Nick Phillips dressing up, first day of rehearsals In Water I’m Weightless. All photos Kaite O’Reilly.
The first day of rehearsals for In Water I’m Weightless, with National Theatre Wales….
Performers Mat Fraser, David Toole, Karina Jones, Nick Phillips, Mandy Colleran and Sophie Stone are encouraged by director John McGrath and designer Paul Clay to play dress up….
David Toole.
In Water I’m Weightless is collaged from a large body of work I’ve been developing over several years – The ‘d’ Monologues (‘d’ denoting Deaf and disabled) – initially from a Creative Wales Major Award from Arts Council Wales, and then further developed with the Unlimited Commissions I have been awarded as part of the Cultural Olympiad.
Designer Paul Clay makes some adjustments to one of Sophie Stone’s rehearsal costumes.
In Water I’m Weightless came about from my ambition to put Deaf and disabled experience, what I call crip culture, and disability cool centre-stage on a national platform, performed by some of the best Deaf and disabled performers in the UK. I’m immensely fortunate that long-term collaborator John McGrath, the artistic director of National Theatre Wales, understood what I sought to achieve with this project, and was excited about it, deciding to bring it to fruition.
Warm-up, first day of rehearsals
Today was the first time the company came together since our r&d week in November 2011. It was an opportunity for us to begin recapping and revisiting earlier work, and for designer Paul Clay to explore some basic costume ideas.
I will be documenting the process over the next four weeks on this blog, and writing about a different process in collaborating and making performance than my two previous productions this year.
Hope you want to follow the journey…
Wow – the rehearsal looked like SO much fun & everyone that everyone has a great attitude to the project – especially Nick! It’s brilliant that you have the concept of bringing the crip culture experience more into the public eye. The title is perfect. When I first developed auto-immune probs I would go to a super heated pool- and it was such an equalizer. Everyone looked so healthy, able to move around etc. So it struck a particular chord for me. I look forward to more posts. Thanks Kaite.