Manchester

The Narrow Stage

October 24, 2014sarah hymasnews, sarahbridgwater heritage boat company, castlefield, collaboration, Manchester, narrowboat, performance

It was a marathon – all thirty three feet of the narrowboat’s aisle: three shows in one evening. The first was still in daylight, the second two after dark, which was when the show really came alive. We had the most minimum of lighting, and as we read the story of Tib, Dan and … (best not spoil the story as caches and zap codes are up until the end of the year at least), I was reminded of reading under bedcovers at night, and how totally absorbing and encompassing that was for my imagination.

Whatever I was told, or, in this case, was telling, seemed totally believable. And so it seemed to our audiences. They all entered into the spirit of building the possibilities of what and who could evolve from the original premise.

We had one rehearsal in situ although had the boat’s dimensions taped out for a day previously. Add people dotted up and down the stage and we were really dancing in the crowd. Making the most of the boat’s length was always central to our performance (arff arff), to bring the intimacy of the spoken voice close to everyone there, which may be uncomfortable for some, but I am sure they’ll all have left with certain phrases and images spinning in their heads.

Inevitably the lighting emphasized this, focusing on our mouths in the main, freeing me, at least, to forget the external, my physical presentation, and pour all energy and focus into the voice and its delivery. The contained space of the narrowboat added to this aural dynamic, as well as providing a challenging screen for Helen to project images and text on to. Wood everywhere – what a wonderful acoustic.

Each performance had a very distinctive character – perhaps created by the audience’s personality, aided by the start time. This difference really altered the peaks and curves of the story, where the humour or sorrow emerged, and, perhaps most crucially, how much detail we got on opening a lock. One day. Next project.

Where Water is its own Performance

October 4, 2014sarah hymasnews, sarahbridgwater heritage boat company, castlefield, collaboration, live literature, Manchester, narrowboat, origami, performance, story trail

With the story trail being previewed this weekend and ready for the public on Monday (eeek) our attention turns to the performance. Following our site visit we were able to finetune the piece to embed it to its narrowboat stage. And with the story trail episodes all in place we were also finally in the position to insure the live performance connected with all the other elements of the story – as well as the contributions from participants.

The performance is another layer to this many layered story. Plus it has the benefit of us all engaging fully with you, the joys of liveness that comes from performance. This immediacy is what makes the performance, especially with its focus on the present timeframe of the story – the past and possible futures being covered elsewhere. It will also feature the origami boats, more projections and fleeting references to text from caches and zap codes.

As with everything else about the story, it has only been possible because of being made by four of us. The fabric of humour, politics, fantasy, improvisation and theatrics gives the forty minute show a real energy. We’ve written it so it doesn’t matter whether you trail before or after the performance.

With it being on Friday evening, there’s the weekend in which to explore the rest of the story. Equally we’re imagining people will have trailed the other episodes before coming to the story. Just like the trail, it won’t matter where your entry point is, just how to piece it together and what you take away from it. Just like water, it has a cycle, where there is no start, no end.

No Spoiler Alerts

September 15, 2014sarah hymasnews, sarahcollaboration, Manchester, story trail

With most of the story written and tallied (all of it won’t be completed until we have YOUR contributions once you’ve walked the trail) I can confidently say I would have never written this story on my own.

Back in June when we first came together to discuss our interests: what we wanted from the story, what we wanted others to get from it, and what we cared enough about to focus on; we cooked up this mythic idea, spanning from 1804 to 2060, with reincarnated characters, super-evolutionary species and a water deity.

I don’t know what the others thought then but I was thinking how the hell are we going to pull this off? Naturally I didn’t voice the doubts. Just smiled courageously and offered to start the draft of the present time frame. Don’t look up. Don’t look down. I kept telling myself. One small step. Etc etc. Sure it was baffling at times. You know how annoying it is when time-hopping stories just don’t add up, if something happened in the past that disintegrates the place or humans involved in the future scenes? Well, we had a few near misses. And a few events that couldn’t have happened in places that hadn’t been built yet. And a few of those moments when you just don’t know what the hell is going on…

The beauty of collaboration is that someone spots the glitches. Not everyone can be totally close to the each element of the story, so there’s always someone with that gorgeously benign and essential ‘objective eye’, that cunning mirror that reflects your ambition and mistakes, illuminates them. So between the four of us we’ve created this amazingly fluid, playful story that could not happen anywhere but Manchester and will hopefully live on in all readers’ minds and hearts whenever they walk the streets and waterways of the city.

And that’s just the story content, I couldn’t have begun to make zappars and formatted geocaches by myself.

Site Visit with Cream Tea

September 4, 2014sarah hymasnews, sarahbarton swing bridge, bridgewater canal, bridgwater heritage boat company, Manchester

So off we went for a site visit to Castlefield, the narrowboat that’ll be the venue for our performance, It’s owned by the Bridgewater Heritage Boat Company who operate from Worsley, so a whole new section of the Bridgewater Canal for two of us and a whole new experience – crusing on a narrowboat – for two of us. Inevitable then we were a bit excited.

Worsley itself is a magnificent testament to the age of canals – with a grand sweeping pedestrian bridge over the canal with gorgeously neat sets and curved dressed stone at the bridge’s entrance.

In between measuring up the performance space and discussing the script we managed to ooh and ahh at the extraordinary Barton Swing Aquaduct whose mechanism is such it can swing while holding the canal water in it, and enjoy the stacked cream tea (at lunch time) that comes with the trip.

My advice: don’t have breakfast. They’re extraordinarily generous.Two and a quarter hours later, we’re full of possibilities for what the performance can deliver, scones and a wonderment for canal travel.

Falling for the Medlock

August 24, 2014sarah hymasnews, sarahManchester, river Medlock

Back in the baking months of this gorgeous summer, Maya and I had a research day to follow the course of the River Medlock – find where it rose and where it sunk beneath Manchester. And for me, as an outsider to Manchester, to get a feel of the maze of culverts and open waterways this city straddles. We were on bikes so our ability to zip about the streets added to the thrill of the chase.

I can’t reveal everything we discovered that day on this post as it would spoil your treasure trail hunting, but one thing safe to share is how fascinated I was with a river so shallow (and so cluttered with tyres, unpaired shoes and other rubbish) can hold such a potent place in my imagination. How the discovery of something I previously knew nothing about and is, for the most of my time in Manchester, out of view, can have such influence when I walk the streets. It seems to echo the pace of pedestrians overground: that very ordinary element of a city has suddenly been heightened. It’s current, depth and hydro-dynamism is increased by its invisibility. Of course, this apparent absence is what love affairs are made of.