one square foot

a research project funded by Arts Council South West, the Arts and Humanities Research Board UK, Devon County Council and Exeter City Council

one suqare foot is a research project that places the actor at the heart of generating material for performance. Stories, images and memories associated with a square foot chosen by each performer have found their forms through a series of interactions with creative artists working in different fields.

There has been an emphasis in the project on the sharing of methods associated with these different disciplines and an attempt to avoid rushing towards tidy solutions in the end products. Essentially, the work has offered the opportunity for exchange, training and interaction, rather than confirmation of already known territories.

The three short performances you will see tonight are part of this project, which had its beginnings near the Green Line in Nicosia and in the Troodos mountains in the centre of Cyprus.

The seeds of inspiration for creating performance, both in Cyprus and in the UK, have been located in site, drawing on personal and historical resonance as well as the social and political implications, and materiality, of each chosen square foot of space.

Small performances on each square foot have already been shared in the first nine days of the project in Exeter. The second six days have been spent in experimenting with ways of translating that imagery into the ,neutral' space of the studio.

Both the Cypriot work and the work in Exeter have been documented and, through Arts Archives Exeter, will be made available in written form and through DVD-ROM to the research community as a whole.

Within the project we have looked at a series of methodologies associated with different kinds of authorship. All three pieces that you will see tonight have a shared authorship.

one square foot is a collaboration between Theatre Alibi, Echo-Arts Cyprus and the School of Performance Arts at the University of Exeter. The project has also been supported by the School of Biological Sciences, Exeter University.

Dorinda Hulton (Project Director)

project leader & director:

Dorinda Hulton

choreographer & director:

Arianna Economou

performers:

Dee Heddon
Daniel Jamieson
Jordan Whyte

installation artist & documentor:

Horst Weierstall

composer & musical director:

Helen Chadwick

documentor:

Peter Hulton

sound designer:

Duncan Chave

stage manager & installation artist:

John Collingswood

consultant ecologist:

Professor Jo Anderson

photographer:

Juanita Gill

alibi artistic director:

Nikki Sved

alibi managers:

Jenny Lawrence
Annemarie MacDonald

alibi administrator:

Sally Eastland

production:

theatre alibi
echo-arts cyprus
school of performance arts university of exeter