Lead Partner: Wildworks
Description
One reason that physical heritage fails to deliver as a meaningful narrative is because it is actually fragmented and illegible. This project explores the role cultural activities play in making the narrative more legible and complete, working in a context of the existing physical heritage but also fulfilling the need to inform the present and help communities meet the future.
WildWorks explore the ways in which cultural activities can help new community narratives evolve and redefine how communities perceive themselves. The WildWorks show Souterrain explores themes of death, lost love, grief and renewal, set in the ‘underworld’. It is a powerful metaphor for communities that have undergone significant change and are still struggling to adapt.
The Souterrain production and performance explores the way that loss and grief can also apply to loss of identity and connections with the environment, with themes of dissolution and chaos, and explores grief and renewal relative to cultural-lead regeneration.
About Souterrain
“Wildworks create shows that come from the lives and memories of those who live there. Someone once said our shows were like being in the middle of a film, the audience being the camera. We search out amazing locations, all of which seem to have had a glorious past and an uncertain future. Our latest residency in Dolcoath, is the only UK venue for Souterrain this year. As a an international theatre company based in Cornwall these final performances will have a special resonance for us ” Bill Mitchell Director
WildWorks collect human stories that touch and resonate across boundaries of language, age, and nationality. They create unique and spectacular landscape theatre that grows out of locations, quarries, cliffs, harbours, derelict industrial sites, castles, empty department stores and old mines.
In 2006 WildWorks started a journey with Souterrain which involved partnerships and performances in six very different communities which included Brighton, Hastings, Bethune, Amiens and Colchester. WildWorks are bringing Souterrain to Sotteville-en-Rouen in France in June 2007, and in July they will be bringing the show back home to Cornwall.
At each venue WildWorks will bring the show to life in a new way, working with new volunteers, adding new skills, narrative and meaning to the existing work. So far WildWorks have worked with ballroom dancers in Hastings, young bikers in Gosnay and a gospel choir in Amiens.
WildWorks have performed Souterrain to great acclaim in five different underworlds; A rural village, a school, a convent, a castle and a dept store.
The Story
Orfee is returning home from war. The village is being decorated with bunting, and the "welcome home" banner has been raised. The band is playing, the choir singing and the vicar is handing out cake. But celebration turns to tragedy when Orfee's wife, Eurydice, is killed in a terrible accident.
Refusing to accept his wife's fate, and believing that love is stronger than death, Orfee sets off into the Underworld.
And we are going with him, to find his lover and bring her back from Hades, Lord of Death, who owns all and returns nothing.
Souterrain Cornwall 2007
The Cornish performance is situated within a site that is part of the lost mining industry. Working directly with residents from west Cornwall communities the community engagement elements of this production will be directed at the specificity of the Cornish experience.
The Cornish adventure takes place against the backdrop of a world heritage mining landscape, beginning at Dolcoath Mine in Camborne. This production will involve young people form the regions most disadvantaged areas, local miners, Camborne brass bands, the local chapter of the WI, rural migrant workers and more ……
Contact Details
Co The WorksCrusader HouseTruroTR1 2DP info@wildworks.bizWebsite: http://www.wildworks.biz