Date: 23/03/2013
This site-specific spoken word and performance event at Preston Bus Station was developed out of a mentoring opportunity offered to TEC through ‘Northern Elements’, an ACE funded Northern spoken word development project delivered by ARC Stockton.
Curating the event around themes of the afterlife, mortality, and journeys, in order to celebrate the building and to raise comment on its potential imminent destruction (it was then under threat), TEC transformed the Bus Station into the backdrop for London writer and director Phil Ormrod’s new work ‘An Hour Before the End of the World’
This performance was supported by two spoken word pieces, ‘Bodies’ by Manchester’s Shamshad Khan and ‘ Choose Your Own Apocalypse’, a playful participatory piece by Preston/Manchester author David Hartley. The evening opened with Tyneside’s edgy Noize Choir ensemble with a ten minute experimental ‘human-voice-as-instrument’ piece, especially created for the acoustics of the Preston landmark.
The evening was woven together by a tour guide MC Brad Bromley adding his own tale to the mix, with a trio of cast from Preston Youth Theatre, who together transported the audience through the Bus Station on their ‘Journey to the End of the World.’
Due to the acoustics of a working Bus Station, audience members had an intimate experience listening to the pieces amplified through headphones. The performances intermingled with the real time sights and sounds of a normal working station; unexpecting people stumbled upon the work and followed; the audience were subsumed by the intimate experience with spoken word within the echoing, vast environment of the Bus Station.
Journey’s aim: To celebrate the place, the people who use it, and encourage the audience to think differently about the space.
Video work by alison
“Brilliant use of the building and the connections folk have with it. Loved the headphones – isolating but also amplifying the background noise of the building. Fantastic performers and some very touching prose”
Jenn
Sarah Jasmon’s with David Hartley - Interview