Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Photo: Kazuyuki Matsumoto
Participatory performance for a theatre audience
Whilst on a 3-week residency in Japan, we made a new work for a primarily non-English-speaking audience, inside a theatre space for the first time.
Applying our site-based methodology, we chose to work with the materials readily-available to us, in Yokohama. From the theatre, these included the audience, the raked seating, the proscenium stage, the sound equipment, the lighting rig and various objects and pieces of furniture found backstage. We also collected, borrowed and bought 20 everyday objects from various places around the city.
Appropriating foley techniques, these materials were used to create a participatory experience, in which the audience evoked a number of distinct soundscapes, using the sounds made with their bodies, with objects and non-speech vocals. On the ‘stage’, these sounds were rehearsed and then performed, conducted by us, and accompanied by narratives and instructions written on cue cards.