Future Sounds
2065 at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, from October 19-20 October. Review by JoON LEWIS
It was a privilege to review the play 2065 from Norwich-based Frozen Light at the North Wall Arts Centre. The company specialises in creating dramas aimed at audiences with severe learning and physical disabilities. It’s a heavily resource-intensive process with very small audience sizes – half a dozen or so especially targeted audience members plus their carers. Frozen Light relies on dozens of charities for support, many based near the tour venues.
Each member of the audience gets special attention from the cast. In one song the cast members sing out audience members’ names so that they immediately feel included in the narrative and invested in the story. The show, directed by Kate O’Connor and created by Lucy Garland and Amber Onat Gregory, encourages audience members to be free to interact however they like. One young woman wanders around the theatre and stage, followed by her carer. She repeatedly taps other audience members on their shoulder. Another woman in a wheelchair, claps her hands happily at the end of each scene, her face a picture of joy.
The story is multi-sensory, with items to listen to, smell, touch and look at. There are consoles to play with, an electric bulb device with forks of light snaking across the glass, pulses and gloop to feel, mobile wind machines blowing a gale at the audience, large sheets of crinkly foil waving, silver snaking tubes writhing. The multi-talented cast play a range of musical instruments, integral to the theme of the show.
The story takes place in a dystopian future that leans on the imagery of Bladerunner or the Divergent movie franchise. The set with a frame of skyscrapers topped off with propagandist commercial neon advertising suggests the urban home for the three young music-loving rebels (Lil Davis, Matt Heslop and Iona Johnson). They live under the radar, green activists, valuing the free speech found in banned books, on the run the authorities, and hiding from drones with missiles out to get them.
The play ends with a display of tinsel and confetti falling from above, the stage a beautiful patchwork of colour.
Life-affirming.
