In Development

This project looks to make connections with the twenty seven cities across the world that, like Nottingham, are UNESCO Cities of Literature. It’s a simple idea but one that allow the voices of playwrights from inside and outside of Europe to be heard here in Nottingham; both through rehearsed readings of their plays and in conversations with the writers themselves.

We’ve been having discussions with a number of cities and the Nottingham Playhouse have agreed to host the events. We’re not far away from announcing the first city that we will be in congress with – but it will be from either Russia or Ukraine and the project will premiere in February next year. We’ll keep you posted.

What were you doing at 5am yesterday? The day before? The week before? Chances are not much. Chances are that just are there are many places that you have heard about but have never been to, that that there are also hours that are rarely visited. Like 5am.

What does happen at 5am? In the town or city where you live?

If someone gave you a ticket for a theatre show that began at 5am would you stay up for it or would you set your alarm? And if you had to travel into the heart of where you live at that hour what would you expect to find?

The 5am Theatre Show is a ludicrous and yet brilliant idea. It’s a play about what happens in this strange hour that so few people ever visit. It’s a play that is different every time that it is performed. It’s a play that brings people out into the places where they live and allows them to see it in a new light. It’s a play about the routines and rituals that happen at this unexplored hour and a play about what happens in the gap between sleeping and waking.

We have had a lot of interest in this idea, in both the U.K and in the Netherlands. It’s the kind of show that will attract interest if programmed as part of a Festival; and it’s a show that will continue to grow and develop. We hope to be able to create something that has a fluid cast and a set of rules, so that in the end it can be performed by anyone.

Right now we’re beginning to look for some assistance across the U.K as we begin to play with the idea. We’re looking for at least three organisations in all. This is how we think this initial stage of the project will play out:

Stage One – What do you do at 5am?

Over a two month period, using social media and other networks, Excavate will gather stories and thoughts connected to people’s experiences of 5am. As part of this they will run a series of 5am related activities in Nottingham which will be open to all and which they will film and document.

Stage Two – We even have a magician

Excavate will recruit a team of four performers – a writer/performer, a choreographer/performer, a musician/performer and a magician/performer. These will spend one week in Nottingham developing ideas on how to devise and structure a show and how to engage with the communities that they will go on to work with. The material from Stage One will feed into this.

Stage Three – Three cities, or three towns, or a mixture of the two

The 5am team will work in three different cities (towns) across the UK, in partnership with theatre and arts production companies. These companies will assist with hosting the team. The team will ideally be supplemented at each location by one other artist from that town or city, where possible using an artist connected to the theatre or arts production company that they are partnered with.

Before visiting the town or city a similar activity to that run in Stage One will have been undertaken by the partner organisation, although they also have the right to stage their own event that may be far more inventive than anything done so far.

During this week the company will collect stories from those who inhabit the city/town at 5am and use this material, along with the material from stage one and two, to create a performance which will be performed at 5am at the end of the week long residency.

This will be repeated in two more cities/towns.

Stage Four – So does it add up to a hill of beans?

All of those involved in the process will share their thoughts on how to make the project work, how to make it even better and how they would like to be a part of what will become a global phenomenon – the 5am Theatre Show.

Once this has been done – and we would like to begin work on this midway through 2015 and have completed this stage by the end of the year – we will look at gaining some funding to hone the show, produce some publicity and put it out there for the world to enjoy.

We are currently in negotiation with Nottingham City Homes and other sheltered housing schemes to develop a project that encourages those who are in their seventies and eighties, and who may not be as sociable as they wish, to engage in conversation with others both across the city and further afield (Rotterdam, Pristina) and to share their life stories using Skype.

Throughout our work we have encountered many people who feel isolated as they reach their later years, but who have many stories to tell and who come alive when they do so. We want to encourage them to use Skype to communicate with their contemporaries, their families and with strangers, and this project aims to give them the confidence to do so.

The Chairs is a community participation project that takes place in various locations simultaneously. It is a project that also operates through social media. It will one day become a film based installation project. It could quite possibly become one of the largest performance projects in the history of the world.

The Chairs is simple. It is about people – a lot of people – standing behind a chair, their chair, and telling the person who is sitting on this chair, a story.

The story they tell is about something that has happened to them whilst they have sat on this chair. Maybe they learnt something? Maybe they were given something? Maybe they sat down on it to deal with a moment when their life had changed? Maybe there is a meal that they remember whilst sitting on this chair; a meal with friends when a decision was made. Maybe their mother came to stay, their child had its first birthday, or they celebrated getting a new job. Maybe something truly terrible happened; maybe their heart was broken; maybe they suddenly realised that they had grown into the person they always wanted to become.

That’s it. Each story may be very short. They last as long as they last. But it is the fact that there are lots of chairs, lots of people, lots of stories, in one place that will give the piece its power. And the fact – and this is the key to the piece – that it is happening in (at least) two places at once; with the audience both hearing the story that is being told behind them and seeing a screen in which they can see people sat on rows of chairs and facing them, as the owners of those chairs stand behind them, also facing the screen, telling their story.

The Chairs takes place in a series of public spaces. It begins six months, one year, three years earlier. With arts organisations in a number of cities – at least ten, preferably fifty – promoting the project and encouraging participation. A Facebook page and a website will already be allowing people to upload images of themselves standing behind chairs, with the stories of these chairs underneath.

People will be encouraged, assisted, provoked to bring their chairs – which must be portable – into the space on a certain day. The chairs will be arranged in rows. There will need to be at least one hundred chairs in each location in ten rows of ten. The owners of the chairs will stand behind them, passively. The audience will be invited, silently, to sit on a chair where they will hear the story attached to it.

And this space will be filmed and will be relayed live to one or more or all of the other cities or towns that are taking part in the project. And at each of the spaces there will be a large screen that will show one or more or all of the other cities or towns that are taking part. So if we get ten cities with one hundred chairs in each it may be possible to see one thousand chairs with one thousand people from all over the world standing behind them (and possibly one thousand people sitting on them).

If you are sitting on a chair the screen will be in front of you. You will see people from other cities sitting on chairs and facing you; just as those who tell the stories about these chairs from other cities will be facing you. Only the person who is telling you their story as you sit on their chair, will not be visible at this moment.

Each individual story will also be filmed separately by the contributing arts organisations creating a body of stories from which to create further work in the future.

The Chairs will bring people onto the streets in countries across the world. The Chairs will give people the chance to sit and listen to the stories of strangers. The Chairs will tell hundreds of small stories of life, love, birth and death. The Chairs will look and sound incredible.