Bric a Brac
A new project in 2013, funded by the Social Enterprise Fund, UnLtd, exploring methods of creating interactive and oral history performance.
Funded by UnLtd, the Social Enterprise Fund. A series of creative experiments with Performing Arts and Media Performance students and participants from the Bridgend Centre, Bollington.
What does it mean to perform oral histories?
What can make-believe contribute to history making?
Can relaxation and play release memory?
Performance 2nd July 2013
Bridgend Community Centre, Bollington.
​
Filmed by Stephen Fletcher & Rachel Wilson, edited by Richard Talbot
Workshop 14th June 2013
Two events offered an opportunity to explore the art of conversation and experiment with ‘performance’ as a form of improvised story-telling with an association with history-making and memory. The events require no specialist knowledge, all are welcome, and guidance was provided in the first session. In the second session there was only guidance in-role and in the moment.
​
The performance was an exercise in improvisation that took in the whole of the centre, including the bric a brac second hand shop. Led in-role by Richard Talbot, the participants developed themes raised spontaneously at the previous week's workshop session. Once again there were some fabulously weird flights of imagination sustained by artful manipulation and unexpected turns in the story. The improvisation turned out to be a story about class and the monarchy - an hour and a half of non-stop improvisation with a very independent, if not anarchic, spirit.
Photography: Rachel Wilson