Download Melanie Wilson - Landscape II Interview

Melanie Wilson answers some questions about her new work Landscape II
1. What is the genesis of your new work, Landscape II?
I was interested in working with film and projection in my new show and how the use of film
could combine with sound and language to create an intimate and revealing portrait of
three women’s shared experiences. The work continues my interest in female subjectivity
and explores the meaning and significance of female inheritance through generations.
between children, mothers and grandmothers.
2. How would you describe what Melanie Wilson makes?
I try to make work that moves an audience deeply and makes it think but tries to do this
with delicacy and wit. I make worlds in which an audience can become immersed in and be
transported by and try to do this with closely woven strands of sound, language and live
performance. It is a very pure and direct sort of theatre and leaves the audience room
enough to think for themselves without ever loosing the connection between them and the
subject matter.
3. How did you get into making this kind of work?
I have a great passion for the theatre as a listening, thinking space and I use poetic text and
sound to do this. I have always been interested in music and wrote and read a great deal
when I was small and growing up. These early interests were brought into focus at Central
School of Speech and Drama, where I did the MA in Advanced Theatre Practise and in the
years after were forged into the particular artistic practise I have through key collaborations
with other artists.
4. What is Landscape II about?
It is about the power of solitude on women’s identity. It is about the connections that exists
or are prevented between women by their experiences in the world. It is about how
Landscape shapes our place in the world for good and bad. It is about freedom, resilience
and bravery.
5. Why is the show called Landscape II?
Firstly, because the two main characters are situated in the same landscape, a century apart.
Secondly, because photography and portraiture and the attendant themes of looking and
being looked at are a key feature of the form of the performance.
6. How did you become interested in the stories of these three women and across
generations?
The story of it was something that came to me whilst spending time in the location of North
Devon. I was prompted to include the experience of the thitd character, an Afghan woman,
by news events at the time I was writing the piece.
7. What research did you undertake, if any?
I researched war photography and photographers on the internet and read widely around
the political subject matter.
8. Does Landscape II draw on real life experiences?
It draws upon the real experiences of women in Afghanistan, but these have also been
fictionalized to an extent.
9. If you had to describe the show in a sentence what would that be?
A highly crafted and moving poem of celebration to the complexity, resilience and
intelligence of women.
10. One of the women who features in Landscape II is from Afghanistan. What drew
you to this character and this country in particular?
News events that occurred around the time of writing. I began to think about the
responsibility that I had as a woman and an artist to think about other women’s experiences
and consider them. Even if that meant accepting that these might always be irreconciable
and mysterious differences.
11. There is much work that doesn't conform to theatre, dance or performance
structures. Do you think this haziness alienates audiences?
Work that incorporates multiple art forms should not be labelled hazy. Opera for example is
a meeting of music, theatre and dance and no one is in any doubt as to what that
constitutes. Audiences should be given the chance to discover truly for themselves whether
there is something for them to connect with in new work. Taste is the right of all audiences
to discover for themselves.
For more information visit www.melaniewilson.org.uk or www.fueltheatre.com