As part of the SMHAF (Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival) 2024, LiveBorders have a programme of shows and workshops exploring this year’s theme – In/Visible – including Clare’s solo show CAN I BE A BUTTERFLY?
The SMHAF theme considers “what it means to be ‘visible’ or ‘invisible’ when we think about our mental health. Which aspects of our mental health do we keep hidden and which do we feel able to share? How can we use the arts and creativity to make mental health more ‘visible’, in a way that engages people and challenges stigma?“(SMHAF 2024)
CAN I BE A BUTTERFLY, initially performed as part of this year’s Duns Play Fest, is a semi-autobiographical, part imagined, solo play about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and its possible message to a fast world.
The show opens up questions central to the theme – particularly around feeling unseen or unheard. Using movement, poetry, sound, song and text the performer (Clare’s Many Threads ) weaves her own story around the fairytale of Briar Rose accompanied by the voices of others who have experienced ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
I am, we are, she is invisible
From: Dream sequence in Can I be a Butterfly?
It will be performed at the Heart of Hawick on 16th October at 7.00pm Heart of Hawick Booking
The show was devised between January and April 2024 and integrates voices from 4 very profound recorded interviews held in February and March this year. Each of the interviewees gave us permission to use their voices as part of the play. Creating the soundscape has been a collaborative project that has accompanied Clare’s devising process In collaboration.
Listening to the stories and experiences of the interviewees on the recordings, we tried (through the cutting and pasting process for the sound effects) to honour the uniqueness of what each person had expressed. This process felt as if it allowed the “invisible” to become “visible” through the medium of sound and finally, through the show itself, enabled these voices to be heard Voices heard.
A short extract from the Castle sequence in Can I be a Butterfly?
"Briar Rose woke early, before anyone else was up and began to explore parts of the castle where she had never been before............. She arrived at a door and there was a key in the door. She turned the key and the door swung open. Inside was a spiral staircase. She began to climb".
Find the other LiveBorders events that are part of the SMHAF 2024 programme at SMHAF programme 2024 – Scottish Borders
The Artist in Studio Hundy 