CLIMBING THE WALLS

Indoor site-specific

The closing scene was inspired and typical of the inventiveness which was consistently displayed.

Red Brick Magasine

It's great to see a piece of work designed specifically for a climbing wall. Watching the scenes in the air instead of on the ground adds a whole new appreciation for performance.

Scott Pritchard, Climber & Audience Member

Souls are like stars, tiny and gigantic, there could easily be nothing, but instead there is everything. How big is the biggest thought you can think?

Climbing The Walls is a site-responsive piece of Physical Theatre involving aerial rope work. Four childhood friends grow up together, experiencing life and all its constraints. A sister desperately trying to hold on to her playful childhood relationship with her brother, whilst he falls in love with a childhood friend. Another, desperate in her search for freedom, views the brother as her liberty and edges in on a relationship that she successfully breaks. Torn between his love and his temptation, the brother must decide whether to take the road that goes up or be happy to remain inside the walls in which they are encapsulated.

Played out on ropes and through the art of rock climbing and bouldering, the piece explores the concept of balance and equilibrium. The balance between the search for freedom and the understanding of something greater, and our sense of will, passion and the world that keeps us trapped. The four are taken on a journey that leaves them exactly where they started, but in turn has changed their world.

The piece itself is humorous and touching, poetic and strikingly visual, a physical theatre performance utilising the attributes of the site to literally contain the piece within walls. Through a combination of physicality, text, song and aerial, it discovers the complicated private lives of four individuals literally ‘Climbing The Walls’.

Funded by Sir Barry Jackson Trust Fund and performed at Creation Climbing Centre, Birmingham and Vertial Limits, Worcester.