Wishes for a Better Future
( - )
A performance about nostalgic tourism and contemporary rural life – and the private moments of the people that dream of them.
A Performance project.
- Location
- Touring south west England
There is an elusive, eliding quality about the whole performance… It is an atmospheric, touching, thought provoking piece, a quiet moment of reflection and intimacy. Blind Ditch have a light touch and something to say – a rare and valuable combination.
Barbara Bridger, writer and dramaturg
Wishes for a Better Future investigates the preservation, packaging and sale of our rural landscapes, and the people who desire them. Lost experiences of childhood holidays become a marketable commodity, and the picturesque is presented as a consumable and unaffordable rural dream. Collisions of text and sound fragments, live feed video and super-8 footage transform the set into a suburban sitting room, green hillsides, or a windswept Dartmoor crag. In this dislocated and mediated world populated with tourists, second home-owners, a corporate healer, salespeople and a beloved dog, we witness the unfolding relationship of two office workers who fear where old age will find them.
Meticulously researched and performed… Crisp and delicate live video feed… beautifully worked and understated text.
Paul Goddard, Arts Council England
Devised by Blind Ditch. Performers/devisors Henning Hegland & Cat Radford. Written & directed by Paula Crutchlow. Sound design John Levack Drever. Scenography & video Volkhardt Müller.
Funded by Arts Council England and South Hams District Council. With support from Dartington College of Arts.
- 12th December 2002 Work-in-progress showing, Studio 1, Dartington College of Arts 7pm
- 7th March 2003 Dartington Arts 8pm
- 18th March 2003 Exeter Phoenix
- 2nd May 2003 The Barbican, Plymouth