ART OF AD VENTURE:
Recently I’ve been fortunate enough to gain Arts Council funding for research and development of my Dreamtime Fellrunner theatre show. I am the writer and performer of this work, collaborating with the director Dan Bye (
www.danielbye.co.uk) and with support from Theatre by The Lake Keswick. As a writer of poetry and prose I involved some of my sporting and literary influences in this work. The fellrunner Joss Naylor is not just a sporting inspiration to me; the aesthetic of his routes which are ‘a meld of body and geography’, and his drystone walls which I describe as ‘shepherd sculptures on the fellside’, demonstrate the inseparability of shepherd, fellrunner and creative being. And England’s first recorded recreational rock-climber, the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who understood jeopardy, both external and internal, in a way that fuelled his creative process and broke new physical and literary ground. Then there’s Virginia Woolf who speaks of the paradox of ‘Granite and Rainbow’ and of being ’the amalgamation of dream and reality’ which is how I feel when I am flying down a fell in the midst of a race, or when I’m a tiny being, like a fly on a wall, half way up rock-face. In ‘seeking out ‘the thin places which separate me from the divine’ I find the relationship of what my body is doing in the landscape is central to the experience. This can involve huge physical effort and at other times being still, even lying down or going to sleep outside while feeling the fellside under my bones. It has been an absorbing process to explore all this through the medium of spoken word and theatre.
In recent years I have found that these desires to seek out experiences of flow and connection, which seem to be the essence of what motivates my life, are beginning to find a fuller expression through my creative work. I have gone from being
20 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
“JUST LIKE TURNING UP AT A RACE OR GEARING UP FOR A TESTING LEAD SHARING CREATIVE WORK WITH THE WORLD FEELS ADVENTUROUS AND EDGY”
an exhausted medic to now being immersed in a combination of writing, making film and theatre, and collaborating which people who are more experienced creative practitioners than myself, but who share my interests and curiosity. I could never have imagined I’d be so privileged to spend my time like this. I’m having to pinch myself – am I dreaming?
Just like turning up at a race or gearing up for a testing lead sharing creative work with the world feels adventurous and edgy. I first stuck my head above the dry-stone-wall by publishing my book ‘Running the Red Line’ in 2018. I had no map for the journey which I now find myself undertaking but a very significant turn was when film maker and photographer Jessie Leong appeared in our kitchen one morning to go climbing with my partner Mandy. The first product of our work together was the film ‘I am a Fellrunner’ which went on to be shown in very diverse settings and received many plaudits. For me the most moving was when we received a message from a refugee who went to a showing in a women’s centre. She had appreciated the poetic portrayal of fellrunning, which is essentially very hard work but also a way to freedom. I can’t imagine what this person had been through but her appreciation also gave me hope and fortified my belief in creative expression as a catalyst for healing.
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