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Claire Cunningham delivers a wonderfully inclusive performance incorporating dance, movement, spoken word and even some opera that all together create something greater than the sum of its parts. Summary
Rating
Excellent
Songs of the Wayfarer is an experimental piece of theatre that’s part dance and movement, part spoken word and part opera. It explores relationships with movement and our bodies, with a narrative woven through of Claire Cunningham herself being a wayfarer and leading a hiking group (the audience) along a trail.
Seating for the show is unreserved, with a variety of options including traditional theatre seating, freestanding chairs, bean bags, and mats on the floor. All performances are relaxed, with a visual story available on entry to the space and a chill out room with a screen showing the performance if you need a break from the space but want to carry on watching. Cunningham cleverly introduces the relaxed nature of the show in character, as if she is briefing her group of hikers.
The performance uses every inch of the space to its full extent, with action moving from stage, to within the audience, and even behind the seating area. The direction and immersive nature of the piece not only brings the audience into the action, but also transports the audience into nature and transforms the Lillian Baylis Studio into a beautiful hiking trail, assisted by projections onto the floor and a beautiful soundscape.
My eye was regularly drawn to the incredibly creative mountain-shaped sculpture to the side of the stage made entirely out of crutches. This feature is used in varying ways throughout, both providing barriers and at times also removing them. The true star of the show is inarguably the BSL interpreter, who not only seamlessly interpreted the show with an incredible beauty and grace that significantly added to the atmosphere, but also most impressively signed the English translation of the pieces of German Opera that beautifully performed, in a way that seemed almost effortless.
Cunningham’s use of her crutches throughout is fascinating to watch, seeing her relationship with movement change; at times the crutches are supporting her, but at other moments, her body is supporting the crutch. Watching her dance with her crutches creates the realisation that not only do the crutches aid her to move, but actually unlock an entirely new range of movement not be possible without them. She explained during a post-show discussion that her fascination with hiking and wayfinding came from the fact that she was told by a professional mountaineering friend that they’d noticed that the way she navigated the world as a crutches user was very similar to how people navigate terrain when hiking.
It is such a pleasure to witness disabled-led art because we don’t have enough of it, and pieces such as Songs of the Wayfarer are a reminder of the true beauty that arises from inclusivity.
Concept & Choreography by: Claire Cunningham, with Dan Watson & Luke Pell
Associate Director & Dramaturgy: Dan Watson
Set and Costume Design by: Bethany Wells
Lighting Design by: Chris Copland
Sound Design by: Matthias Herrmann
Video Design by: Michelle Ettlin
Executive Producer: Nadja Dias
Songs of the Wayfarer runs between the 4th and 6th December at the Lilian Baylis Studio. Further information and tickets are available here.
Information about the production and Claire Cunningham can be found here.
