The summer residency in 2018 took place from 23 July – 11 August. This year, 19 actors, 2 designers, 2 technicians and 5 producers came together to work with award-winning theatre company The Wardrobe Ensemble, a Bristol-based group of artists working together to make new plays that dissect the twenty-first century experience. Their work in playful, energetic, often irreverent and dedicated to finding the place where the intellectual and the emotional collide.
Film by project participant Charlotte Burke
The Project
Over the course of three weeks, the newly-formed ensemble worked together to create S A F A R I, a theatrical collage about the internet, insomnia chat rooms and human connection online. The final production was a nocturnal montage of recreated viral videos and memes; with ensemble movement, absurd humour and retro, Club Tropicana nostalgia.
For the first time, we incorporated a producing strand: five emerging producers worked alongside Hannah Smith, the Wardrobe Ensemble’s producer, to manage the project, handling the PR & marketing, budgets, publishing a project zine, curating a pop-up installation in the gallery and taking over The North Wall’s social media accounts. You can read the S A F A R I Zine to find out more.
Photos © Josh Tomalin Photography
