A wind at my back

When I walk on my local moor at Fala, Midlothian, south east of Edinburgh, I get filled up with space and wind, ease and earth, and a visceral sense of connection to the depth of time. So when, in the autumn of 2015, BREATHE – a bold new arts festival at The Old Church in Hackney – invited me to perform on the theme of AIR for their inaugural programme, I thought immediately of Fala Moor.

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I heard the clattering, snaking skeins of pink-footed geese that fly each autumn from Iceland and eastern Greenland to winter on this unassuming patch of southern Scottish peatbog. And I talked and waved my arms into my computer from my kitchen table about what those birds might have to tell us as human beings … a bit like this:

And from these domestic ramblings and environmental observations, a new show – WIND RESISTANCE – was born.

This site documents my WIND RESISTANCE journey from my kitchen to an intimate church in London where more than thirty pages of sellotaped-together ideas started to cohere into what will be, in the months to come, a run of performances at the Edinburgh International Festival in co-production with Edinburgh’s beautiful Lyceum Theatre.

It’s already been quite a whirlwind.

Sincere thanks at the outset to Rachel Milward and The Old Church team in Hackney and to my friend, dramaturg and writer, Ruth Little for the opening of a door afforded by BREATHE festival in late February 2016. You were the first kind wind at my back.


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