PERFORMERS: 6 - 10
RUNNING TIME: 35 MINUTES
PREMIERED: MAY 2022
PUBLIC is a new outdoor performance from groundbreaking circus company Ockham’s Razor about the ownership of public space.
Urban space has become increasingly colonised by corporations with our malls, shopping centres and transport hubs being owned and policed by private interests. In this landscape there is less space for young people, to take up public space - to experiment, play, rest together and build social bonds with their peers. Play has become a risky and subversive act.
In PUBLIC a graduate company of 10 young performers create an image of a reality where they are able to be utterly without guard in a public arena. Incorporating acrobatics, parkour and dance they move through the architecture of the streets, lifting each other over and around walls, stairs, obstacles - dancing with the fabric of the world. The show is about support, freedom and tenderness and asks how and where we can be uninhibited and unbound?
At the end of the PUBLIC performance we would love as many young people and audience members as possible to join in with a simple dance to create a mass dance reflecting a key theme of the show - RECLAIMING PUBLIC SPACE.
We have filmed some simple tutorials of the FLASH MOB dance moves for you to learn. Please feel free to share on your social media to get as many people as possible RECLAIMING YOUR SPACE…
SHORT TUTORIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3orpjgf5rRs
LONG TUTORIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KcaQDJrDYg
OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG PERFORMERS
We are also looking for performers aged 13-20 from each local community to actually take part in Public.
Participants should have experience or interest in circus, dance, martial arts, parkour or movement. You will take part in a free short workshop learning a movement sequence, led by choreographer Joel Daniel, and members of the company. The piece created will become part of the performance of Public, acting as a youth stage invasion!
What the press say
“a jaw-dropping free show.”
Manchester Wire
“a vivid spectacle”
British Theatre Guide
Show images
Credits
Directed by:
Alex Harvey & Charlotte Mooney - Ockham’s Razor
Devised & created by:
Ockham’s Razor & the company
Performed by:
The Company - Alex Morton, Andromeda Gervásio, Dylan Springer, Eric Mitchell, Hugo Knowles, Jem Bentham, Josh Hoffman, Melissa Bravo, Raf Ffinch Shah, Seb Parker & Shane Hampden
With choreography from:
Joel Daniel
Composition & sound design:
Max Reinhardt
Additional composition:
Sarathy Korwar
Costume design:
Tina Bicât
Costume design assistant:
Katie Taylor Strawn
Senior stage manager:
Laura Betty Haynes
Company stage manager:
Finley Dickins
Produced by:
Alison King- Turtle Key Arts
Assistant producers:
Kelly Codling Bray, Niamh Hanns, Carina Simoes- Turtle Key Arts
Marketing, leaflet design and press:
Shaun Dawson – Turtle Key Arts
Video production:
Primo DVP
Logo ident:
topright
Production photography:
Mark Dawson
Rehearsal photography and additional digital content:
Steve Ryan
Press & pr:
Chloe Nelkin Consultancy
THANKS
We would like to thank the incredible company of performers who have created this show alongside us. We are continually staggered by their skill, commitment and compassion.
We have been joined for this show by friends old and new. Once again we are delighted to work with long time collaborator Max Rhinehart who, with Sarathy Korwar, has created this incredible, eclectic and powerful score to lead us through.
Thanks to Tina Bicât who with assistant Katie Strawm has done the impossible in designing costumes which simultaneously look utterly ordinary and yet completely beautiful.
We’ve been so incredibly lucky to have Joêl Daniel in our corner as we make this piece of circus dance. Thank you for your creativity, curiosity and calmness.
Once again Betty Haynes has been peerless and perfect keeping us on the straight and narrow and holding all the forts together ably assisted by our new CSM Finlay Dickins.
A huge thanks to our mentors Bim Mason, Matilda Leyser, Phelim McDermott and Rosemary Lee for your brilliant, insightful and inspiring thoughts, advice & wisdom.
Making work like this is all about collaboration and partnership. We are so grateful for the Lowry for supporting and commissioning us again with this work and allowing us to take over their Plaza and for the National Centre for Circus Arts with their support and commission and creating opportunities for graduating artists.
Finally last, and by no means least, we want to thank the Turtle Key Arts team - our powerhouse producer Ali King, alongside Niamh, Kelly, Shaun, Charlotte and Alan. You are the community who keep us going and enable us to be brave in the world. We could not do it without you.
SPECIAL THANKS
To all of our funders and commissioning partners, Steve Cowton and Matt Eames and all the staff at the Lowry, Kate White and the team at National Centre for Circus, Arts Council England, Jonathan Priest and Circomedia, Nathan Johnston, Steve Ryan, Alan Bowyer, Paul Veer, Tam Osborn, Stacey Potter, Paddy Walters, all the team at Turtle Key Arts, all the performers who joined us through the R&D, Owen and the team at Circus House, Hanno and the team at the Church of The Holy Innocence, the Ockham’s Razor advisory board, to all the youth groups and individuals who joined us onstage, the audiences that took part in our dance finale and to all the people who emailed, tweeted, re-tweeted, instagrammed and facebooked about our work,
Finally, a very special thanks to our parents for all their love and support with Ida - because none of this is possible without you.
Ockham's Razor Produced by Turtle Key Arts
in partnership with the National Centre for Circus Arts,
commissioned by NCCA and The Lowry, Salford Quays supported by Circomedia.
