Hope Springs Eternal, Site-specifically with Oranges
VICTORIA KINGHAM
Archer Lodge is one of various lovely, un-reconstituted houses situated within St Leonards and Hastings, designed a couple of hundred years ago to offer well-proportioned and elegant living space. The beauty that houses like this retain is partly because a well-lived, well-loved domestic space invites consideration of everyday social history: of the men, the women, the children, the comings and goings, the births and the deaths, the tragedies and the ceremonies that will have happened in the years between its original construction and now. The multi-disciplinary project, Explore The Arch, turns the use of this space into an art form.
Actor Yasmin Aishah and musician Sam Brown in the heart of the home
So in the performance I Take You Into My Eyes we follow Yasmin Aishah from room to room and she explains that in her family, to share an orange is to share a symbol of unconditional love. She hands out oranges for us to peel and slice. These are roasted during the performance and create an extraordinary perfume, which makes me realise that I have never in my life roasted an orange. She tells us about Hadeel, a Gazan woman with a large family and an even larger extended community that she is determined to keep alive, one way or another. While bombs drop and buildings are destroyed and friends and relatives die, their highly extended and augmented family group move, in Gaza, from one domicile to another and carry on talking, laughing, cooking, sharing. And because of the reach of the internet to all except very remote areas, she can invite people across the globe, like Yasmin, to share her world and contribute to it in any way possible. Somehow they have an electricity supply; somehow they have an internet connection. Within the mass of dross now cascading through the ether, to see a real sharing and an education and an affection which would be impossible without its aid, offers a small glimmer of hope for humanity.
It was a unique experience, moving with the performer, accessible to anyone who was able to manage stairs. But in the context of declining theatre audiences and increasing reliance on sound-bites and glamour, immediacy and sensationalism, it’s a rarefied performance. This is a branch of theatre that should be more widely known. It is simultaneously promenade theatre and site-specific theatre. Now Gail Borrow herself, one of the directors of the Archer Lodge project, has instigated a new genre, Domestic Theatre: one-time productions making use of a rare venue.
I Take You Into My Eyes was performed by Explore The Arch at Archer Lodge, St Leonards, during the first week in January. Details can be found at explorethearch.com. The next issue of Hastings Independent looks at the project itself, its members and its aims, in much more detail. Not to be missed.
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