HAND IN GLOVE PERFORMANCE COMPANY

Hand in Glove are currently embarked on making a production for Jolt International Festival in 2015 - I'm Taller than the Fixing Man. Various shorter performances are being created to test this material, including a street performance at the 2015 Site Festival in Stroud. The larger production explores the pathological relationship between the individual and the crowd. The body - its different expressions of gestural communication (semiotic, instrumental and immersive) and its motion - is central to narrative themes centred upon a number of set-pieces or tableaux: The Witness; The Conversation; The End of the World; Cloak and Dagger; One Goes Free; The Duel; The Body; The Ship; The Crowd; Sword of Damocles; Sitter and Speaker; Landing; Cinema; Subrepticiamente; Alien; and The Zone.

These scenes provide a visual and sonic reference through which themes of division, indivisibility, hierarchy, absurdity, gathering and ritual can be explored. A formal vocabulary of echoing structures and images will help to shape the external expression of internal states.

The body's physical form, its mobility and postures in connection with other bodies provides the most important aspect of telling a story that will be uncovered and revealed rather than told. As distinct graphic units, the body's actions and postures will often connect to the architectural components of the mise-en-scène to indicate a particular place, as in The Ship and The Zone etc ... Colour and sound will be integral to the mood and tone of each set-piece, and are essential aspects to the filmic way in which one scene morphs into another.

Exposing the procedures with which these tableaux are achieved is intended to add to the sense for the audience of a notion of reality as a set of discoveries made by the cast. Although the design will depend on transforming arrangements of bodies, lighting and objects for each tableau, individual motion and gestures will be largely improvised. The production depends on the real characteristics of performers and how their creative imaginations coalesce to create its events. The combination of individuating mannerisms, a situation (such as The Duel), and a specific behavioural agenda is intended to produce a conceivable version of reality; a mute fiction of distinct transitions and corporeal patterns.