Something a taxi driver in Liverpool said…
An installation in the dark for one person at a time, an eight and a half minute journey into the landscape of your own mind, discovering or rediscovering its fears and joys.
Available but requires discussion for different contexts; please contact Ali Dunican [email protected] to discuss possibilities.
Why we made Something…
“I wanted to investigate how far it was possible to create a narrative that existed only in the audience member’s head. I wanted to play with the idea of fear and move beyond it. I wanted to use no words in the dark, strip away the visual and explore our other senses – especially sound and smell.
I planted various objects in the dark space, specific for me, evocative in another story for the audience: grass, a jacket that smelled of the stables, warm sand. What the audience choose to engage with and where they took their narratives were entirely their own choice, whether they knew this or not. A performer inhabited the darkness kept the visitor company when necessary.
As the piece matures and responds to every location, I have become more interested in the challenges of its construction, how it make it function, the mechanics that underlay its poetics.”
Renny O’Shea, director
Resources available
Astounding. A blessing. Moving. Emotional. Challenging. Entertaining. Stimulating. Perfectly written. Angry. Peaceful. Beginning middle and beautiful end. I wish it never did. Lemn Sissay, poet.
Credits and performance details
Performers (in different combinations): Jane Arnfield, Christine Devaney, Carla Henry, Chanje Kunda, Renny O’Shea, Darren Pritchard, Michael Sherin, Julia Turpin.
Director and designer Renny O’Shea; Sound Consultant Graeme Miller; Production Greg Akehurst; Room design Simon Banham
Production details
First produced at Contact, Manchester in March 2001 as part of an At Home residency. Also shown at the Belfast and Edinburgh Festivals, Nuffield Theatre in Lancaster, VECC in Vancouver and HAU Berlin.
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