The Shape of Things to Come
New Season 2024
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
NEW SEASON OF ORIGINAL SHORT PERFORMANCES 02 MAY - 15 JUNE
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a programme of brand new original short performances commissioned by Volcano from freelance theatre makers and performers in Wales and beyond. All of the performances are about 30 minutes long.
The shows in this series are all very different – we’ve got spaceships, stick insects, disco dancing, drag and more.. . What connects these diverse works is that they all look towards the future – imagining new possibilities and exploring other ways of being.
CLICK A TITLE TO BOOK, OR BUY A SEASON TICKET
THU 18 APRIL | PROLOGUE: ONCE UPON A 2024
3pm. Featuring BTEC Students from RUBICON DANCE | Created with MARIANNE TUCKMAN
ONCE UPON A 2024 develops on some of the themes of The Rising Damp & Other Tails, a duet that Marianne made as part of the Shape of Things to Come series at Volcano in 2023. Set on a stormy night in the depths of a raging housing crisis, this immersive performance retells Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid as a tragic and exploitative love story between a merman and an estate agent.
The cast and co-creators of ONCE UPON A 2024 are on the cusp of a new chapter of their lives; in September they will each leave home to start full-time dance training in cities all over the UK. ONCE UPON A 2024 is a danced reflection on what it means to be young and to dream in the context of the ongoing cost of living crisis.
THU 02 – SAT 04 MAY | IS THAT ALL THERE IS? | By CATHERINE ALEXANDER
Thursday 5:30pm & 7:30pm | Friday 7:30pm | Saturday 2pm
IS THAT ALL THERE IS? explores our wildest hopes and dreams for the last years of our lives.
Part performance, part conversation, IS THAT ALL THERE IS? is a piece about social care for the elderly by a care worker who sometimes works in theatre. During the pandemic, Catherine fell out of love with the theatre world and became a domiciliary care worker, finding a new sense of purpose and clarity in daily exercising compassion and forming relationships with vulnerable people. After long struggles with chronic anxiety and with the everyday pain of endometriosis, she is approaching performance from a different place, creating work that is informed by her experience as a care worker, with compassion and laughter at its core.
THU 09 – SAT 11 MAY | RITUALS OF THE MOLIKILIKILI | By ERIC NGALLE CHARLES
Thursday 2pm | Friday 5:30pm & 7:30pm | Saturday 4pm
Can blindness be a desired affliction? What have those eyes seen, to desire to see no more?
THE RITUALS OF THE MOLIKILIKILI (Stick Insect) is about the power of Literature to overcome trauma. It weaves between languages, folktales, and Bantu oral traditions. Ericis a Cameroonian writer, poet, playwright, and human rights activist based in Wales.
THU 16 – SAT 18 MAY | THIS MUSEUM IS A SPACESHIP | By CHRISTOPHER ELSON
Thursday 5:30pm & 7:30pm | Friday 5:30pm | Saturday 2pm
A dream of immortality – not for the rich or the chosen but for the entirety of humankind!
In THIS MUSEUM IS A SPACESHIP, a nameless curator offers an energetic, unnerving introduction to the dusty artefacts of an almost-forgotten museum. A box of tapes is found, a basic projector… antiquated pieces speaking of unbelievable technologies. Part lecture, part audiobook, part excursion into leaps of collective imagination, this performance sets the ideas of the 19th century Russian avant-garde against the context of our current global and personal anxieties. Whilst the current crop of billionaire ‘futurists’, the Silicon Valley tech-bros, speak in terms of profit and interplanetary imperialism, The Russian Cosmists spoke of immortality, resurrection for all, complete freedom of travel in universal space! The final exhibit? The museum itself, as our curator attempts to harness an excess of solar energy to set us free to explore more radical orbits throughout the universe.
THU 23 – FRI 24 MAY | PERFECT PLACES | By LUKE HEREFORD
Thursday 7:30pm & 9:30pm | Friday 7:30pm & 9:30pm
A theatrical poem about the search for queer belonging in queer spaces.
As a male-presenting non-binary person, I so often must be chameleonic in queer spaces. In a space that welcomes mostly hairy butch men, I become a hairy butch man for the night. Night after night, I reinvent myself as someone I am not. Trapped in these self-destructive cycles, how are we supposed to find queer happiness? Is anyone in these spaces truly happy? How do we get out, and how do we get to be happy just being us?
You are invited to join Luke in a microcosm of an archetypal queer club, with music, singing, words, drag, dancing and more, as they attempt to figure out who this place is for and where is the perfect place for those who don’t belong. There is no obligation to bring your authentic self!
THU 13 – SAT 15 JUNE | NYTHU | By ELIN PHILLIPS
Thursday 5:30 & 7:30pm | Friday 7:30pm | Saturday 2pm
How can we think of the future when the present is so all-consuming? When sleeplessness robs you of your power to speak/think and turns you into some strange creature silently prowling the landing? Hysterical and yet methodical. The long night’s madness of the primary carer. Cancelled plans, unanswered emails, dates flying past you as you think of the phases of her life instead. The freedom of the future cannot be fathomed in this current funk.
NYTHU (Nesting) is a Welsh-language performance with disco-dancing, inspired by Elin’s experience as a new mother and primary carer.
THU 13 – SAT 15 JUNE | SANC | By AKEIM TOUSSAINT BUCK
Thursday 6:15pm & 8:15pm | Friday 8:15pm | Saturday 1:15pm
SANC – The sanctity of sanctuary. To move, to speak, is to respond to a future, expected or unexpected. Akeim’s performance uses movement and the voice to express humanity’s needs in dire times of onslaught on our embodied freedom. It is about rewilding the cosmopolitan human, immersing ourselves in nature to heal and reset. From the concrete a flower will always grow and so be the flow of the human in its cycles of rebirth.
AKEIM TOUSSAINT BUCKis an interdisciplinary performer and maker, born in Jamaica and raised in England. Graduating from The Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 2014, Akeim began creating his own work in 2015. His intention is to create moving, thought provoking, accessible and free-spirited projects.
