A walk along the banks of the Tyne at dusk may already sound like a lovely prospect. But this summer a theatre company are promising to make it a truly Beautiful Journey. Sam Wonfor reports.
EVER wondered what paradise would look like? Would it be a place where hairdressers tell your fortune? Would there be bicycle-powered lights? Would there be somewhere you could see your memories? Would there be a live cabaret band who sing for their supper every night?
The answer to all of the above would be a resounding "yes" if you were looking at a paradisical haven through the eyes of Wildworks theatre director Bill Mitchell and his team of creative creators.
For the past two years, the Wildworks team have been developing The Beautiful Journey – a promenade, open air theatre production poised to transform Davy Bank in Wallsend into the surreal world of Queen Kalypso.
Every night during two weeks in the summer, hundreds of people will enter into Kalypso’s paradise and take in the result of their hard work.
"What we try to do is straddle spectacle and intimacy," says Bill during one of the Cornwall-based company’s’ North East excursions.
"If we went one way, we’d get huge images and awe … and if we went the other way, we’d have very lovely small things without the impact.
"We want that real flavour of fairground … a vibrant community paradise, and the audience are very important to that."
Wildworks is an international company known for creating large-scale theatre events in unusual sites while working with the local communities.
And the company’s work on The Beautiful Journey has been no different. Project manager, and Newcastle-based Natalie Querol, has been the company’s "angel in the north" in recent months, co-ordinating the all-important community contribution to proceedings.
"We’ve been working with a community team and a school team, predominantly in Wallsend. We organised a series of tea parties, which is a lovely device I’d never come across," she explains.
"With the community team we went out and talked to lots of people in Wallsend – in pubs, day centres, in the street … and began to solicit their stories. Then they would come to the party to swap stories …… and we set up a bank of scanners and printers to capture people’s precious memories. People brought in photographs, letters … lots of things.
"Each of the schools we worked in (Bedewell Primary School, Hebburn and Western Community Primary school in Wallsend) also held tea parties and got the children’s older relatives to come in to be interviewed by the children themselves. It’s been a really lovely experience for everyone."
As well as producing a series of artworks the results of the research informed the production.
"It’s these processes which make this show unique to this area," says Bill, "so the production will be different in the North East than it is in the South West," he adds, referring to the Devonport run of the production which closes this Saturday ahead of the journey North.