"Just walk outside and look at the Sky'
A Performance Installation Piece
Wednesday 30th January 2008 7pm-8pm
Theatre Workshop, Shearwood Road, Sheffield

This project focussed on inspiration and whether theatre can inspire.
The starting point for this project involved me asking people the question 'What inspires them?' Below are some of the answers people gave

Friends and family
The Holy Spirit that comes from God
Chocolate
Friends
A bracing walk in the cold on a morning
A good night's sleep
Prayer
Evolution
Bacteria
Artificial Life
Philosophy
Seeing the possible end result I want to get to.
My own self belief
Socks
People who beat the odds and come out on top Richard Branson / Ernest Shackleton.
Life
Interesting people
Quotes
Books
Fantastic memories
Random things
News stories
Love

I took the statements and undertook a workshop with a group of local actors. The actors were asked to create images based on the answers people gave. Below are some of the images that were produced.

I then took these images a stage further with the actors.  The group were asked to chose one inspiration from them list; they chose‘books’. From this we created a number of images to tell a story about this inspiration.  The images told the story of a young girl reading a book and then being taken into the story and having her own adventure amongst the characters in the book.  The story ended with a final image of the girls mother standing in her bedroom and turning the light off.

I also took the statements and words people gave and took photographs that I felt represented them in some way. These photographs were then printed and suspended around the theatre during the installation. Here are some of the photographs that I took,

During the actual performance of the installation, I performed through song, by singing in a sound booth, with headphones connected so that people could listen to the song. I repeated the song throughout the performance continually, to give people a chance to experience it at their leisure.

I was also involved in some of the performance aspects with two other artists Lauren Williams and Rob Newmark Jones, who can be seen picturered below.

The peformance installation itself consisted of pieces that we had individually created for people to walk around and look at, touch, watch, listen to, as well as a perfomance. The sequence was repeated three times thoughout the evening.