OUT & ABOUT
Taking theatre to new heights
Petrified people balancing precariously on top of skyscrapers looking down on the crowded, colonised city below. Disillusioned travellers trekking through the barren, drought-hit lands in search of reprieve. A despondent couple dangling as the scorched landscape behind them burns with a fury that love could never ignite.
Credit: Pepper Pictures
It may sound like scenes from a fictitious disaster movie but this is the portrait of the real-life catastrophe we are all facing – climate change – which has been depicted in a dramatic performance that is coming to Wentworth this autumn. Following the success of last year’s Man Engine, Great Places Wentworth and Elsecar sees yet another large-scale outdoor art show brought
‘‘the Great Place team are proud to welcome this Wired Aerial Theatre Production production to Wentworth following an eight-year world tour which has seen over 50 performances’’
to South Yorkshire with the world-renowned aerial production of As The World Tipped. As part of the We Wonder Festival: Noir event this November, the front lawn at Wentworth Woodhouse will set the stage for an innovative, thought-provoking and poignant evening performance that takes theatre to new heights. Based on the current ecological crisis and one of the most pressing political and social issues on the plant, As The World Tipped is a pioneering production that sees its performers suspended on wires above the audience on a tipping platform to symbolise how human life is hanging by a thread at the hands of our own doing.
Written and directed by Nigel Jamieson, the poetic 50-minute show combines compelling audio/visuals with gravity-defying bungee-assisted dance to leave the audience angry and elated at the same time.
Set at the 2009 UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, the narrative sees harassed staff fail to notice as the unsteady world around them slides towards disaster – both literally and metaphorically. The cast struggle to battle the effects of environmental devastation in a performance that pushes the audience to their limits. Not just a thing of thespian beauty, As The
Credit: Christophe Raynauld
World Tipped conveys a very real and immediate underlying message that those who choose to ignore shall face the consequences of. Only now, a decade on from that Copenhagen
conference where world leaders failed to sign a legally binding treaty, have people begun to wake up to the environmental issues around us. This summer saw the hottest July and wettest August on record, with 85 percent of British adults now concerned about global warming and reducing our carbon footprint. But how many more droughts, floods, wildfires and heatwaves will it take for action to begin? Working in partnership with the Without Walls
Touring Network Partnership to bring outdoor arts festivals to the public, the Great Place team are proud to welcome this Wired Aerial Theatre Production to Wentworth following an eight-year world tour which has seen over 50 performances in South Korea, Australia, Italy and Chile to name a few.
The idea of an elevated production is the brainchild of Liverpool-based Wired Aerial Theatre whose directors have harnessed the opportunity to address climate change in a powerful way. Dancer Wendy Ogilvie and her climber husband Jamie combined their two skills to develop bungee-assisted dance which uses climbing techniques, gymnastics, contemporary dance and flying.
While they don’t aim to preach or bore about the effects of climate change, As The World Tipped proves good theatre can be spectacular, emotional, funny and witty while still having rhetorical undertones.
Credit: Norfolk and Norwich Fesival
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