Moving Pieces at Critical Care, a symposium about audience in immersive, interactive and one-on-one

On Thursday 29 March, Director of Moving Pieces, Charlie Blowers, will be delivering a presentation at Critical Care, a symposium held at London South Bank University supported by the Centre for Digital Storymaking and Performance & New Technologies Research Group.

The symposium places performance and performers at the heart of the day to explore three key areas of research relating to 'care'. Charlie will be presenting a paper responding to the second area,

‘How do theatre and performance makers negotiate care as a subject matter? In an ageing society in which the number of senior citizens has increased by 11% and 850,000 British people are living with dementia (projected to rise to 1 million by 2025 and 2 million by 2050), how can we sensitively deal with topics such as ageing, dementia and illness within the performances that we create? How can we attempt to represent the experience of people who may struggle to articulate that experience themselves? Should we attempt to give audiences an experience of these things or is this an impossibility that renders any attempt futile and tokenistic?’

Charlie will give an overview of Moving Pieces’ unique approach to theatre-making and how storytelling and the process of developing performance narratives can be deeply connected to wellbeing and care.

Moving Pieces listens to the body as a source of creative material, a cornerstone of our embodied practice. This idea that stories can emerge from our bodies, and the bodies of the participants we work with, means that we begin our storytelling journeys with the subject of care at the core.

We will discuss how we have used this approach to:

1) Sensitively explore experiences of grief, identity and relationships to boost emotional resilience, enable self-regulation and better understand our mental wellbeing.

2) Produce compelling stories and performances that resonate with and generate empathy among our audiences.

Places are £25 and can be booked via the University: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/whats-on