We’ve had theatre in shops, on boats, on the streets and in empty warehouses – so why not theatre in a cave? Steve Wright ventures underground.

Dreams: shadowy, unknowable, many-tentacled things that bubble up from our subconscious, telling surreal and unfathomable stories and offering entrances into the vast, underground labyrinth of the subconscious. Caves: shadowy, unknowable, many-tentacled things that bubble up from the earth’s crust, offering entrances into a vast subterranean world. The two seem perfect bedfellows – one almost a metaphorical mapping of the other. And it’s an affinity that’s inspired students from the University of the West England to produce an intriguing show in one of Bristol’s most unusual performance venues.

With help from media professionals and staff at the Bower Ashton campus, final-year media practice students at UWE have devised a multimedia, interactive installation that will lead visitors around the shadowy catacombs of Redcliffe Caves next week. Billed as “a physical exploration into the boundary between dreams and reality”, ‘Do Not Disturb’ will greet visitors to the caves with a multi-sensory experience. Inside, audiences will find a mix of stereo and surround sound, projections, live music, theatre, lighting, set design and more. These elements and the evening’s narrative itself will change according to the audience’s behaviour as they make their way around the Redcliffe underworld. Each performance (for an audience of 10) will last up to 30 minutes, and there will be 30 performances over five nights, on the hour from 5pm until 10pm.

Executive producer Lisa Gaudion discovered the caves while researching local filming locations. She approached Alan Gray, who has been leading tours of the caves for over 40 years. “Alan loved the idea of creating a media installation and has been an amazing asset to the production, assisting us with location visits, power sourcing and applying for an event licence from the council,” explains the show’s producer Charlotte Lane.

The show, says Charlotte, focuses on “what we know about why we dream, and how we interpret them”. And the subject matter grew directly out of the extraordinary performance space they found themselves with. “Redcliffe Caves offered a challenging, unique location for us to work in. We wanted to offer audiences something interesting, that didn’t follow stereotypical ‘cave’ narratives – horror or wartime, for example.”

Hence the decision to use the caves as a metaphor for the human subconscious. “When we looked at the map, we noticed that the caves looked almost like a neural network – and we decided to run with that,” Charlotte explains. Another factor was the release of Christopher Nolan’s hugely admired psychological thriller ‘Inception’, in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘extractor’ stole secrets from the subconscious mind by creating and manipulating dreams. “Lots of us were affected by the film, and dreams became a popular narrative concept for the installation. The boundary between reality and dreams seemed to resonate deepest for us. We were interested in the unknown and misunderstood aspects of dreams, rather than the scientific reasoning behind why we dream.”

By incorporating both reported dream narratives and a fictional character leading the narrative, Charlotte and co hope to connect with audiences both in a conscious and unconscious fashion – “much like dreams,” as she observes. “Every aspect of the production represents something else, and the installation as a whole does not necessarily need to be understood. I hope each audience member will connect with the content in a personal way, relating it to their own dreams and or lives. Everyone dreams: we all share this experience. But no one truly understands it.”

If audiences merely stumble out of the caves feeling a little bewildered, that too is fine, says Charlotte. “Perhaps not everybody will understand the underlying sub-narrative, which contrasts Freud’s rational approach to interpreting a dream and Jung’s ‘spiritualist’ approach. But again, the installation as a whole represents how we miss the meaning behind our dreams.”

DO NOT DISTURB TOOK PLACE FROM MON 11-FRI 15 APR. 
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2011

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