Final
Performance! One
more performance of this matchless drama will take place at High
Heathercombe's sculpture trail on Sunday 5th September 2010 at
Heathercombe on Dartmoor. Visit www.heathercombe.com
for more information on the event.
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:
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.
HINTERLAND
- COMMUNITY PLAY 2010
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.