Judith Adams - Playwright & Dramatist

ARASHI NO IE / STORMY HOUSE

In development 2016-18

Arashi no ie / Stormy House is an Anglo-Japanese installation/performance project running 2017-20 and initiated by Whitestone Arts (Judith Adams playwright, Simon Warner film-maker, Stacey Johnstone performer) to explore Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1818-48) through the prism of traditional Japanese ghost stories and their landscape settings, as transcribed by Greco-Irish polymath Patrick Lafcadio Hearn / Yakumo Koizumi (1850-1904).

Working in our studio on Haworth Moor in collaboration with designers Leo Warner and Jenny Melville and film-maker Jessie Rodger from the creative technology company 59 Productions (London and New York), five visiting Japanese Artists (Misuzu Kosaka, Ima Tenko, Riko Murakami, Natsuko Toyoshima and Ayaka Morimoto), theatre students from CAPA College (Wakefield) and performers Zoe Katsilerou (Athens) and Aaron White (Kent), we created moving silhouettes (ghosts) and scenarios and captured them on film. We also worked with pupils from Haworth and Copthorne Primary Schools and ran public workshops, demonstrations and calligraphy sessions in Haworth and central Bradford.

Using the material and resources gathered, Whitestone Arts will stage an installation 3-10th November 2018 in the Old School Room, Haworth and in Theatre in the Mill 2019 (dates tbc) as part of the Emily Brontë birthday celebrations and to celebrate Patrick Lafcadio Hearn’s unique literary excellence as well as his neglected contribution to the understanding of Japanese sensibilities and culture.

Tanizaki: In Praise of Shadows.

Soul-swallowing (Japan trip blog link)

ARASHI Workshop Report June/July 2018

Artists:

Judith Adams
Simon Warner
Stacey Johnstone
(Whitestone Arts)

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SWEET FANNY ADAMS IN EDEN

A three-year project, commissioned by Stellar Quines Theatre Company and funded by the Scottish Arts Council for performance in Pitlochry Plant Collectors' Memorial Garden (2003).

Company: Judith Adams, Muriel Romanes, Leo Warner, Robert Sharp, Francis Gallop, Colette O'Neil, Wendy Seagar, Alexandra Mathie, Luke Shaw, Kern Faulkner, Jonathan Battersby, Pauline Lockhart, Yonnie Fraser, Karen Bryce, Anna Cocciadiferro, Jemima Levick, Ian Jackson, Gemma Swallow, Jessica Richards, Sunita Hundija, Jacqui Howard, Stephanie Turner, Kate Quinn, Alex Bynoth, Katie Durkin, Claire Halleran, Catherine Lindow, Lisa Sangster, Amy Elder, Ross Adam, Dan Huke, Simon Warner, Joanna Boyce, Alison Reever, Kirstin Roan, members of Lyceum Youth Theatre.

The first public performances of Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden took place in the Pitlochry Plant Collectors' Garden in August 2003, but this version was already an adaptation of the original, which exists, in all its mutable dialogue and descriptive elements, on a hypertext site created for playwright Judith Adams by media artists Leo Warner and Robert Sharp of Fifty Nine Productions. This enabled her to lay simultaneous script modules out spatially on computer, and then "walk" different pathways between them, moving backwards and forwards through time. In its simplest form, such a structure is most closely described as a 3-D mind map. This was adapted for the challenging terrain of Pitlochry, losing some elements and gaining others along the way.

These modules, which cannot be published in any conventional way, remain available for re-assembly into any site-specific productions.

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V5/THE DAEDALUS PROJECT

2012 -

Ongoing development of a project with Stacey Johnstone, exploring themes based on Simon Warner's lecture Isolating V5: Towards a Human Zoetrope, presented at the Magic Lantern Society/University of Westminster conference Old Media New Work 1 May 2010 & Hybrid art and science exhibition, Sheffield Institute of the Arts, February 2010

Currently devising a cross-art touring performance and/or installation.

A Whitestone Arts Development Project

SOUTH RIDING

2011/12

A Whitestone Arts project.

South Riding - An English Landscape by Winifred Holtby

published (posthumously) in 1936

Dramatised for ensemble performance by Judith Adams

"I want to do something hard, muscular, compact, very little emotional and then the emotion hammered into style. Metal work, not water colour." Winifred Holtby.

For performance in 2012/13

Current status:

Second draft text and movement ensemble workshop West Yorkshire Playhouse, December 6th-9th 2010

10 performers

video design Mic Pool

choreography Lucy Hind

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THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS

August 2009

"Judith Adams is the perfect choice to adapt Muriel Spark's sly and tender novel about a group of young women living on little more than hope and euphoria..." Guardian preview

SPARK ADAPTATION FLAMES INTO LIFE *****

Monday, August 17, 2009

".....we have Stellar Quines' masterly Girls Of Slender Means, the result of producer/director Muriel Romanes commissioning the playwright Judith Adams to adapt Spark's slim 1963 book.....this graceful production flows ....the performances are faultless....Spark gave Adams' first draft her blessing; and she has brought the text bitingly alive and as savagely brilliant as ever." Metro, NADINE MCBAY

"Scotland's leading women's theatre company has succeeded in bringing together a fascinating first-ever stage version...in a strong and thought-provoking adaptation by Judith Adams....a powerful and gripping contribution to this year's Festival debate on the idea of enlightenment...." Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman ****

"packed audiences are lapping up Judith Adams' fine adaptation in a poetic, deliquescent production by Muriel Romanes....the mood, and sense of history, is spot on....there's a gallery of outstanding performances led by Maureen Beattie...brilliant newcomer Melody Grove as their poetry-reciting conscience, and Candida Benson as the sexy Selina. A show with a big future, I'd guess." Michael Coveney, WHAT"S ON Stage ****

"Adams's script is beautifully fractured, and Muriel Romanes's production....has a fevered quality that feeds the idea that 'death is just a tick away'" Lyn Gardner, The Guardian ***

NOMINATION for BEST ENSEMBLE at the Festival: The Stage ****

"there is no doubting the clarity of vision..." Oliver Farrimond, Fest.***

Between VE Day and VJ Day, as the war-shaken May of Teck Club collapses in its very own peace-time holocaust, the world loses the last vestiges of its torn and tattered innocence, slips between the sheets with Mammon and goes to the Devil as simply as a beautiful young girl slips into the chiffon folds of a bartered Schiaparelli dress for her night out.

Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive John Updike, New Yorker

Music Hall, Assembly Rooms, George Street box office

box office: 0131 623 3030

www.assemblyfestival.com

6th to 31st Aug 2009, 2.50pm

Producer/director: Muriel Romanes, Stellar Quines Theatre Company

Funded by Scottish Arts Council and Assembly Festival

(MORAL: "It's just a matter of time" Muriel Spark The Girls of Slender Means)

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VARIANCE

September 23rd - 26th 2009

Inspired by Bach's Goldberg Variations

Text exploration towards performance at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield of MA Ensemble Physical Theatre students, led by John Britton

With Chris Coe

University of Huddersfield

DANCE WORKSHOPS / CORTES ISLAND / CANADA

July 12 - 22

Based at HOLLYHOCK Arts and Retreat Centre (BC CANADA)

Leaders:

Margie Gillis: Dancing from the Inside Out

Tedd Robinson: Functional Movement

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STONES WORKSHOP / FRANCE

April 8th-17th

"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak" (Macbeth)

Physical Training, Ensemble and Macbeth

Leader:

John Britton

Au Brana Cultural Centre, Pauilhac, South of France

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VILLETTE - dramatisation of Charlotte Bronte's novel

23 October - 1st November 2008

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

Second year students reprise the gothic adventures of Lucy Snowe

Director: Deborah Paige

Thursday 23rd October - Saturday 1 November 2008

Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre - 7.30pm (Mat. 2.30)

- and after

25-27 September, 2008

Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield

Collaboration with students studying for the University of Huddersfield's MA in Ensemble Physical Theatre: Training and Performance.

exploring text and movement with John Britton and Chris Coe

PART ONE: GENESIS TO NEMESIS

7.30pm

Matinee 2.30 pm, Friday

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MARGIE GILLIS / UBC WORKSHOP (VANCOUVER)

17th / 18th / 19th March 2008

A workshop funded by the University of British Columbia, Canada with solo dancer and choreographer Margie Gills and Professor Michelle LeBaron to explore, through dance and language, the negative and positive character of conflict - its nature and its possible uses.

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WOMEN ON THE BRINK

November 2007

Text provision on the hoof (or wing) for international 3 year project exploring depression and creativity. Co-production between Edinburgh (Stellar Quines), Montreal (Imago Theatre) and Romania (National Theatre of Timisoara). Workshops at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 2006, National Theatre of Timisoara 2007.

CROW PLAY

November 2007-2010

Private commission in collaboration with Paula Frunzetti and Mirela Iacob (Romania). To be composed in English, Romanian and Bird.

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SHAKESPEARE'S DAUGHTERS

December 2007 -

Epistolatory revelations, with Sue Limb

This forthright union of Trinny and Susannah and Charlie's Garden Army with Shakespeare in Love is sure to contain startling new evidence of the surprising importance of Birmingham in the cultural renaissance and plumbing advances of Elizabethan life. Edgebaston Racing Monthly

.

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THE LITTLE MERMAID

December 1997

December 1997

For children 7-10

Directed by Catriona Murray

Designed by Kate Burnett

Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen

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