Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Landing Party to showcase work of final year Performance students
The work of four part-time students – Sara Jackson, Hannah Jade Robbins, Emily Start and Christopher Walker - marks the outcome of the Artist Project Major module, each focusing on a different theme – pregnancy and motherhood; growing up; dementia; and dancing within restrictions.
Alex Kelly, Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Music & Performing Arts at our University said:
"Landing Party is our annual showcase of new work created as part of the MA Performance course at Leeds Beckett University. This year the work is from two modules: Artist Mentor and Artist Project Major.
The work is mentored or supervised by Leeds Beckett Performing Arts tutors, but is initiated and created by the students themselves. One of the things that is exciting about this for us is that the showcase provides a snapshot of the concerns and interests of a new generation of performance makers – a glimpse of the future.
So far I’ve seen extracts or work-in-progresses of all of the shows, and I’m really excited to see where they have got to by the time of the festival."
Head of Performing Arts, Oliver Bray said: “Our postgraduate students presenting work as part of the Landing Party continue to represent the heart of our ethos in Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett. We produce work that genuinely uncovers new territory, unravels expectations and shapes the performance landscapes of the future. My very best wishes to our postgraduates with their last hurrah as MA students - they have already landed and it has been a privilege to watch them explore.”
Here, we delve deeper in each student’s work.
Sara Jackson - Memoirs of an Inexperienced Mother
What is your plan for this performance? It is interactive after all, so you will need a plan. Will you hide at the back and hope we don’t notice you or be the first to volunteer? Either way, you know nothing ever goes to plan? Have you ever made a birthing plan?
This semi-autobiographical piece looks at what happens when the plan for a perfect birth goes horribly wrong. When instead of glowing there is sickness, instead of labour, there is pre-eclampsia. Instead of a happy homecoming there is the neonatal intensive care unit, jaundice, NG tubes and breast pumps. There will be laughter, tears, joy and fear as we look at the absurdity of creating the perfect plan, knowing that it will never happen. The miracle of birth is a different experience for everybody. The one thing they have in common is that they didn’t go to plan.
Hannah Jade Robbins - The Immortality Project
If our memory is the museum in which we reside, what’s left if all that we’ve built is plucked from the mind?
The Immortality Project is a piece of visual theatre, effortlessly crossing boundaries between performance poetry, symbolic imagery, music and personal story. Disclosed through the relationship of granddaughter and grandmother, the performance explores the strange and cruel effects of dementia on the human mind.
Immerse yourself in a snowfall of memories and reappraise the value of your own…
Emily Start - Rubiks
A performance. Made up of five bodies. Five bodies exploring the interactions between themselves and the other four bodies. Inquiring into the relationships that occur between them on stage. What are they thinking? Where are going? How do they intend to reach their destination? Continually manipulated by the other bodies that surround them, each performer is forced beyond their choreographic familiarities to where the unknown begins to play out.
Christopher Walker - Life-ready
Do we ever truly feel like an adult and do we ever want to?
As we are attributed with an ever increasing number… are we ready to tackle the next step? In a new world dominated by the internet and social media, are the next generation truly “Insta-ready”? Has the Tamagotchi taught us anything?
Two people, 14 years and 1 day apart, try to come to terms with each other. They try to imagine what is to come and reflect on what has already been. As childhood and adulthood collide, we begin to question the differences between the two.
Dean of School Andrew Fryer also commented:
“What you are about to experience during this unique Festival of new work is an extraordinary range of cutting-edge performance from our uniquely talented students. Prepare to be amazed!”