Tag: Theatre practitioner

In/Visible

Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2024

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".
Extract from SFX 5 – Castle sequence

Find the other LiveBorders events that are part of the SMHAF 2024 programme at SMHAF programme 2024 – Scottish Borders

In collaboration

A solo play about Chronic Fatigue and its possible message to a fast world

During the last 6 weeks I’ve been busy creating the soundscape for a devised solo show that my partner, Clare at Clare’s Many Threads, has been working on since January.

Clare will be performing Can I be a butterfly at the local Duns Play Fest here in the Scottish Borders on 28th April at 6.15pm Duns Play Fest 2024

Can I be a butterfly? is a semi-autobiographical, part imagined, solo play about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and its possible message to a fast world.

Using movement, poetry, sound, song and text, Clare weaves her own story around the fairytale of Briar Rose accompanied by the voices of others who have experienced ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Creating the soundscape has been a collaborative project that has accompanied Clare’s devising process. We have been working with 4 very profound recorded interviews. Each of the interviewees gave us permission to use their voices as part of the play.

It has involved a lot of intense listening and a painstaking process of cutting and weaving together their stories and experiences – often similar and sometimes very different. Trying all the time to honour the uniqueness of what each person expressed when they spoke to Clare during the interview/conversations.

As well as the voices from the 4 interviewees, the collaboration has gone wider, incorporating into the soudscape recordings of the singing groups in Duns and Smailholm, performing a song Clare composed for the show.

A full run through this week at the local village hall went well, but was not without its fair share of technical glitches.

Some of the early sound editing work has not made its way into the final play. “Colour of Fatigue” is one such clip. We couldn’t find a place for it, despite the fact that it encapsulates the gravity and humour expressed in the interviews:

What’s the colour of fatigue?

In the final stages of rehearsing and refining the play, we’d both like to acknowledge the collaboarative contributions of the 4 people who were interviewed (Gill, Lucy, Adrian and Eula), the poems Lucy recorded for the show and the singing groups in Duns and Smailholm.

If you are in the area on 28th April come along to Duns Play Fest to see the show. Duns Play Fest Tickets – Can I be a butterfly?

Clare’s Many Threads is the Artist name of Clare Watson. She is an interdisciplinary practitioner living in the Borders, who works with theatre practice, walking, creative writing, textiles and song.