Preview: House of Sand season – Pedal & Castles

I couldn’t see any of the House of Sand shows in the Fringe Fest­iv­al this year so I’m really pleased that two of them – Ped­al and Castles – are com­ing back to BATS Theatre this month.  Castles won the SYNZ Award and was nom­in­ated in a num­ber of oth­er cat­egor­ies.  I sent some ques­tions to per­former Eliza Sanders.

Q. What inspired these pieces?

A. It’s hard to pin­point spe­cif­ic ideas that inspired the works. There are def­in­itely themes that are dom­in­ant through­out both pieces, such as free­dom, dis­cov­ery, flight, self analysis/critique and sex. I am not inter­ested in hav­ing a mean­ing or a mes­sage I want to get across, rather I just try to make things that have some innately inter­est­ing qual­ity or have an aes­thet­ic that evoke an emo­tion­al response. I’m really pas­sion­ate in all my work that whatever an audi­ence mem­ber sees or under­stands the work to be is exactly what it is. I’ve really enjoyed talk­ing to people after my shows and dis­cov­er­ing their inter­pret­a­tions of the mater­i­al that I nev­er would have thought of before, but when they say it the rep­res­ent­a­tion seems com­pletely obvi­ous. So the next time I per­form the work I see what they saw and it is com­pletely new to me too.

Q. Ped­al is the fore­run­ner to Castles – what does this mean?

A. I cre­ated Ped­al while I was still at school [New Zea­l­and School of Dance]. After audi­ences in Can­berra and Wel­ling­ton respon­ded so gen­er­ously to what I had made, I wanted to really exper­i­ment with the form that had evolved. I felt as though I had only skimmed the sur­face of what was pos­sible in the con­text of being alone on stage with only my voice and a few pieces of fab­ric to work with.

The dra­mat­ic arc and jour­ney in Castles was much more planned from the out­set. I was trav­el­ling in Europe and Amer­ica for a few months when I had the inspir­a­tion for the how the jour­ney should con­tin­ue. I had a strong sense that the ‘story’ (whatever that might be) I had begun in Ped­al was not com­pletely con­cluded and I wanted to revis­it the Char­ac­ter (for want of a bet­ter word) and meth­od to see where else it might go. It cer­tainly feels like a pro­gres­sion from where I star­ted with Ped­al.

Q. What can people expect?

A. People often say my work is strange, or not like any­thing they’ve ever seen before. I guess in a way it is strange, I’m telling a story but I don’t know what it is. It’s almost entirely scored by my own text but what I say rarely makes very much logic­al sense. I per­form phys­ic­al and intric­ate dance sequences which I hope use the train­ing I have to com­mu­nic­ate what only move­ment can, while deliv­er­ing semi-sensic­al text. I sup­pose audi­ences can expect a weird hybrid of the cab­aret, absurd­ist theatre and the vir­tu­osic move­ment style that New Zea­l­and and Aus­tralia are known for. I hope that they defy type cast­ing. I’m trained as a dan­cer, but I’m also pas­sion­ate about theatre, music, visu­al and per­form­ance art so my hope is that Ped­al and Castles are an inter­sec­tion of all these things using my primary back­ground in dance as tool to pull them all togeth­er.

Q. Who else is involved with your work?

My broth­er Charles who is co-cre­at­or of House of Sand has been my part­ner on all things pro­duc­tion based for the sea­son. I also had cre­at­ive assistance/advice from a whole range of peers and tutors while I was cre­at­ing Ped­al at NZSD. John But­ter­field and Tommy Truss were par­tic­u­larly help­ful in the early stages of put­ting Ped­al togeth­er. Laura Bean­land-Steph­ens has been a con­stant voice of reas­on. My mum and her sew­ing machine has also played a pretty massive part in the phys­ic­al cre­ation of the props and cos­tumes. Owen Macarthy has done all the light­ing design for both shows as well as film­ing past shows and edit­ing promo videos. Ant­on Cleav­er-Wilkin­son has done all the poster design from Mel­bourne and the pro­mo­tion images were taken by Steph­en A’Court and Lor­na Sim who have both been incred­ible gen­er­ous in offer­ing their pho­to­graphy ser­vices for free! I’m so grate­ful to all these people

Q. Do we have to see both shows to make sense of them?

A. No. Both works hold their own without the oth­er to sup­port them. How­ever I think the pro­gres­sion and dif­fer­ence between the two is what many people will find fas­cin­at­ing. I hope that most people come to see both because they are a con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er and each makes the oth­er a rich­er exper­i­ence.

• House of Sand sea­son Ped­als & Castles per­formed in rep­er­tory at BATS theatre 17–21 Mary 2016, with a double bill on 21 May  2016