| Absorbing Multi-media Performance Piece |
Theatre Event |
| John Harrison- Forgotten Footprints , Aberystwyth Arts Centre Studio , June 14, 2012 |
“Forgotten Footprints” is a new title this season from Cardigan publisher Parthian. It is also title of an eleven-venue performance tour that includes Chapter and Rhosygilwen. Appearances at Hay and Dinefwr might suggest a literary event, but it is not. “Forgotten Footprints” has a script, a director in the heavyweight form of Rebecca Gould. It has video, a sound design and a score by composer Tim Riley. Theatre is an elastic term for the range that comes within its auspices. “Forgotten Footprints” has thematic focus, form and feeling, and to a degree to outdo many a one-person performance piece. John Harrison has even written in a villain by name of John Lachlan Cope. Histories of Antarctica focus on its great explorers, the indomitable men who headed for its terrible interior. It is a story of men, although John Harrison tells of a lonely female skull found on Desolation Island. Initially believed to be possible evidence of genuine human settlement, she is sadly revealed as a Patagonian, most likely taken by a sealer for purposes of domestic and sexual service. John Harrison’s subjects are the smaller, often barely known, figures who opened up the earth’s last continent. James Cook is well known, the greatest navigator of his time. Harrison gives him a serviceable Yorkshire accent. His death on a beach at Hawaii is well attested, the fact of his being partly eaten less so. Writing for theatre needs image in the way that narrative for a book does not. Here a little sloop, crewed by a group of men all named William, carries a cargo of pianos and hats from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. A monarch of Spain, enraged at the loss of his dominions, sends a quartet of vengeful ships to the terrible waters around Cape Horn. Two young adventurers prepare to experience the Antarctic winter by first turning a boat upside down over themselves. They have equipped themselves with beans, crème de menthe sweets and a phonograph. Albatross eggs will keep a stranded human alive but the worst food in this Far South is apparently canned Norwegian fish cakes. Hair grown long for warmth turns thin and grey, even on a thirty-two year old. The risk of psychosis is ever present; in this emptiness those inner voices can rise to subsume external reality. These are facts and performance does not live by facts. When frozen hair sticks to a sleeping bag and snaps off, it has the feel of authenticity of personal experience. The sea freezes over and with it the ice brings utter silence. Rebecca Gould provides just the lonely soft sound of a heartbeat. John Harrison evokes the elation of the sight of the first strip of sunlight after the Antarctic winter. He sails off in an inflatable canoe by night and the only light in the vastness is that of a distant mother ship. “Forgotten Footprints” is a hybrid work that has bravery to it. It comes without programme; Richard Lewis Davies is producer. Acknowledgement is given to the Welsh Books Council. The current tour includes Swansea 27th June and Caernarfon 7th July. A second will include Abergavenny. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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