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CROSS COLLABORATIONS
Cross Collaboration is my vehicle for creating creative collaborative post-disciplinary work. Over the last decade Cross Collaborations has existed in various forms. For many years it was a collective of people making ecological performance work, micro-theatre and immersive one-on-one experiences. Now its hibernating, waiting for the next seed to emerge. Its amorphous nature takes the pressure off having to 'produce' in fallow times and gives me the freedom to get my hands dirty with agroecology, make social theatre with migrants & locals and set up association La Bolina. The next Cross Collaborations piece, when it arrives, will for sure be enriched by this diversity of influences and people.
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Below are a collection of works from Cross Collaborations and on a page of its own, Post Present Future.
MERIDIAN (2014/15)
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A bespoke half-hour performance experience for one audience at a time.
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Complete darkness. You lie encased in the landscape, experiencing your own body’s intricate physiology and inner sensations. Then slowly the earth beneath you begins to shift away, your body falls. You find yourself enveloped by the vibrations of singing bodies wrapped in your arms. You arrive in the present, suspended in the fragile balance between ancestry and future generations.
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Meridian grew from a desire to reconnect the ecology of human-body with the earth-body.
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Meridian was commissioned by Theatre Delicatessen and first performed in the ex BBC studios on Marylebone High Street.
It received Arts Council England funding and was further developed in an R&D at Battersea Arts Centre in 2015.
Meridian toured to Latitude Festival and was performed within the roots of a banyan tree.
Praise for Meridian
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"Cross Collaborations’ ritualistic and breathtaking performance, pioneers a new type of one-on-one performance art using experiential immersion to encourage presencing"
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“what a beautiful thing.” David Jubb Artistic Director, BAC
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"beyond comparison"
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"total presence"
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"I came away with a sense of awe of what we are"
TALKING ABOUT IMMERSIVE THEATRE (2016)
In late 2016 I was invited to talk about my practice with Dr Joanna Bucknall, a micro performance scholar and programme leader at Portsmouth University as part of TAIT - Talking About Immersive Theatre a series of pod casts with theatre makers.
It was a very joyful meeting as you can hear in the interview.
We covered many things from the trickiness of labels, to the sensation (or lack of!) of soil underfoot during micro performance Meridian, to the future of training in immersive performance.
And at the end of the interview Jo reads out the touching letter she wrote in 2011 at the One on One Festival at the Battersea Arts Centre with my project Post Present Future which I posted back to her last year
HOW TO BUILD A ROUNDHOUSE (2013)
A poetic solo performance drawing from experiential deep ecology exploring the embodied feeling of aliveness. Playful, provocative,
subtle and intricate immersive performance of physical endurance, voice and installation.
MEAT MEET ME (2009/10)
Performance directed by Angus Balbernie and performed in Dartington College of Arts and Glasgow Exchange.
