A brand new show that fuses postwar and contemporary text, innovative sound and a young cast of local actors and spoken word performers to explore ideas of personal freedom and choice.
The problem with choosing is that it just goes on, moment by moment, for an entire lifetime, and happens without reason. I guess I just still want to feel that I can always re-choose. That no choice I make will be so bad that I can’t be saved from it, from myself.
What are the consequences of our choices on ourselves and on others? Made and performed in Newport during the weeks leading up to the UK’s planned withdrawal from the EU, this show will be performed by an extraordinary cast drawn from the area’s vocal but under-represented millennial generation.
Immersing the audience into the heart of the action, STORM.3: Together and Alone will be a timely, theatrical response to the stormy political times in which we find ourselves.
Based on Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté by Simone de Beauvoir © Editions Gallimard.
“I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering how to discuss things at the moment; when opposition is dismissed as ‘fake’, and arguments and information are replaced with slogans designed to ‘win the narrative’ by stirring emotions rather than ideas – slogans that can mean whatever I want them to mean.
Questions about which of us are really amongst ‘the people’ being talked about – or what I might individually want to ‘take back control’ of, and for or from whom – seem difficult to ask.
As a theatre maker I don’t feel able to offer answers to any of those questions, nor do I want to; but I do feel a need to try to open up spaces where we might look at them.
The Storm Cycle began as an exploration of new ways to do precisely that, as these storms began to gather – STORM.3 has become a particular and perhaps pivotal moment in that journey.
The decision to voice words drawn from The Ethics of Ambiguity is not only a recognition of the continued and current relevance of Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas, but also remembers the desolation and optimism that followed WWII and gave birth to the Europe in which we now live.
The choice to work with local performers who might make these words speak about their own needs and time, seemed inescapable.
This is not a theatre that I already know how to build; but I hope that it might offer some room to meet and reflect, in ways that are perhaps not possible in other places…”
Mike Brookes Creator of STORM.3: Together and Alone
NTW_STORM3_Programme_ART_Screen_v2_Small.pdf
Connor Allen