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SHOES by Hallucinating Angels

SHOES by Hallucinating Angels

SHOES: Local production seeks funds

Local theatre and film practitioners are seeking funding via a Kickstarter campaign for one of their recent projects, SHOES, to go to Derry/Londonderry. HOT’s Zelly Restorick asked Frances Viner of Hallucinating Angels about the catalyst for the project and what she and her colleagues hope to achieve.

Who is involved in Hallucinating Angels – and what are your aims?

We are theatre and film practitioners who work together in the communities of Hastings and Bexhill. My colleagues are Patrick Kealey (director Theatre Nation) and Sam Sharples (filmmaker). Our aim is to support a community’s potential for tolerance and inclusivity by creative engagement, in particular by sharing its stories. As a group of artists we are drawn to common experiences in their endless variety and detail. We are inspired by the haunting richness of ‘ordinary’ day-to-day life.

Tell HOT about SHOES

We are delighted that one of our recent projects, SHOES, has been invited to Derry/Londonderry as our process references the Irish oral tradition of passing on stories. Its simplicity and profundity could also make a contribution to a community in which recent history means conflict resolution is an on-going task. We have already gathered little masterpieces of storytelling from people in the community who invited us to ‘walk a mile in their shoes’.

What are the goals of your Kickstarter campaign?

Our Kickstarter campaign will enable us to work with students from Ulster University’s drama department in the exquisite Playhouse Theatre. We aim to create an experimental interpretation of the stories including use of live video whilst maintaining their real life integrity. The resulting showcase performance will bring a community together to celebrate its richness, diversity, creativity and universality. Bill Wyman and Paula Rego’s have signed shoes as two of the
rewards for making a pledge.

Our confidence in SHOES is born out by its early development in Bexhill in 2014 when people from the community shared stories about their shoes in a pop-up shoe shop. These were developed into a script for a performance at the De La Warr Pavilion. Responses to both stories and performance were overwhelming.

“It was good to sit and talk. Just sit and talk…”

“I liked the humanity and the whole style of presentation.”

“Local, global, universal stories, joyful and meaningful, a thoughtful, spiritual, fabulous evening.”

“Simplicity and profundity of SHOES could be of value to any community.”

Our ambitions for SHOES include securing a commission for a full scale production at The Playhouse and a series of residencies both here and abroad to share the methodology of SHOES and its journey from street to stage. The biggest pleasure would be to bring SHOES home to East Sussex.

The SHOES Kickstarter campaign has more detail as well as a couple of fabulous short films showing work to date.

What other work have you showed in Hastings?

Some of our Arts Council funded work can be seen at Hallucinating Angels,  including SHOES in Bexhill. Hastings Online Times gave us a terrific puff for WILDFELL our most recent work in Hastings, which played to packed houses at The Palace and partnered service users at Seaview and East Sussex Recovery Alliance.

It would be bloody great if our local community, which has provided us with so much inspiration, could go that bit further and help us spread our wings.

SHOES-POSTER

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Posted 12:33 Monday, Mar 19, 2018 In: Arts News

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