Yet To Meet
Apr 2021
Deviser, Technical Director
A devised show created using a hybrid development process that explores the question of how can we share a space together.
Devised as part of the Practices Module under the Advanced Theatre Practice program at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Working across time and space, Exposure G2710 has created a performance spanning the hybrid universe of the digital, and not, the dreamt, and the real. Bringing the inner out and back again, looking at the before while living in the after, Exposure G2710 explore the limits of the spaces we can imagine. Through scanning, layering, and projecting spaces upon spaces upon spaces, they move through this world; both between worlds, and before worlds. Intertwining text from Georges Perec and ourselves to create a performance that jumps between time, you are welcomed into this private ocean, where we have all once been, and can never return to.
As part of my MA degree at Royal Central, I co-devised this show along with my classmates by engaging in a collaborative theatre-making process that included 8 weeks of remote research and development (circa UK lockdown January 2021) and 4 weeks of in-person rehearsals. The group's methodology was inspired by the different spaces we occupy today – real, virtual, dreamt, imagined, shared, unshared, private and personal – and how one may share a space together across space and time. After many rounds of practice-led experimentation and bi-weekly sharings, we used the framework of a 'womb' to bring shape to some of the ideas that intrigued us as well as ways of devising that brought together the online experience with the offline rehearsal room. Whilst we all played an integral role in devising the show, I focused on scenographic elements such as the soundscape and projection and technical design.
Cast & Crew
Devised by Grace Kavanagh, Emma Wagstaff, Evgenia Kovryga, Fanjin Ye, Holly Nomafo and Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Supported by Nohar Lazarovich (Unit Leader), Lynne Kendrick (Course Leader), Anna Smith (Production Manager), Dana McMillan (Technical Crew)
Presented by Advanced Theatre Practice, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Production Overview
This show was created for academic assessment under the MA/MFA Advanced Theatre Practice at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama which asks students take part in a term long performance experiment, focused on generating new work from a simple stimulus. Curated in companies by the course team, students create a process through exploring new ways of collaborating and performing, abandoning normative modes of theatre-making and engaging in the creative risks offered by new ideas. This year’s laboratory began virtually, and processes took advantage of what the digital can offer as well as made material between and through the distances they found themselves in. Now they return to the site – some students meeting in person for the first time – to see what happens to performance when we begin with absence and move into presence.