The tale so far

Mark and Bridget have banded together to devise a new performance work drawn from a fairytale text. As a starting point, we've chosen to take The Pigeon's Bride, a tale of Jugoslav origin, and have a team of four performers working with us to bring it to life. At this stage all options are open as to the form it may take, but as a provocation the text is rich. We are excited to tell this story; its female protagonist is fascinating, beautiful and bold, and the images are strong.

The thematic territory of the piece struck us:
- restraint
- isolation
- a broken promise
- abandonment
- determination
- communication
- transformation

And the texture within it were inviting:
- the tower
- milk
- pigeons
- 3 pairs of iron shoes
- mountains, deserts, forests
- a bathhouse
- a rooster with wooden shoes

 The narrative of the piece is strangely unified - not everything is explained or wrapped up, but the writers finds unity in its disunity. It avoids overt moralising, and allows the tale to speak for itself.

Outside the story, I as a maker have brought my own objectives to this project. I want to work physically as a primary entrypoint from which to build the work. I'm interested in animal physicality, finding the expressive and gestural animal bodies, and the gradual transition between animality and the human form. How can animal work help us unlock the physical body, outside and inside the social frame?
I'm interested in task-based work, and its value as a technique in physical storytelling. I have dealt with task in isolation: the body under endurance, the non-performative body, the immediate body. I want to start using this as an expressive tool in storytelling, as part of action or as an image in the mise-en-scene. For me at this stage this becomes a question of bridging the gap between the performative and non-performative body; the expressive and the practical. Does the language of one disrupt the other? Does seeing the actor sweat and struggle undermine the expressive fiction? Can we watch an actor portray an animal doing a task?
When do we stop suspending our disbelief? How grand can the expressive language stretch without losing the live body on stage in real space and time?

Lets find out.