Med Theatre

Living Trees

- a family learning workshop

Learn about how important trees are to our everyday lives and the connections to climate change, whilst using images from literature to bring trees to life through drama and storytelling. Led by drama professionals from MED Theatre.

Saturday 18th September 2010, 2pm-4.30pm

Venue: Moretonhampstead Parish Hall

Price: completely free!

Suitable for any age; if under 8 must be accompanied by an adult

To book your free place contact MED Theatre’s Education Officer on

01647 441356 or abbystobart@medtheatre.co.uk

BROWN HARE - A CASE STUDY

A site specific dance-drama performance took place at High Heathercombe on the side of Hameldown on August 7th 2010 at 5pm.

Sitting in a conventional theatre can numb an audience’s sensibility to what is in front of their eyes, as they silently fight the battle in their minds between a feeling of responsibility to analyse what they are watching and the desire to be entertained. If, however, an audience is taken to the edge of the earth, quite literally, and exposed to the elements that only the wild can provide, faded perception – desaturated by the sanitisation of modern Western life - can be given vivid colour once more. The reason that we feel more alive in these situations is because we are brought closer to the animal world we originate from. Connection with the wild invigorates us, because it reminds us of our kinship with the animal world, and our mammalian heritage.

MED Theatre invited their audience to experience this energising consciousness with them in their performance of Brown Hare along the shoulder of the largest hill on Dartmoor, the whale-backed Hameldown. The Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus) bridges the gap between the human and animal world, with its ecological, spiritual and mythological dimensions. Currently in steep decline, it was held sacred on parts of Dartmoor as recently as Victorian times. It is featured in the symbol of the three hares which occurs from the Buddhist caves of China in the East to Celtic Wales in the West, with the largest known cluster on and around Dartmoor. MED Theatre’s Brown Hare used dance, music and text to fuse together elements of ecology and mythology in creating a cross-cultural performance that was international as well as local, scientific as well as artistic.

Time stood still as young artists led a captivated audience on a journey which began in a rowan copse bordering moorland. A hare capers around the surface of the moon in a slow motion ritual. Two hares melt into each other like two lovers within the wild undergrowth of a barren moorland and then transform into an ethereal woman - a magic made strangely believable within a performance world created by animalistic movement, discomforting music and unearthly text. The liminal experience conjured at sun-down on the edge of the world by such a performance could never be replicated indoors.

A second performance will take place at the Edge Heathercombe Sculpture Trail on Sunday 5th September at 3pm. For more information about this event please click here.

See an article about this on the BBC website via this link:

Brown Hare on BBC Devon website

We have launched the brand new video game Loricum. The story-led game is based on a play young people wrote about the flooding of a Dartmoor valley to make a reservoir and the mixed local reaction, which was the subject of the 2006 MED Theatre community play, Loricum. The game also includes a filmed trailer and stop-frame animations that assist in telling the story. Look out for it on our website soon!

If you would like to order a hard copy of the video game - CD in case with cover artwork - please contact us at info@medtheatre.co.uk or call 01647 441356.

This innovative and exciting project has run from January through June 2010. The video game has multiple endings dependent on character choices and task completion, with a point and click format to control multiple characters and objects

Young people have received training in all aspects of the process and have taken lead roles in creating the interactive CD/DVD video game, devising and scripting the game, preparing artwork, making models and stop-motion animations, and filming and editing an introduction, as well as carrying out the all-important coding.

MED Theatre's young people have been making a film with the young people from Newton Abbot on the theme of difference. In Banned, a Christian rock band recruits a girl from a family who don't approve of religion. The film has involved the participants in composing their own rock songs, which formed the sound track, as well as scripting and filming a dramatic scenario. Coombeshead College has employed MED Theatre as a partner to deliver this film, which was launched at Coombeshead Theatre on June 29th.

Our annual MED Theatre community play Hinterland was toured to village halls and community venues in the local area, doing a total of six performances in March 2010.

This year the play was based on the life of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who at the end of the 18th century, had grand designs to convert large areas of open moor into arable farmland. Although unsuccessful in this venture he founded the community now called Princetown and its iconic prison.

The final performance took place in Moretonhampstead Parish Hall on Wednesday 9th December. The play had been adapted by the young participants from its original site-specific location of Dartmoor Prison Museum barn to complement the new space.

- a project for our times, charting the ecology, history, folklore and communities of Dartmoor as seen through the eyes of the performing arts. The website went live at the end of April.

Our Wild Nights Young Company performed this delightful historical play to enchanted audiences at Castle Drogo on the 15th and 16th August, 2007.

A new website has been created about the process of creating The Children's Castle, part of Castle Drogo Roots. This website, which includes photos from the project, was designed and created by members of the Young Company.

To find out about MED Theatre's upcoming events and productions, click on the DIARY page or read our latest NEWSLETTER.

If you are interested in the ideas of MED Theatre, and would like to find out more, please email us: