Output details

6 Degrees Below the Horizon

Research for Six Degrees Below the Horizon began by examining the histories of Mediterranean port cultures, where notions of national borders and identities are challenged by the ever-changing mix of ethnicities and nationalities, the activity of commerce, the blurring of the lines between legal and criminal behaviour and by the suspensions of the norms governing sexuality and political orthodoxy. We began by attempting to find a theatrical language that could articulate Foucault’s concept of heterotopia: places of imagination, illusion and adventure; sites where the whole concept of what constitutes borders and limits might be re-thought and re-lived in radically new ways. Key to this attempt to create a theatrical version of heterotopia was the research and application of digital projection technologies as a means to create the sense of ‘spatial otherness’ that Foucault explores. It was in the space that opens up between theatre and cinema, which our explorations with digital projection afforded, that we discovered a scenographic means to articulate the concept of heterotopic space.

Initial research for this theatre-piece developed out of a British Council funded Creative Collaborations Project (£30K) awarded in 2010. Originally entitled Tales From The Bar of Lost Souls, this version was a collaboration with The National Theatre of Greece and the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOK) and involved 17 performances in Athens, Nicosia, Bristol, Exeter, Leeds, Manchester (Queer Up North Festival), Ipswich (The Pulse Festival) and The Dukes, Lancaster. In 2011 the renamed work received funding from Arts Council England (£50K), which supported further research and a national tour (premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse). Research in this second phase focused on examining how the stilled pictorial image operates as a memory act and exploring what narrative techniques enable a theatrical staging of memory as a form of heterotopic remembering.