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