Walk on Water is a celebration of female experience expressed through
the medium of water. It explores our relationship with water, from its
most basic uses to its sociological, psychological and spiritual connotations.
The piece spans a range of emotions from joy to sadness to madness,
using the water as a metaphor to convey the breadth of women’s experience.
Much of this content is ritualised, giving the piece a heightened, timeless
quality.
‘Submerging and emerging’ is the guiding principle of the work, suggesting
the metaphorical extremes of our interaction with water - from the banal
domesticity of clothes washing to the poignancy of a drowning body.
The piece is a journey of transformation from a place of drowning to
a place of buoyancy, where walking on water may be possible.
Walk on Water explores a poetic approach to form. A series of vignettes
are juxtaposed - the images colliding and affecting one another to make
meaning. The imagery created makes reference to other art forms and
to cultural mythology, from Shakespeare’s Ophelia and Lady Macbeth,
to the portrayal of women and water by Pre-Raphelites such as J.W Waterhouse.
Each section is constructed like a Haiku poem – a distillation of motion
and emotion, exploring aspects of our involvement with or dependence
on water. To complement this, a movement language has been developed
in relationship to theatrical intent, rather than drawing on a specific
vocabulary.
Live,
unaccompanied singing enhances and is integrated with the imagery of
the work. Traditional Celtic songs have been sourced for the project,
including sea-shanties, ‘waulking songs’ and songs for sailing and navigating.
The performers, influenced by other traditional oral cultures such as
Bulgaria and Greenland have composed additional songs. The singing provides
an emotional landscape for the piece, strengthened with the addition
of live drum and water percussion.
The unfamiliar language of the songs enhances the generic nature of
the work, representing women from a variety of cultures and historical
periods. ‘Call and response’ songs, sung by the whole cast, support
the communal imagery of the work. Solo sections exploring private worlds,
are supported by individual voices representing the internal voice of
the performer. The notion of song as call supports the content of the
work, as pure voices call the performer/characters to deeper understandings
of self.
Live and recorded soundscapes of splashed, poured and dripped water
will be woven through the piece, supporting transitions between sections.
Overall, the sound chosen mirrors the water in its purity and lack of
embellishment.
