Output details

Above me the Wide Blue Sky

Fevered Sleep&Fuel

This project involved the experimental creation of a performance dramaturgy and performance installation that would invite audiences to meditate on their relationship to nature and their environment. While the performance did not intend to moralise, the project brought together ideas about nature, belonging, home, memory, identity in order to explore implications of current environmental changes and erosion for the individual human being. As a dramaturg I worked with the two directors to develop the conceptual framework for the project, and through attending rehearsals I helped develop the overall dramaturgy.

My four main questions when developing the dramaturgy were:

• How do we create performance dramaturgy based on the idea of an eco-system, and what kind of compositional language does an eco-system propose which could be helpful for the creative team?

• How do we create a dramaturgy that embodies the idea of loss, erosion and disappearance?

• How do we create a dramaturgy that invites the audience to mirror their own relationship to nature?

• What is the difference between a theatre piece and a performance installation, and how does the installation format offer a different optic and experience for the audience?

The performance dramaturgy was significantly informed by two ideas 1) Edward O Wilson’s Biophilia Hypothesis. This thesis proposes that the gradual erosion and loss of species in our environment can be compared to a gradually impoverishing grammar and language. Thus the erosion process is akin to a loss of complexity and impoverishment. 2)Nature, childhood and the shaping of personal identity are intertwined processes.

Moreover, the use of technology and images on wide screens as a key part of the spatial design in the performance installation offered an investigation of nature as an imagined – and not concrete – reality in the space.