Based on a book of poetry by the Scottish psychiatrist R.D Laing, the performance explores the "knots, tangles, fankles, impasses, disjunctions, whirligogs, binds" that can arise in relationships. Laing's poems take Jack and Jill as their focus, but perhaps the patterns that emerge between the characters are strangely familiar to us all.
The design takes inspiration from the diagrams used to illustrate transactional analysis in ‘Games People Play’ by psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne.
A hanging mobile of six coloured glass discs that gently dance as the air currents in the room are disturbed by the shifting positions of the characters physically and psychologically.
Spotlit by a stage light, the glass discs cast shadows on the wall behind and change size in relation to their position. When the glass discs happen to come into perfect alignment, with the smallest disc closest to the light and the largest disc furthest from the light, the shadows cast are all the same size.
Set and Costume Design: Emma Wagstaff
Apapted and Directed by: Emma Wagstaff
Performers: Richard McCarthy, Lila Dowie, Aly Fraser
Musician and composer: Callum Good
Photographs by Mark Wilkinson and Emma Wagstaff
