I am more interested in the work I have yet to make than the work I have. Perhaps because the work I haven’t made hasn’t disappointed me and because i always want to believe that my best work is to come. I want to make work that has a crafted quality, which is about things that matter. I want to make work that feels like it would only work in the space that it is showing in and I want to explore all of the ways that the audience feels part of the event. Ideas arrive all the time and I am certain that many of the things I will go on to do I haven’t thought of yet. But here are a few of the thoughts that are currently swimming about in my head. some of them have been there too long …..
future ideas
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Craft Town
Ever since I arrived at the Maltings i have been promoting the idea of Farnham as a craft town as a distinctive characteristic of the town. we are getting there and in the spring we hear if we have been accepted as a World City of Craft. Proof, if we needed it, that it is possible to talk the truth into being
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hens
every time i see chickens running free i am strangely touched. i love their apparent ordinariness. and yet something like 10 million chickens are ‘dispatched’ each day in the UK. I think this is less a play and more a collection of photos, writings, facts, infographs and colour charts. it might have to wait as an idea.
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a canon of county plays
This idea is to create a kind of theatrical doomsday book of life in each of the 48 english counties. (defining how many counties there are is a challenge) then commission a writer for each county to write the play they wish that springs from that county. Then make them available ‘rights’ free for performance by amateurs, schools and professionals. The thought is that some might start as alliances with a particular theatre – say Chichester and Sussex – and each would be called simply ‘the Wiltshire play’. About £750k
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The Great Hedge of India
This was a customs barrier built by the British rulers across India in the 1840s to facilitate collecting the heavy salt tax. The barrier consisted of fences, stone walls, and a nearly impenetrable barrier of trees, thorny bushes, and hedges, with periodic guard stations. The hedge was forgotten in India as well as in Britain, without even passing mentions in standard histories, until its existence was unearthed by Roy Moxham. The Customs Line ran nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km), and was manned by about 12,000 personnel actively patrolling and guarding the barrier. There is something wonderfully English and revelatory in this story.
