Aldeburgh Music

description | participants | visuals

November 2007 and February 2008

Aldeburgh Music offered Wonderful Beast two research and development Residencies at Snape towards the creation of The Dead Moon.

Residency 1: focused on music, learning sea shanties and experimenting with vocal sounds inspired by the reed beds and surroundings of the Maltings, as well as exploring local folk tales and smuggling stories. Out of it emerged the future writer for the show. We spent a session with The East Anglian Traditional Music Trust learning to play jig dolls and to step dance, and another one with a traditional singer and storyteller who later joined the company for the production.

Residency 2: focused on a section of the first draft of the play leading to a work in progress performance in the Peter Pears Recital Room for Friends of the company, funders and the Aldeburgh Music executive team. A set was built and costumes found for a foretaste of what was to come. This residency, though more pressured than the first one, had its own benefits in terms of finding out what worked well, what we should discard, and what the audience felt.