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UAL Research Online

In Limbo

MacDonald, Claire and Culank, Jenny and Miller, Graeme and Scriven, Nettie (2005) In Limbo. [Performance]

Type of Research: Performance
Creators: MacDonald, Claire and Culank, Jenny and Miller, Graeme and Scriven, Nettie
Description:

I wrote the play ‘In Limbo’ for crossover audiences based on a short fiction ’The Baby’ by the writer David Almond. [See http://www.classworks.org.uk/pages/about/touring-inlimbo.html] I took ultimate responsibility as playwright but the work resulted from a two-year collaborative research project with Almond, director Jenny Culank, members of the Classworks youth and community theatres, and, in the later stages, with sound artist Graeme Miller and designer Nettie Scriven. Almond’s work crosses genre and artistic disciplines, proposing imaginary and imaginative worlds that also crossover and into the everyday life in Tyneside of the 1960s to the present. In my adaptation of the component narratives I particularly focussed on the relationship between fictional and theatrical narrative, voice, sound and visual language. I transformed the world of the story to the fictional space of performance and into a theatrical dramaturgy. My interest in examining the theatrical form and means as well as the narrative matched well Almond’s similar concern about writing/making/text/fabric/the telling of tales and the making and naming of worlds both real and imaginary. Though Almond himself had adapted other of his works for the stage, this was the first time that another writer had taken one of his stories as the basis for performance. The project realized my commitment to working with and for young people as, conceptually sophisticated and inclusive of collaborative research. The project included workshops on fiction and performance and while it began in Cambridge and Ipswich, was performed in and around the North East, the localle of the play’s subject. The Edinburgh Festival production also included a public discussion between Almond and myself titled, ‘Adapting the Novel for Theatre’.

Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: RAE2008 UoA63
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > Central Saint Martins
Date: 1 February 2005
Event Location: New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (Tour)
Date Deposited: 04 Dec 2009 14:00
Last Modified: 11 May 2011 10:07
Item ID: 1228
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/1228

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