Erdsee / Earthsea
October 2022
The first half of the German language translation of the radio series Earthsea is now available to stream as Erdsee via your podcast provider of choice.
You can read more about Erdsee on the Westdeutscher Rundfunk website, and more about the original 2018 dramatisation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic books here.
嵐の家 Arashi No Ie / Stormy House
~ Featured Project ~
“…he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire… Nelly: I am Heathcliff.”
Emily Brontë / Catherine Earnshaw:
Wuthering Heights (1848)
“…here the old narrative breaks off: the rest of the story exists only in some brain that has been dust for centuries. I am able to imagine several possible endings; but none of them would satisfy an Occidental imagination. I prefer to let the witness attempt to decide for themselves the Probable Consequence of Swallowing a Soul”
Lafcadio Hearn transl.
In a Cup of Tea, Kwaidan (1903)
Overview
嵐の家 Arashi No Ie / Stormy House is an on-going collaboration and co-creation between 59 Productions and Whitestone Arts, integrating classic texts, video (including VR and AR), traditional lullaby, binaural sound, landscape, architecture and cross-cultural mixed reality performance. At its heart, it celebrates the power of childhood imagination to conjure, through play, both redemptive artforms and new and better worlds from the implosion of the old.
The project was inspired by the prolific literature, maps and ‘making out’ (acting) of the famous Brontë children in their tiny Parsonage cellar in Haworth, West Yorkshire. Emily sited her imaginary Queendom of Gondal in the North Pacific, so our 2018 performance version explored the ghost world of Wuthering Heights from the structural perspective of traditional Japanese ghost tales, Kwaidan, translated into English in 1903 by Greco-Irish author Patrick Lafcadio Hearn. Research revealed that both writers had Celtic roots, lost mothers when very young and shared a passion for shape-shifting. (Hearn took Japanese citizenship and a new identity when he married the daughter of a samurai family. Emily simply is the voice of all the characters in her only novel). This walk-in installation premiered to great public delight in the Old Schoolroom opposite the Brontës’ original home, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, in 2018.
2020-21
we are currently exploring VR, AR and MR versions of the show for international festivals, museums, and other non-theatre buildings. More news to come.
