Visions of Earthly Paradise – The Church of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, London International Festival of Theatre, June 1996.

Ett samarbete med The Battersea Arts Center Youth Drama Group. Projektet var ett uppdrag till oss, Carina Reich och Bogdan Szyber, från LIFT, London International Festival of Theater, som det året enbart arbetade med barn- och ungdomskultur.

Created together with 13 young people aged 14-22, an 1-hour performance/installation in St. Peter’s Church, Lambeth, district of London.

Lambeth is a quite poor and run-down part of London with a 40% black and 30% Asian share of the population. We met regularly with the group of young performers from Battersea Arts Centre and developed together with them all the images and concepts for the event. The Swedish light-designer Jens Sethzman and a musician from British Guiana, Keith Waithe, was also included in the team. The aforementioned performance period was preceded by two workshops periods of 10 days each and a production period – a total of 37 days.

The project aimed to confront young people with a working process they’ve never met before in which they had to face and confront issues of their own conceptual focus, responsibility to themselves and to the group. They conducted budgeted plans in a time-pressured production situation. The goal of the process was a participation in the creation of a high-quality artistic product.

“Visions of Earthly Paradise” was a huge success with the audience – it was sold out in the church throughout the performance period – a total of 1,200 people took part in the event which became the winner of Time Out magazine’s award for “Best site-specific theater project in London 1996”.

Venue

The Church of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, London International Festival of Theatre, premiär 17 juni 1996.

Recipe

13 teenagers, 760 liter jelly, 60 kg salt, 22 kg sweets, 73 teddybears, 4 cupboards, 1 church, 60 minutes x 7 nights.