Workshop Montreal. Company Devised and performed by Rachel Mars Performers/singers Rhiannon Armstrong, Louise Mothersole, Orla O’Flanagan, and Rachel Weston Original music composed and arranged by Louise Mothersole Directed by Rachel Mars and Wendy Hubbard Lighting Designer Anna Barrett Producer Rebecca Atkinson-Lord

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