Aitherios Theatre

Our upcoming site specific project in Haggerston, London.

The IDEA:

 

The Olympics are coming to our corner of London, Hackney and things are changing. The regeneration of the area will see estates razed and rebuilt. We follow the story of one woman who has lived in the same flat from the ages of 21 to 99, from the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony in 1933 to its planned demolition in 2011. Ours is the human history behind the demolition signs. She is our last woman standing.

 

The performance will be an intimate experience for a small audience, roaming through five flats off a single corridor. Within each flat our character and her main living room will be depicted at five different points of time in her life from her arrival to her eviction.

 

It is the stories that are contained within these estates that we want to archive and document before they are erased along with the bricks and mortar.  Changes in social housing are occurring all over the country and we want to chronicle stories from effected communities throughout the UK. Regeneration will change the way people live and our work will pay homage to a way of life lost.

 

 

PERFORMANCE STYLE:

 

This promenade piece will revolve around the interactions of our protagonist with other characters who are all ‘off stage’ in adjacent rooms, heard but never seen. In one flat we will watch her talk to her husband who is in the bathroom, in another we will pick up a ‘listening glass’ and press our ear to the wall with her to listen to the neighbours’ conversations, in the final scene we will sit with her as the landlord serves her eviction notice through the front door. Soundscapes filter through the walls, echoing the close proximity of the living quarters.

 

The intimacy of standing in someone’s front room, watching them as there life unfolds, will be coupled with this acoustic performance, akin to a ‘radio play’. In this performance, the audience free roaming are free to pick and choose when they zoom in on moments in which our character’s life unfolds, absorbing as much or as little of the story as they want.

 

Through this combination of voyeurism, visual clues, unseen happenings in adjacent rooms and the power of their imaginations audience members weave threads of our character’s story together.

 

Intended Space:

Five flats within a social housing estate, which has been cited for eviction.  For example, Samuel House, Haggerston Estate, Clarisa Road, Hackney E8 4HN.  Here there are some unoccupied ground floor flats.  Opposite Samuel House, across the central courtyard demolition has begun on the estate. Samuel House will be the last phase of the development and whilst there are unoccupied flats many residents remain. Having spent time with the local community, on the estate, in their homes and in their community centre the idea for the project has been well received.  London Quadrant, the landlords have agreed in principle. We have accessibility advisors on board.

 

Programme: 2 performances per day for one month in the summer of 2011.

 

Audience capacity: 25 people per performance.

 

Estimated running time: 50 minutes per performance.  There is no interval.

 

Transfer possibilities: Councils in Glasgow and Leeds have volunteered potential sites within their cities: Govan estate, Glasgow; Holbeck, Leeds.

 

WHAT WE WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE:

 

The five performance spaces represent the same flat in different ages.  Within each flat only the living room will be dressed, historically accurately to both place and period.  All other rooms including corridors will remain in whatever state we find them in. We will create our character’s home by referencing resident’s photographs and memories.  It will be a complete immersion like stepping into a memory, absolute and faithful in every detail. Recurring images and items connect the eras; for example a dress worn in one scene might appear in a photograph in a later period or the clock might remain a fixture in every era.  The rooms will feel warm and alive in contract to the empty shell of the rest of the flat. Audience are given visual clues to build their own story, there will be space for the audience to explore and answer the question posed to them on their ticket.

IN A NUTSHELL:

 

We want our show to bring our character fully to life for each audience member. Our character’s home and life will come from the local resident’s input.  In doing this we wish to gather and archive the human history within these building cited for demolition before they disappear.