Rhiannon Faith Company makes radically tender dance theatre, working nationally on big stages and locally with communities on the margins, always with social change and care at its heart.
Olivier Award nominated, radically tender dance-theatre show invites you into the pub to shed your worries with ‘Lay Down Your Burdens’, coming to Harlow and Norwich.
Choreographer and theatre maker Rhiannon Faith invites you to step into an evening at the local pub, but a night at the local like no other. Here you can explore the beauty of humanity and the eternal need for community and compassion, take the weight off and help each other lighten the load and restore our weary souls.
I had the opportunity to interview Rhiannon before the tour:
Hayley: Tell me, how did the idea of this show all start?
Rhiannon: I was making a show that was trying to find how, in a live space, like a performance space, we could build a feeling or a sense of community with an audience. That was kind of the beginning of it all, how using dance or theatre, or whatever type of performance, how do you make an audience feel connected to one another? If an audience can feel connected to one another, where we’re talking about things that are perhaps are making them feeling a little bit vulnerable, like the heavy stuff in our lives that we carry, and once we say things out loud it makes the weight of them go away. So the idea of the show was if we all came together and for a moment, we could feel carried in a way, how would that connect us as humans and what do I have to do as a choreographer and director to make that feel OK and safe, enjoyable and artistic and so it has found itself being set in a pub!
Hayley: Explore that with me a bit more, how did you choose for it being set in a pub?
Rhiannon: There were many variations before we arrived at a pub but there was something that always pulled me back to that. Sometimes, if you’re particularly isolated and you go somewhere by yourself, you may end up at a bar and you may end up chatting to the bar man – that’s kind of a thing that we see in films. A lonely person might come into a bar and try to talk about his troubles. The bar man is there as someone who has to receive the woes of the world that this person is going through as part of their job, and carries probably quite a lot and probably understands a lot about humanity in that receiving and carrying. I think it kind of went on from there, a pub is a place for community, it’s a place where you meet your friends and you offload, it’s a place where sometimes there is live music, quizzes and games and often it’s a place of counsel and feeling like you belong.
Hayley: I’ve been sent all the production shots of ‘Lay Down Your Burdens’ and the set looks really good, tell me a bit about that.
Rhiannon: Me and my designer spoke about it down to the last ‘T’, even about the pub carpet in particular because I’ve been in many pubs in my time and I was like it needs to have this specific detail. The actual world itself, I just feel like we have built a pub on stage and so it has a very homely feel and I’m sure it will end up in my parents garden in the summer after the tour.
Hayley: Is there speaking within the performance, or is it just dance?
Rhiannon: Yes, I work quite often with dance and text. In this particular piece of dance theatre there is lots of very high physical movement and also a script, so we learn about the journeys of the characters during the show and individually what they’re carrying and what that does to the environment.
Hayley: That’s interesting, sometimes when it’s all dance some of us ‘mortals’ don’t always fully understand what is trying to be put across.
Rhiannon: Yes, I think for me movement is such a powerful tool because the body can speak about the stuff that we bear and sometimes when you are sitting with your friend you don’t have to speak, you know how they’re feeling because of what their body is saying to you. There’s a lot of emotional access physically, especially using dancing performance you can tap into the emotional parts of you and express that quite viscerally or physically. Sometimes a conversation does the same thing so if someone says how are you feeling you might be able to express that through movement or you might actually be able to say yeah I’m feeling shit, I think it’s really whatever serves at that moment.
Hayley: With regards to the elements and the characters, who or what has inspired you?
Rhiannon: I always write quite autobiographically so when I’m working with performers or inviting performers into the process, they have to be able to go deep into their feelings and talk about their experiences which we do by inviting a therapist into our rehearsal space quite often and we go quite deep into philosophical stuff. Or stuff that is personal and maybe stuff that’s universal like the weight of the world or all the stuff that’s going on, also the weight that we carry ourselves. We always work with performers where their characters are a part of them – they’re exaggerated parts of who they are as people and then around that I create a story that allows those characters to take the audience on a journey. In particular we have the landlady Sarah, who’s the beating heart of the of the pub, who carries the tone of the show really, she holds a lot as she makes sure that everyone is always putting one foot in front of the next and moving forward. She’s a bit of a counsellor in a way and not in a professional sense, but she is there for the locals, she knows them as regulars, she knows what to anticipate and how to hold them.
Then we have a guy called Donny who’s a stranger. All of the characters are regulars in the pub and then on this one night a stranger comes in and that stranger is carrying a lot of suffering, a lot of pain. He’s carrying the ashes of his mother in a flask and he’s about to poke and challenge, infect the space because he feels so much loneliness, as much as loneliness can feel like a disease in some sense. You know he’s carrying a lot of stuff and in order for him to get it out he projects and the others to feel it. Sarah is always the person who tries to bring him back to lightness and tries to offer care, so she’s a bit of a counteract rather than going yes you’re carrying all this stuff, you’re acting bad, you’re a bad person she does the opposite and says well actually there’s lots of care here in this space and you know maybe you could look at things like this and that might be useful. It’s a lot about his journey and his transformation because of the acts of the regulars and Sarah
Hayley: What elements are key to make this production really work?
Rhiannon: Well there is a lot going on, the world is key, bringing people in. We bring the audience into the pub, there’s participation, we play some pretty shit pub games but there’s lots of fun too we do a quiz bingo, a ‘Stars In Your Eyes’. It’s really important to get the audience feeling like their part of it. We have live music, Irish-folky sound and that carries the beat parts of the pub. I’m from a big Irish Catholic family and music is always present when we go to the pub. There’s an energy and it really holds the more emotive and beautiful moments, when we’re talking about feelings or when we need to go a bit more serious and but there’s a contrast as there’s light and dark, there’s participation, there’s humour as well as really physical dance and these characters taken on the journey with you.
Hayley: That sounds really interesting, What challenges are there?
Rhiannon: The challenges are really on any given night as it might change a little bit because a lot of it relies on how onboard the audience want to get and every audience is different. Depending on who is in the room on each tour date you never really know how the show is going to go to some extent.
Hayley: So it keeps on your toes as well?
Rhiannon: Keeps everyone on their toes yeah, because you know mostly everything is set but when you’re interacting with an audience, a bit like a comedian would have to be prepared as they could say anything and you have to be able to work with that and use it as something which adds to the work.
Hayley: The press release information mentions about how the audience can unload their burdens so how does that happen in the show?
Rhiannon: There are lots of invitations, nobody is forced to do anything that they don’t want to do, in fact we do a bit of a disclaimer at the beginning if you’d rather just sit back and watch you know that’s fine and we have a way of using stickers if you definitely don’t want to have anyone talk to you, that’s OK. It’s about invitations, so in the games that we play we invite people to join in with, the questions we ask some of the characters in the show we also ask those questions to the audience, there’s just lots of different invitations to connect and then I guess it’s up to the audience how much they want to.
Hayley: What discussions do you hope your show promotes?
Rhiannon: I really hope that it helps us talk about how essential it is to connect and how important to is to sometimes be vulnerable and ask for help when you need it. Or if you’re particularly feeling alone that by making a trip to go into the community than that will be of benefit, because there’s a moment in the show where we realise that we’re all the same, we’re all flawed we all have moments of darkness. We all have moments of beauty and it’s just as important to know that and to speak of that to know that sometimes things are really hard because if you just think things are hard for yourself you think what am I doing wrong rather than knowing that actually everybody, even though they might not speak of it, everybody has a day where there’s shadows there for them.
Hayley: Does this resonate with you on a personal level?
Rhiannon: Yeah absolutely, what was interesting with the award stuff is the day that I was dropping my father-in-law at the hospital that morning, he was getting a scan to go into radiotherapy so you’re carrying that and then when I get home, I find I’ve been nominated for an Olivier Award and it’s the contrast. I think for everybody each day can be difficult yet there are also things that are beautiful and unexpected, like nature, like going for walks, the things we are gifted really and I think personally for me I can’t always see that because sometimes because you’re in the fog but I think that the more that we know that it’s okay to walk with your shadow sometimes or it’s okay to feel not okay and then we can take the pressure off. I like the idea of lifting the weight off yourself rather than making yourself feel like you’re not good enough. Speaking of humanity is interesting and I’m learning with each show that I make I learn more about myself in relation to the world and to people.
Hayley: is there anything in this performance that you’re particularly excited about
Rhiannon: I love the show because it’s the first show I’ve had with live music in so whenever I hear India and Paul get their instruments out I fill with excitement. It’s a wonderful cast, they are brilliant, as performers they are all very gifted with their physicality. I love the unknown territory that you step into when there’s audience participation, it’s always a risk and that excites me because it when it works, when it feels the fullest where you can feel people really lean into it, there’s something quite magical and when I was little and thinking about making dance or theatre that was always the dream, to be able to use a piece of art to do something that was maybe a bit otherworldly so yeah I get excited about that and my job all the time.
Hayley: What’s been the biggest surprise with this show?
Rhiannon: It’s funny you should say that, we’ve had a dancer that has been pregnant during the show and we have another dancer that will be pregnant on this leg of the tour so things like that pop up as a bit of a surprise. As a company we embrace that and think it’s really important to have pregnant women in pieces of dance and theatre and working as artists until they don’t want to.
I mean getting the award that’s always a surprise you never go into it thinking that that is going to happen and so being on the red carpet last year at the Olivier’s was a big surprise and it was very exciting. I really leaned into it, I was like what would Lady Gaga do as I’ve never done anything like that before and it was all very thrilling.
Hayley: The Company is described as ‘radically tender dance theatre’, what does that mean?
Rhiannon: I think that us as a company is trying to make work that is radical in its ideas, what it’s trying to do in the world and how it’s trying to change something within people and open things up in the way that we think about. What the possibilities of dance and theatre can be radical in the sense of how you approach making a piece of work because what it could be for society but also tender in the approach, tender in you can say a lot without having to shout sometimes you can be gentle and considerate and compassionate in your approach to doing that and so it’s trying to understand the two.
Hayley: What’s the process creating new choreography?
Rhiannon: We actually do a lot of talking first, we talk a lot about the themes of the show and it might be a piece we’re all interested in, such as the idea of heaviness or weight and then we might take that into the studio and improvise around that and then we might find things that we keep coming back to and repeating in our bodies and that becomes something that we want to set and we create sequence out of that. That’s the composition of the choreography or it might be that we want a scene that’s really energetic and fun and so we think about it needs lifting and it needs lots of energy so we want to make that movement dynamic and fast and exciting. If it’s quite close to the audience that might be a really exciting experience for them to be close to that that type of energy. Sometimes it’s about asking the dancers to think about a feeling and moving their body with that feeling and sometimes we might have a piece of text and we want to make some movement that really sits alongside it, and we want it to be quite small, so I might take the lead and create that section and the dancers will learn it. There’s lots of different approaches.
Hayley: What is it about dance as an art form that particularly appeals to you?
Rhiannon: It’s a way of accessing something emotional, for me it’s the movement that speaks feelings a lot so the things that you can’t say, the things that you hold in your body, the feelings that you have, always in our work we feel first and then we move so we understand where the movement is coming from. Its the way I communicate feelings and ideas. It’s just what I do. I mean it’s just a thing such as if you have that gift to be able to sing that’s how you connect with the world and people, dance is the way that I connect with the world and people because I’m quite a shy person really. I’m a bit of a hermit sometimes and when I have to come out and interact with the world for work then that takes a lot of effort and energy, I enjoy it but I’m also quite an introvert so I think movement really helps me express what I’m thinking.
Hayley: Last off topic question, do you have any special skill outside of dance and theatre that we should know about?
Rhiannon: I’ve never been asked that, I used to play hockey and I was a goal scorer. I used to love playing hockey but I had to stop because I kept injuring myself – I broke my nose, I broke my ankle I and then because I was a choreographer I had to be serious and actually say no I can’t do it anymore but I still dream about it. I was really good at it, I used to play for many teams. It actually makes me sad that I can’t play anymore.
Hayley: With your award nominations I think the change was in the right direction!
Rhiannon: Yeah, yeah maybe I can come back to it later in life – that’s what I’m thinking.
Hayley: Thank you for your time today and I very much look forward to the show.
A widely acclaimed award nominated show that invites its audience to unload their worries and concerns is coming to Harlow Playhouse and Norwich Theatre Royal in March as part of a national tour.
Photo Credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou