Intricate Theatre was formed by three Theatre and Performance students at the University of Surrey, Guildford School of Acting. As a collective, we all wish to create work that is provocative, considered and beautiful, through unconventional performance which utilises our talents in drama, dance and music to explore contemporary themes and issues.
Having all returned to university after completing a sandwich-year in the industry, we all gained experience working in professional companies. Flo did her work placement at Candoco Dance Company, Malachy worked at Theatre Deli and Emily spent her year with Stopgap Dance Company. With some insight into how professional companies are run, we decided to take the opportunity in our final year of university to set up a professional company of our own, and thus Intricate was born!
As our first blog post, it seems fitting to talk a bit about how we start creating work in the studio and a bit about each company member as we go. Stay tuned for more blog posts in future about each company member and particularly about their experiences working in the industry!
So, we are currently working towards our first show, Habitus which is premiering in London this May. The show is being performed in a non-traditional theatre space (to be announced very soon!) and we are tackling the theme of modern intimacy in surprising and unconventional ways. We are approaching this performance through the devising process, with our main inspiration being Lauren Berlant's scholarly writing on Intimacy, (which you can read the first page of here). However, Habitus is very audience-focused and thus relies on our imaginations (and our wonderful friends who graciously come to see work-in-progress showings regularly!) to prepare for all eventualities when interacting with audience members.
When we start creating work, we always begin with what we want to say. By the time we get into the studio, we already have a basic idea about what we want the show to be about, be it a theme, an issue or a story. From Lauren Berlant's writing, we knew that our show would be an enquiry into how people experience modern intimacy in their daily lives - but we had no idea how we were going to explore this on stage.
So, when it comes to devising - we start by mapping out key aspects of our chosen theme that excite us. We whittle these down to a few key aspects, maybe four or five, then we take these and devote a day in the studio to each one.
On these days, we each bring in materials and stimuli relating to this aspect that may inspire us to create work. For example, Malachy was interested in portraying romantic intimacy in the age of the internet, so he brought in This Modern Love, a book containing hundreds of submitted letters, messages, tweets and photos about love and intimacy. Many of the submissions in the book sparked ideas for moments in our piece, such as this message:
This message in particular got us thinking about being with somebody in total silence for an extended period of time. So, we spent two hours in the studio together with no distractions and we sat, walked around and even interacted with each other, in total silence. With some tweaking and rules put in place, this eventually became a scene which may make it into the final show! This is one of many examples of how we use stimuli to come up with ideas and to create interesting work.
As a company, we are very committed to engaging with what we intend to explore, which in this case is intimacy. Much of our process has been about establishing intimacy with each other through activities and exercises, often involving eye contact, touch, sharing secrets etc. Although these activities build intimacy between us as company members, they also often spawn really interesting ideas that may crop up in the final show.
We like to push our exercises as far as we can physically take them. Just like the exercise where we spent two hours in silence - if we test an idea, we test it to its farthest limits. These ideas often start out small (such as a gesture or a phrase), and we've found that performing these small moments for long durations or repeated hundreds of times can reveal things that are often unexpected and beautiful. What happens if you apply, rub off, then reapply your lipstick continuously until the tube runs out in one sitting? And what happens when you do this on stage in front of a paying audience? Guess we'll have to find out!
It is working in this way that allows us to take something ordinary, enlarge it, and then take the time to pay attention to its intricacies. It is in these intricacies where we find our material.
HABITUS will be performed in London on the 12th and 14th of May. Head to our homepage and sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date with tickets and venue information!
Intricate x 🌹