i-witness
A new Volcano show for autumn 2008

"In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk…"

i-witness is a new show inspired by the writings of WG Sebald. 10 years after the publication in English of The Rings of Saturn, Volcano invites you on an extraordinary journey in the writer's footsteps.

Although his actual journey covers only one small corner of England, the book is an adventure of memory and association that reaches across the globe and through hundreds of years of history. Every place and every object leads us somewhere else. From crumbling English seaside resorts, we are transported deep into the Belgian Congo or the silk houses of a Chinese Empress. But the exotic charm of these journeys is always unsettled by some epic brutality just around the corner or below the surface, with the strange effect that this detached and scholarly prose rages with violence on every page.

Our show is not just about walking, or Suffolk, or what Europeans did in the Congo. It is also about connections and traces, and finding beauty in the shadow of destruction. We want to bring alive the deeply unsettling effect of the book - to move you and agitate you. We bring you an intimate, up-close experience - using video, dance and the sheer emotional power of live performance to lead you through strange landscapes and follow their clues, signs and connections. i-witness is brutal, meditative, and darkly funny theatre that explores what it means to live in a world full of the echoes and whisperings of the past.

"If we view ourselves from a great height it is frightening how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end" WG Sebald.


i-witness features Catherine Bennett, Paul Davies, Matilda Leyser, Philip Ralph and Fern Smith.
Design is by Gerald Tyler, and Film by Lucy Cash.
Co-produced by Volcano Theatre Company and Taliesin Arts Centre
Supported by a touring grant from Arts Council England