'On Our Terms'

From the 30th of May to the 11th of June, the Vital Spaces Company is touring an interactive performance piece titled On Our Terms around Devon.

Visiting various schools, youth clubs, and county offices, the hour-long show blends workshop and physical theatre to create a the VSC's unique blend of a resonant and vivid show with dialogic outcomes.

The audience ranges from invited members of Devon County Council, to various youth club groups, to school classes and administrators.

Aiming to open up dialogue around what the 'youth' represent and how they can have a voice in society, the piece veers away from traditional issues-based Applied Theatre and manages to look almost like a real performance - studded with poignant moments of conversation and honesty for its blended audience.

Drawing on work by companies like Sojourn Theatre (Portland, Oregon), the aesthetic represents the final outcomes of two years of research, and is a launching pad for future work in partnership with local authorities and youth organisations.

Public Transit Sightings

Vital Spaces Company has been riding the train.

November has seen two invisible performances - one in Exeter city centre's bus system and the other on First Great Western's commuter train from Exeter to Newton Abbot.

The process and workshop development of these performances involved the company's usual method of extended riffing. We spent about four studio sessions in developing the devised material - some of which was recycled from other work being done by company members.

The process began with a simple 'nothing's too crazy' brainstorm session - the products of which can be seen here:

barbershop quartet
karaoke machine
sponanteous tour led by strange guide
pulling faces across a crowded carriage
strangers rendezvous
sponanteous romance
dressing up as stereotypical 'youths' but reading Hamlet or War and Peace
shadow puppetry in the aisle
reverse panhandling: giving away spare change
vending unusual objects - lucky dip
free hug tshirts
playing frisbee in the carriage
simple but interesting conversation in public - epic story, too intimate, etc.
mobile phones and uncomfortable public intimacy
genuine wizard belief - being in Harry Potter
pyjamas, teddies, sleep time
slow motion
quintuplets - all in babygrows
nativity scene
caroling
impromptu massage
sing songs - take requests
busking, instrumental music randomly played
blast classical music from a boombox
conga in the aisle

From this no-holds-barred place, we narrowed the options down to a core 5 which we felt had dramatic potential, could be effectively (aesthetically) actualised, and which would 'do the job'. The goal was the subvert expectations about how young people perform identity in public spaces. The method was an invisible, grounded, subtle performance which would leave people unaware they'd just witnessed a fiction.

We rehearsed and finalised our five pieces:
Fictional mobile phone conversations (solo pieces)
Two 'unusual' conversations (duo pieces)
Impromptu serenade (duo musical piece)
Going to Wizarding School (ensemble piece)

These pieces were finally developed into a series of fluid and adjustable sequences, and performed. Scenes from the train performance are shown in the short film below.

To see the film in full-screen and better quality, click here.

Exeter City Centre

Footage from Thursday 20 May 2010.

Vital Spaces Company in the city centre.

Many thanks to the busker who provided the impromptu soundtrack.

postcards from the edge

As the Regeneration Film Project nears completion for this season and summer is starting to wink at us around the corner, here are some celebrations of the work we've done...

a chance to (finally) meet the faciliatators who've made the work possible, in their own words.

All first year drama students from the University of Exeter, the Vital Spaces Company was formed in December of 2009, and since that time they've run two successful film workshops at youth centres in Torbay and devised an original site-specific piece for the Exeter city centre.

Here are Josh, Rosalie, Izzy, Matt & Rachael.

blue rain poncho

Exeter city centre will be seeing a cycle of performances over the 48 hour period between 19 and 20 May, involving five performers, five blue rain ponchos, 5 newspapers, and 5 hats.

The Vital Spaces Company has been doing some site-specific performance art, as a break away from the film project facilitation.

This cross between invisible theatre (woops, not now that I've mentioned it!), site-specific practice, durational performance, and devised physical work is just silly enough to earn some pedestrian photos.

It's been a welcome chance to do a bit of performing, and to think about what is possible as theatre in the city centre.