We are John Long, Ashley Williams, Michael Starr and Henry Avella.
We all love IMPACT Theatre.
John is 50 and has been a member since 2011, Ashley, 33, has been a member since 2006, Henry who is 51 has been with IMPACT since 2004 and Michael who is 58 and has been a member since IMPACT started in 1999.
We are all Artists and Performers and love putting on shows, workshops, exhibitions and other events.
Things have been very difficult over the last two years and Covid-19 has made us change how we do things at IMPACT.
We want to tell you about our Immersive Project that we have been working on for the last two years.
In Art at IMPACT we learn about different artists and their work. In 2019 some of our artists visited the Van Gogh Immersive exhibitions in Paris and York. We were very excited about them and decided it was something we could do at IMPACT.
Looking after our environment is very important to us at IMPACT so we thought this could make a good theme for our exhibition. We did lots of research, including watching films and looking on the internet. We also had a visit from Friends of the Earth. The subject is so big that we decided to narrow our focus to the important issue of plastic in our Oceans.
We watched a TEDtalk by the sculptor Jason De Caries Taylor and he talked about looking after the ocean environment. He creates huge statues that he places on the ocean bed. We decided to create an immersive exhibition and film about Plastic in the Ocean because we want people to realise how serious the problem is and to care about making our oceans clean and safe.
We started work on the exhibition and decided that it would include our music and poetry as well as artwork and dance, to tell a story that would highlight the problem of plastic pollution in the ocean.
Then came the first lockdown!
This did not stop us, and our artists and performers were supported to work at home creating artwork for the exhibition. This would be used to hang on the walls and to make animations and backdrops for our film.
When we could return to IMPACT we developed this artwork digitally using IPads and created large pieces for the exhibition including Mother Nature, Giant sea creatures and a coral reef.
We also created dance pieces working in a socially distance way using a green screen. These became rays, sea creatures, statues and pollution warriors in our film. The soundtrack created by our musicians and poets to accompany the artworks and dance shown on all four walls of our studio theatre has made it an inspirational piece.
The film tells the story of how our ocean is a beautiful place but continuing to pollute it with plastic and rubbish is causing harm to the wildlife, and if we don’t make a change fish, birds and animals will continue to die and the coral reefs will be destroyed.
We called our film ‘Red Rope’. The rope being a plastic rope left in the ocean as part of the rubbish, tangling and choking wildlife but then it becomes part of the solution being used by the pollution warriors to pull the rubbish out of the ocean. The Red rope becomes a symbol of working together and hope.
We wrote in one of our poems:
Red Rope
Symbol of hope
Join as one
Protect our world
Together we are mighty warriors
We dedicated our film to our friend Terry Smith who was also an artist and a dancer in the film. He sadly passed away during the second lockdown and we miss him very much.
We really hope that people will come to IMPACT to see our immersive exhibition.
If you would like to come, you can book tickets at impacttheatre.co
Here is the trailer: