Performance #22

Dreamtime

7 April 2022

At The New Cross House, London for Telegraph Hill Festival 2022.

This play is loosely about a group of friends of mine, told through a fictional tale with various details changed. Writing about real people is a sensitive matter, but my friends knew in advance and gave their blessing. The red tent group provided a structure and a vehicle for exploring women’s inner lives and relationships with each other.

The crux of the piece is about community and some of the challenges we face in a world run by Tories. One strand is based on a true, real-life local story, whilst also representing the wider narrative of what we see happening everywhere.

My other inspiration came from numerous ancient megalithic sites across England and Wales that I’d had the good fortune to visit and dance around during the coronavirus pandemic, between lockdowns. They always transport me to magical places and I wanted to bring some of that to this performance.

The play itself – created for the 2022 Telegraph Hill Festival – gradually emerged and made itself known to me. The process is always very personal and highly creative; it’s one of my favourite parts of life.

Over the years my style has shifted from being primarily based in physical theatre and performance art, with considerable audience participation, to become more focused on story-telling and narrative.

I have always been a writer at heart. As I grow older, I want to embrace that more and return to something I got so much from as a child.

Video

Recording of the live performance (1 hour 21 minutes).

This video is free to access but if you would like to make a donation towards my work as an artist, it would be highly appreciated as the performance was entirely self-funded – paypal.me/EstherBunting