13th – 15th September 2017
Working with the Arts & Events team at Southwark council, Extraordinary Bodies returned to Southwark where our show Weighting played to audiences of thousands back in 2015. We will be continuing our work with the Southwark community as they take part in our Creative Exploration residency exploring ideas of value and worth through circus, writing and physical theatre.
“We’re working at the shiny, brand new Theatre Peckham (the loos are very fancy and there’s a hipster coffee shop round the corner). On day one, two of the participants are doing the splits across people’s shoulders. Soon everyone is bridging across people’s backs and building human pyramids… we could make a killer cheerleading team. We’ve been talking a lot about how circus and acro work is only possible if everyone involved trusts each other; it means you create a community, from scratch, in half an hour. I think that’s why I love these workshops so much. They feel like a big accepting trusting hug (maybe the most earnest sentence I’ve ever written). This in turn means people feel comfortable sharing stories from their lives which they may not have otherwise done in a group of new people, and make beautiful pieces of writing. More than anything else, I think what I’ll take from this week is one of the participants turning to me and saying “I love cracking my knuckles. It’s like peeling glue off your hands”. Which I think is incredibly true (I love cracking my knuckles). I’ll also remember how strong a lot of the group were during the aerial work, and how quickly they got the hang of it. It’s pretty amazing to watch.”
Elana Binysh, Assistant Producer, Extraordinary Bodies
Read review of our Creative Exploration at Theatre Peckham by Dora Hemming
