Where I Live Now
Photo credit: Seán Talbot
Piles and piles of paper. The detritus of what was. A search for meaning, for the right words.
I wonder who walked here before me
Who dreamed of these rocks
Words. Words. Words.
All lost!
Draw together, O,
out of the dark, a golden age.
Nature would endeavor the moon out of her sphere.
These are not natural events.
These are not natural events.
A world of smoke, paper and water, fragmented and disjointed, three survivors try to make sense of what is left behind. Where I Live Now was a contemporary theatre performance performed in the Chandler Studio Theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on the 7th and 8th of June 2022.
Where I Live Now was an artist commission to direct an original devised performance adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Grappling with themes of loss, grief and hope for the natural world, this performance was inspired by the site-responsive work of Simone Kenyon's Into The Mountain and How The Earth Must See Itself. All different kinds of writing played a huge part in the development process, such Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter, as the writing of Timothy Morton, in particular All Art is Ecological, in how he details the strangeness of living in a time of mass extinction, and Persephone in the Late Anthropocene by Megan Grumbling, a poetic exploration of myth and meaning making in the break down of human civilisation.
These texts and many more made it into the script itself as the text was almost entirely made from cutting and collaging, with the text of The Tempest and other works of poetry and writing. This process was helped by poet Sophia Archontis who was invited as a visiting artist to facilitate a workshop on her practice of collage poetry. This practice of fracturing and decontextualising texts and meaning highlights the difficulty in human beings making sense of the world while living through calamitous ecological destruction. Where I Live Now was a search for meaning when it seems all is lost.
Directed by Seán Talbot and devised with the cast of Amy Clark, Anna Flink and Lauren Elliott. A collaboration of first and final years students in the Contemporary Performance Practice programme.
Production Manager: Kevin Murray
Technical Manager: Neil McDowell Smith
Stage Manager: Alexandra McKenna
Assistant Stage Manager: Noah Dunnett & Nommy Soplantila
with thanks to Anne Peart, Lauren Murison and Lucy May Wilson.
Head Of Stage: Scotty Scott
Deputy Head of Stage: Tom Sedgwick
Stage Crew: Lana Kirk & Dylan McLean
Lighting Designer: Mhairhi Burton Coyle
PLX: Pippa Reilly
LX Programmer: Anna Athanasiadi
LX Crew: Bradley Hamilton & Aisha Oyedepo
Sound Designer: Maddy Hazel Frost
Deputy Sound Designer: Fraser Mackie
Sound Operator: Jordan Alsoudani & Robyn Johnstone
Sound Mentor: Matt Padden
Video Designer: Leo Wittwer
Video Programmer: Rhia Mitsuhash
CPP Tutor/Mentors: Gudrun Soley Sigurdardottir and Josh Armstrong
Photo Credit: Seán Talbot (top), Sean Daniel McGarvey (bottom two).