Tilted Coming to The Place

For the past three years I have been rolling around in a box-working with Tilted Productions has been a brilliant adventure into the unknown. Who knew cardboard and vinyl records could generate so much material? Maresa von Stockert, the artistic director of Tilted Productions and the choreographer of our new piece Constructions of Thin Air. has the same enthusiasm and excitement for these materials as she has on the first day that I started working with her. In 2014 we began research for a piece called Belonging(s) exploring the notion of our belongings being a part of the way that we generate a sense of belonging, a wordplay that only exists in English. Belonging(s) was to become a site sensitive promenade piece incorporating each community that we visited. Maresa's vision for Belonging(s) was forever evolving and she constantly pushed us and the piece to new places. Constructions of Thin Air is perhaps a larger stepping stone of the many small ones that Belonging(s) has taken. A piece for the stage, it has been an interesting journey from the outdoor to the indoor. So many things which we take for granted in the theatre have been rediscovered, like the possibility to drag someone across the stage without causing them immense pain, we are protected from the interference or intrusion of the weather. Having said this, there are things that I miss from outdoor performance - the unexpected interactions with the audience (who sometimes were surprised to become audience or even performers), the sometimes unexpected beauty and poetry of a landscape and one unforgettable performance which ended in a thunderstorm. Constructions of Thin Air draws on all of this but. in bringing it inside, Maresa has been able to create something much more intimate and delicate which would not have been able to compete with all the distractions of outdoor performance, The 9th and 10th March will be our last performances this season, I hope that those of you that weren't able to see Belonging(s) will get a chance to see this moving and pertinent piece, and those of you that did will come back to find something that has truly transformed. Cardboard may make you think of many things, your online shopping arriving at your door, the records you store in your loft, a thin mattress on a cold street but for me, cardboard will always now be imbued with the ability to create borders, rooms and memories and the breaking down of these.