Plantable/Green Stage/Tanja Beer
World Stage Design, Cardiff, Wales: 13–14 September 2013 Collisions Festival, CSSD, London: 21 September 2013 Project blog: https://transplantablelivingroom.wordpress.com
Green Stage: http://www.greenstagetheatre.co.uk/wp/transplantable-living-room/ Video trailer: http://vimeo.com/95562183
Documentary (15 mins): http://vimeo.com/89697230
Plantable development video – Transplanted Tea Sets: http://vimeo.com/73564977
Brief Description
Trans-Plantable Living Room was a living, edible performance space, grown by community
gardeners, that hosted interactive performances by international performance collective Plantable during September 2013 in Cardiff and London.
In Cardiff the living room was installed under a tree in Bute Park behind the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, as part of the World Stage Design festival and in London there was an indoor version at Central School of Speech and Drama as part of Collisions: New Research in Performance Festival.
The creative process was a collaboration between an international group of artists and community groups. A network of Cardiff-based gardeners grew plants for the space, coordinated by Sam Holt of Riverside Community Allotments. Some material for the piece was developed from a workshops with Katie Jones of Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, which explored how story-telling and imagination can help solve problems that face us today, like climate change, and feeding a growing population. The oral history interviews by Rosie Leach investigated personal narratives about gardening in Cardiff: why people garden, how gardening practices have changed over time and what role they see local, small-scale food production taking in providing food in today’s fast-changing world. Ideas and material from workshops and interviews were woven together by Plantable, to create an immersive, interactive performance.
Company Information:
Plantable Performance Research Collective is a trans-national trio (Lisa Woynarski UK, Bronwyn Preece Canada, Meghan Moe Beitiks United States) examining the interface between ecological restoration, performance and community engagement. We start from the premise that the effects of climate change are, in part, due to the perceived separation between humans and the natural world. Through performance, we attempt to bridge that divide and highlight the interconnectedness of humans and the living world by literally and symbolically planting cultural memes. We posit that a struggle to connect is both a source of inspiration for our work and could lead towards mitigating the effects of climate change. We seek creative ways of tackling ethical imperatives around our current lifestyles and arts practices. Plantable strives to create low carbon impact performances and offset impacts that are necessary to the work. The performances we make are practice-
based research – we both intend to create work that has a positive ecological impact, and accompany it with vigorous academic research of ecological performance-making. (https://performanceandecology.wordpress.com/plantable/)
Green Stage:
Green Stage was founded in 2010 by Lisa Woynarski and Rosie Leach as The Green Theatre Project, to experiment with how theatre could explore and embody sustainable ideas and practice.
The company devises work around the ecological conundrums we find ourselves in. Producing performances and workshops is accompanied by an engagement with the research and ideas of others, within and outside of academic institutions. Other projects have included a devised performance, Unplugged, performed at Spitalfields City Farm and the Camden Green Fair at Regents Park in 2010; Forest Tales and Urban Trails, an immersive journey through King Henry’s Walk Garden in London in 2010; and a series of workshops about theatre in green spaces. (http://www.greenstagetheatre.co.uk)
Tanja Beer:
Tanja Beer is an ecoscenographer and researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. With over 15 years of experience in stage design, she is developing a new paradigm of ecological design for performance, primarily through the Living Stage concept. She has worked with a variety of theatre companies and festivals in Australia (Sydney Opera House, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Queensland Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts House, The Arts Centre, Castlemaine State Festival) and overseas (including projects in London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Vienna).
(http://www.tanjabeer.com)
Volunteer response: ‘Debs reflects on the rain’
Posted on September 20, 2013
(https://transplantablelivingroom.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/debs-reflects-on-the-rain/) I loved that it rained when I got round to savouring the performance in the Trans-plantable
Living Room. That there wasn’t too much light as a result, and that the circumstances gave the
project I’d seen grow and bloom in the two weeks prior, an extra hint of untamed wilderness. As the performers moved about to the recorded voice of someone whom, like a flower, needed just a bit of water and direction in his life, I forgot myself and went along with that thought – drifting to the all-encompassing rhythm of the movements before me on the living stage. The uninvited character was stealing the show, alright. The rain brought us closer together and dared give us all similar parts to play. Audience and performers embraced its presence as there wasn’t much choice, but also because the whole Living Room was an irresistible invitation to accept our powerlessness over nature’s exuberance and mysterious ways. An invitation delivered in the same unspoken language used by gardeners to attend to their plants: One of love rather than control, labour rather than charge, tenderness rather than force.
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The rituals of gardening are open to interpretation. I’m learning to read them as displays of committed affection between plant and gardener, designed to enable as well as deepen the lives of both. The performance in the Living Room incorporated the simplicity of these rituals to the pieces of furniture turned to exquisite planters of unique character and style, elements in a lifelong cycle that can be briefly suspended only by a good ol’ cup o’ Tea :0)
Deborah Freire Guarani Kaiowa is a volunteer at Riverside Community Garden, part of the team who built, planted and hosted the Living Room.
Green Stage/Plantable/Tanja Beer (2013)Trans-Plantable Living Room, Bute Park, Cardiff.
Top photo by Nigel Pugh, others by Mike Medaglia.