CLINCH/Clara Bloomfield
Sarah, a fifteen year old girl, lives with her grandfather in a touch ex-mining town in Fife. She suffers with bad anxiety. Joining the local boxing club is an act that is laced with significant challenges and tensions for them both.
What was the inspiration for this performance?
Collision creates performance for young adult audiences. Through
our work we aim to encourage a greater dialogue surrounding what it is to be a
young adult in todays society.
Anxiety amongst young adults is at a
record high due to pressures from the pace of life, expectation, education,
work, body image and social media to name but a few.
‘Clinch’ was a seed of an idea that
was in reaction to this and coupled with my own personal interest in the role
sport, particularly boxing, plays in small communities and villages. I
serendipitously met with a young female boxer who shared her relationship
with the sport and the lack of equal opportunities and at times how she felt she
was a joke. I knew this was a subject area that would be relevant to so many
people.
How do you feel your work fits within the remit
of the manipulate festival?
Collision was selected as one of four companies for
Testroom, a creative development opportunity for Scottish-based
artists. Puppet Animation Scotland,
supported by the National Theatre of Scotland based in Rockvilla,
Glasgow, and facilitated by leading puppeteer Gavin Glover, Testroom
offers artists of any discipline the opportunity to explore
initial creative ideas which aim to place, at their heart, elements of live
puppet or object manipulation. ‘Clinch’ is a result of this development
opportunity.
Is performance still a good space for the
public discussion of ideas?
I would argue it still is.
Theatre should be a place for social
commentary, a space to explore another’s
views on the world, that can be in agreement or opposing to your own. A
space that can be immediate and responsive in it’s discussion of current world
events. That said, is theatre achieving this? Is theatre a space
that is accessible to the wider public…I don’t think so…this
is an area that needs to be addressed.
How did you become interested in making
performance?
From a young age I had the great fortune of working with strong
inspiring female directors and performance makers; Annie Wood (a former
Artistic Director Polka Theatre) and Nancy Reilly (The Wooster Group)who set me on a path
to create experiences that blurred the line between life and art, reality and
fiction. Environments where people could confidently explore their position
in the world and reflect it back through performance.
Is there any particular approach to the making
of the show?
There are three main components to
our scratch performance of ‘Clinch’; storytelling, puppetry and sound.
Each element is integral in the development and advancement of our
‘story’.
Each element had to feel like it
was part of the same world, sharing a similar tone and intention. With
each of these three aspects being so interconnected, if changes to one
occurred, the same refocus had to apply to the others to ensure a consistent
flow and aesthetic.
This at points was time consuming
when revisiting music timings, script rewrites, edits and re-rehearsals but as
the director this results in a satisfying culmination of artistic processes,
producing an accomplished collaborative presentation.
Does the show fit with your usual productions?
In one sense no. Testroom provided
Collision a development opportunity to experiment with puppetry in 'Clinch’
which is a new mode of performance for us.
In this context as a writer /
director the platform provided me the space to interrogate my approach to
storytelling and to explore my relationship with text and visual performance.
In the other sense yes – as a
company Collision is interested in creating sociopolitical performance
surrounding what it is to be a young adult in todays society. We feel
‘Clinch’ contributes to this broader discussion through a topical subject
matter.
What do you hope that the audience will
experience?
The seeds of what we hope to develop into a full
production. We hope to gain feedback from the audience that can support
the next stage in our development progress. From this short sharing we
hope for the audience to feel a connection with Sarah and want them to
champion her to overcome the challenges she is battling.
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