Hurray for Jack Iredale...and his review of our Hepworth Performance this week...
So as many of you know, we at Yew Tree (excuse the rhyme) were commissioned to do a piece for the new Hepworth art gallery, that big grey building near the church on the water. So we cracked on, and devised some excellent scenes. Rehearsed a few Saturday mornings at Thornes Park and once at The Hepworth, which once you get inside is fantastic. The rooms are just enormous white caverns with windows looking at Wakefield, and filled with nothing, it’s going to be a shame to actually put art in, though the rooms themselves aren’t that… acoustically brilliant.
So it got to the night of the performance. We arrived to get in a quick rehearsal or two before the presentations that kicked off the evening started. Now, we were in separate rooms for our little scenes, kind of like we were the pieces of art for the evening. As such, I don’t really know how the audience reacted to the first 3 scenes beyond the occasional roar of laughter, so I’m assuming they enjoyed them. The pieces were a spectacular look at Hepworth through her own words and those of her critics, a piece of physical theatre designed to provoke more ideas about it that weren’t actually there, and a comedic reviewing of the same piece by 3 people, showing the wide variety of techniques we use at Yew Tree. Considering that the audience had just been told it was a piece of theatre, I don’t think that this was quite what they were expecting. Then again, I don’t think they really did know what to expect.
Of course, the whole performance featured different techniques, such as some talking head style monologues giving different views on art, some comedic and others analytical. Then we got onto what has to be some of the most brilliant scenes we’ve done. The first batch were people commenting pieces of art formed by Yew Tree actors, showing the different ways people interact with art, but moving onto the second gallery we had pieces of art acting with the observers and even themselves, one of the most brilliant ones being dialogue between a piece of renaissance art and modern art.
Right, so that’s a (not so) brief overview of the performance. Talking to some audience members afterwards, I got the impression they really enjoyed it and I really think we’ve opened up Yew Tree to a whole new group of people, and especially after talking to the Director of The Hepworth, it looks like this won’t be the last time we perform at The Hepworth.
So as many of you know, we at Yew Tree (excuse the rhyme) were commissioned to do a piece for the new Hepworth art gallery, that big grey building near the church on the water. So we cracked on, and devised some excellent scenes. Rehearsed a few Saturday mornings at Thornes Park and once at The Hepworth, which once you get inside is fantastic. The rooms are just enormous white caverns with windows looking at Wakefield, and filled with nothing, it’s going to be a shame to actually put art in, though the rooms themselves aren’t that… acoustically brilliant.
So it got to the night of the performance. We arrived to get in a quick rehearsal or two before the presentations that kicked off the evening started. Now, we were in separate rooms for our little scenes, kind of like we were the pieces of art for the evening. As such, I don’t really know how the audience reacted to the first 3 scenes beyond the occasional roar of laughter, so I’m assuming they enjoyed them. The pieces were a spectacular look at Hepworth through her own words and those of her critics, a piece of physical theatre designed to provoke more ideas about it that weren’t actually there, and a comedic reviewing of the same piece by 3 people, showing the wide variety of techniques we use at Yew Tree. Considering that the audience had just been told it was a piece of theatre, I don’t think that this was quite what they were expecting. Then again, I don’t think they really did know what to expect.
Of course, the whole performance featured different techniques, such as some talking head style monologues giving different views on art, some comedic and others analytical. Then we got onto what has to be some of the most brilliant scenes we’ve done. The first batch were people commenting pieces of art formed by Yew Tree actors, showing the different ways people interact with art, but moving onto the second gallery we had pieces of art acting with the observers and even themselves, one of the most brilliant ones being dialogue between a piece of renaissance art and modern art.
Right, so that’s a (not so) brief overview of the performance. Talking to some audience members afterwards, I got the impression they really enjoyed it and I really think we’ve opened up Yew Tree to a whole new group of people, and especially after talking to the Director of The Hepworth, it looks like this won’t be the last time we perform at The Hepworth.
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