This Imaginary Woman - where did she come from?

[A full article by Fern Smith about the process by which This Imaginary Woman came about is available HERE]

This Imaginary Woman came out of a desire for artists from different disciplines to work on a collaborative project. Artists such as musicians, performers and designers often work together for a common end, but in many instances due to the constraints of a specific project or time-scale, the end result is often not a true artistic collaboration. Musicians become slaves to the script, plot, director, or choreographer. Performers lend themselves over to the vision of the director. Directors feel at the mercy of programmers, the audience, the playwright. Building on an awareness that these situations often occur within the most democratic of companies, a performer and a composer/songwriter have set out to create a piece of music theatre that represents a truly collaborative project.

Whilst directing Moments of Madness, written by Paul Davies, Fern Smith made contact with Patrick Fitzgerald, who worked on that project as composer.

Fern has always been interested in the role of the voice in physical theatre, undertaking workshops with voice teachers from different backgrounds in conjunction with her work in the company.

This Imaginary Woman grew out of a desire to explore the voice and sound in performance, in this instance using piano and guitar and the human voice - sounding, singing and storytelling. In the performance, sound and voice are used to express the unconscious, spiritual, emotional, instinctive and rebellious selves of musician and performer.

The project also comes from a desire to create a space for "authenticity" within contemporary performance. The intention is to create a theatrical world with a sense of ritual and an audience/performer relationship on a deeper level than many more traditional theatre pieces typically allow.

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This Imaginary Woman
Photos by Graham Matthews