Thread Theatre Com­pany’s phys­ic­al theatre work The Keep­ers  starts tomor­row night at BATS Theatre.   The story is that “two women inhab­it an isol­ated light­house on a small rocky island in the middle of an ocean. One arrived by row­boat, unan­nounced and unex­plained – the oth­er seems to have been here forever. The women are both drawn to and repelled from the oth­er. As the days roll by their iden­tit­ies become inex­plic­ably inter­twined, and the bound­ar­ies between the two become increas­ingly blurred. ” The devisers Julia Croft and Veron­ica Brady say it explores memory, love, loss, and how people hold onto, or let go of, things in their lives. It’s a piece that sounds intriguing as there isn’t a lin­ear nar­rat­ive, and much of the story is told through move­ment.  They are joined on stage by Claire Cow­an who provides the sound­scape. Appar­ently she plays uncon­ven­tion­al instru­ments (a buck­et, paper) along­side more tra­di­tion­al ones (cello, viol­in.) All three are clear about nar­rat­ive in the piece but part of the fun for us as audi­ence is that we don’t get to see all of it. Instead, we get to use our ima­gin­a­tions and fill in the story.

The work was designed to tour so the set is simple and min­im­al­ist. Items on stage have mul­tiple func­tions. (That explains where the buck­et comes from.) It’s inten­tion­ally ambigu­ous so the story can­’t be fixed to a par­tic­u­lar loc­a­tion or a par­tic­u­lar time.

Thread Theatre want us to bring our own exper­i­ences and view of the world. If you have time after the show, they’d love to hear your inter­pret­a­tion.

  • The Keep­ers by Thread Theatre on at BATS Theatre, 19–29 Septem­ber 2012.