This life is not lived from the hand into the mouth but from the ass into the maw
The audience follows Father compost and his herd of mystical beasts onto a magical journey into the maze of their collective subconscious. Lost in here they become a part of the pack leading a ritual that initiates transformation and rejuvenation but demands a mutilating sacrifice.
In our 2008 production ‘Biosphere’ the audience is seated in an outward facing horseshoe formation to view the initial forty minutes of the show. The entire first section essentially is frontally viewed and the performers do not acknowledge the presence of the audience. At a particular point in the story, this relationship suddenly shifts. Performers directly interact with the audience, move them off their chairs. The audience-performer relationship and the way the space is used is radically changed. Previously distinctly allocated zones to either provide space to the audience or the performance is no longer defined as such. Spectators enter into the performance space and the performers into the space of the audience with the affect that an environment of shared space is established. The spectator is now surrounded by the action and able to interact with Performers and performance environment and to a certain degree able to influence the development of events.
The shift in the physical position the audience takes interrelates with a major change in terms of interaction and engagement transforming the role of the spectator into that of a participant in the event.
A great deal of day-to-day social interaction is based on predetermined formulas and commonly established behavioural patterns that have been adopted by the individual. Audience members bring these sorts of patterns to an event. Past experiences that they associate with a situation they encounter are likely to influence the code of conduct that the audience member is going to subscribe to.
The performance environments Living Structures create and the sites in which these are set up exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship. We us a range of different scenographic and performative devices to control the level of porosity between constructed environments and the pre-existing location, altering the prominence that the one or the other has at different points of our performances.
Exploding star II
Moments of magic are moments of light a star shines at its’ brightest just before it will ignite, oh I am radiant, radiant, radiant, I am an exploding star
As the red giant elapses and swelters into dust up-stands the white dwarf newly fused from the gust. Forgotten the strain, forgotten the pain, from the nebular cloud against all the odds I am standing up straight a radiant star once again.
