Friday 16 January 2009

RECREATING OLD COMMUNITIES


The idea of community has become vast due to globalisation. But how was it in the past? How was it in a village?

I have been visiting many National Trust properties lately, and there is a specific one in Cornwall that requires a journey to the past. A festival could be developed for that property by recreating the old community of the village and combine it with theatre, music and art

Recreating the village would involve a massive production on costume and props. The investigation of the old community would also be crucial to create the story. There would be a necessity for a very large cast and artists’ crew. The idea is to have around 6 plays, or 6 plots running in a promenade style that have a story connection, which would lead to a big finale by sharing the last scene together.

During these performances musicians and street artists would be around the village playing music or doing portraits of audience members, the same way it used to be done at the time we are recreating. There could also be a street art craft fair, selling all kinds of things of that era.
I imagine this project to have a length of approximately 4 days, having camping fields were the audience could stay at night.

Anyone interested in the Cornwall Festival?

2 comments:

Mark Griffin said...

This sounds very exciting. Would you try and find 'real' stories from the village's history or create a fiction? It's a huge project - but could be fantastic - and the only way to eat an elephant is in bite size pieces - so give them a ring.

Carolina Castro-Freire said...

i think it would depend on how interesting the real stories are...