Light at the Edge of Land is a new process currently in R&D phase. Originally part of the 'Shakespeare Lives' program with The British Council, this new work was one of a series of new research commissions exploring contemporary artists relationships to the legacy of Shakespeare's works.

 

Light... took as it's starting point 'King Lear'. Interested in Shakespeare's presentation of 'landscape' in this seminal tragedy, the work questioned how as an artist living in a global context of ecological disaster, how one may approach presenting 'landscape' in new performance. Given the human race's obsession with 'things' and economic growth, and a general denial at the tragedy that we are enacting upon the landscapes of the world, this project seeks to replace the human protagonist in a narrative of tragedy, with that of a landscape.

 

The live enquiry of this project exists around the directive, 'To create performance that encourages empathy towards landscape'. The initial phase of research was conducted in China over the Summer of 2015 between the cities of Hangzhou, Shanghai and the Huangshan mountain range, and thanks to further funding support from British Council, a secondary phase will begin during Summer 2016, and for this phase of research I will be collaborating with artist Jo Hellier.

 

The aim of this second phase of R&D is to begin to imagine and realise the aesthetics of the above enquiry, in the hope of generating an idea for a piece of performance.

 

For more up to date information of this process unfolding, see Blog Page.