An new audio theatre piece will be available for your shell-likes at the end of October. Inspired by an epidemic of uncontrollable dancing in the 1500s, Newcastle writer Alison Carr reckons we could all do with a dose of it right now.
We Step Outside and Start to Dance: The team
You know what it’s like, you nip online for five minutes and two hours later you’re lost down an internet rabbit hole.
This happens to me constantly, but it’s not all time wasted as it can yield great fodder for play ideas.
My stage play Hush was inspired by true stories of shoes containing severed feet repeatedly washing up on the shores of Canada and America. My recent audio play Stuff grew from a news article about a hoarder whose vast collections were causing the ceiling of the room underneath to sag.
And so, I was clicking around Google back in July when I came across a story about an outbreak of uncontrollable dancing recorded in France in 1518. Basically, a woman went out in to the street and started to dance. And didn’t stop. Within a month, 400 people had joined her.
As I read on, though, it stopped being something weird from 500 years ago and came into sharp focus. This ‘dancing plague’ has been put down to mass hysteria caused by extreme hardships, stress and fear. Which caused me to ask – if ever there was a time to start dancing, isn’t it now?
I knew immediately that I HAD to do something with this. But how?
Clockwise from top left: Film maker Merlin Mee, Dale Jewitt, Karen Traynor and Sarah Lewis Obuba during rehearsals at Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle
My usual avenues – theatres – were literally closed. But I couldn’t let the idea go, or wait for theatres to reopen (whenever that may be). This was a story for right now. So I decided to write it as an audio piece. This means participants can take part where ever and whenever they like; alone, with their families or bubbles, in-line with whatever restrictions are in force. It also frees them up for dancing. Yes, dancing. Because I knew from the get-go I wanted participants to press play and start to dance.
I got in touch with director Melanie Rashbrooke to invite her on board and we set about making the piece ourselves.
The first step was to apply for funding from Arts Council England. Our application was successful which is handy cos without it this couldn’t have happened, so thank you ACE. We invited people to share their dancing stories with us via a short online questionnaire. We (by which I mean ‘I’) faffed about with the title for a bit, eventually settling on We Step Outside and Start to Dance. We then assembled a crack team of talented North East practitioners and off we went.
Fast forward three months to October. It’s written, it’s rehearsed and we were now at Live Theatre recording the final piece.
We Step Outside and Start to Dance in Newcastle
It’s been a whole new world of risk assessments, health questionnaires, temperature checks, hand sanitising, mask wearing, social distancing and remembering to bring our own mugs and teaspoons cos we can’t share. But that didn’t dampen our spirits, our passion or enthusiasm. I’ll never again take for granted being in a creative space making work. It was a joy and a privilege and I think we all felt quite overwhelmed and emotional at times.
We Step Outside and Start to Dance will be available at www.westarttodance.com from midday on Wednesday 28 October.
It’ll be available as an audio download, and there’s a BSL interpreted and captioned film version also. It’s free, with the option to make a donation if you’re able and would like to.
I’m so proud of all of us who have made something brand new during these challenging times, and I really hope everyone taking part has fun. Cos God knows, we need some fun right now.