July 10, 2019 by katie
I’ve been interviewed for two excellent podcasts recently. I talk about the origins of the company, our working style, and go into detail about some of our projects.
Have a listen, and subscribe!
TAIT (Talking about immersive theatre) Podcast
(Photo by Gavin Whitner)
July 6, 2018 by katie
We are very pleased to welcome Tricia Coleman to the team, as Producer of A Moment of Madness.
Tricia Coleman is an arts and event producer with a special interest in interactive performance, digital arts practice and new commissions. She is producer for Manchester International Festival (MIF) a biennial arts festival of new commissions; and previously for Abandon Normal Devices (AND), a programme of new approaches to art-making, new cinema and digital culture. Recent projects include: the international tour of virtual reality exhibition Björk Digital by Björk (MIF); Joshua Sofaer’s Workshops in People’s Homes, featuring performative workshops in domestic spaces (AND); and Missing, a game-based interactive theatre experience for young people (with youth charity 42nd Street).
July 23, 2015 by katie
Directed by Katie Day
Text by Clare Duffy
Video by Chris Keenan
Sound by Mark Day
Scenography by Xristina Penna
Card Game Designer Holly Gramazio
Stage management by Xanthe Parker
Creative Technologist David Haylock, Watershed
Producer Thomas Wildish
Identity Design by Sebastian Harding
Scientific Collaborator Professor Debra Skene
Performed by Ali Belbin, Angela Clerkin, Rochi Rampal, Graeme Rose, and Magdalena Tuka
2015 Tour funded by Arts Council England, The Sir Barry Jackson Trust, and our Kickstarter supporters. Supported by Watershed, Theatre in the Mill Bradford, and Birmingham REP. Official 2015 hotel partners: Radisson Blu Birmingham & The Bradford Hotel.
Originally commissioned by Camden People’s Theatre, and funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, Arts Council England, Birmingham City Council and the Sir Barry Jackson Trust, with support from Contact Theatre, CPT and mac.
Our thanks to the creative team and casts who played key roles in developing the original production in 2008.
by katie
An Evaluation Report of Black Tonic, produced in 2009 for the production’s principal funders the Welcome Trust, is available to download. Click here to download the Evaluation Report and Supporting Documents. This information is made available for the purposes of sharing our learning in relation to creating theatre that engages with science.
July 17, 2015 by katie
I was asked to give a presentation about how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign recently, and thought it would be a good opportunity to share some of the learning I’d accumulated through running our Black Tonic 2015 campaign earlier this year, and the research I did that fed into the campaign.
I thought I’d share a PDF of the slides here, so others could take a look too.
July 17, 2014 by katie
Afterlife
R&D Retreat
Monnington House, Herefordshire February 2014
Watch the film documenting the week here
In February 2014 we brought together a small group of artists to develop ideas for a new project ‘Afterlife’ during a residential R&D week in rural Herefordshire.
‘Afterlife’ will be a 3 night residential retreat for 12 participants, where they are supported to select ONE memory from their life so far that would like to live in for eternity, and to receive artistic interpretations of the memory to take home that will act as memory triggers.
Our aim for the R&D week was to creatively interrogate the idea, and explore ways in which we could create this kind of experience for our participantaudience.
The artists all kept a journal during the week to note reflections and insights. Extracts from these are quoted below to help tell the story of the week.
SUNDAY: ARRIVAL
We arrived at night, so none of us had a real sense of where we were, the look of the land nearby, if there were any houses, animals, etc… All this was unveiled the next morning. Having a secret location where participants arrive by cabs at night, might help with the sense of being retreated or in another dimension.
MONDAY : INTRODUCTORY EXERCISE: MAKING & WALKING A LABYRINTH
Every Monday should be labyrinth day! This was our first activity and one that I’ll keep in my mind forever.
The Labyrinth for me was a very apt introduction to what we are exploring. The group got together pretty fast and devised a way to make the shape of the Labyrinth collectively. The way these group dynamics worked contributed, I found, to the overall experience. The participation of everyone in the making of a common “game” with specific rules, and then the experience of walking the Labyrinth, helped me enter the right state of mind for thinking about the memories I would visit, and for sharing the space with the rest of the group.
TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY: CREATIVE EXERCISES TO SURFACE & REFINE MEMORIES
We tried out a variety of creative techniques to find ways to unlock our memories, using smells, music, meditation, writing exercises, and visual prompt cards.
I like the more tangential sessions, approaching memory less directly: so, meditation and images are good and fruitful, the ‘think of a happy memory’ questions less so.
One writing exercise was based on our five senses: smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. What I found surprising was that every single sense brought completely different memories to the ones I had over the week. Five brand new memories.
Next we experimented with ways to get inside the memory and flesh it out, using drawing and writing exercises, and describing the environment of the memory to camera, then watching the films back.
Feelings and emotions are a key to this retreat. As a participant I was asked to delve into my past memories and pick one. This process, apart from bringing back these memories as images, brought up feelings and emotions. In some cases more intense than others.
THURSDAY: CREATION OF IMMERSIVE MEMORY EXPERIENCES & CREATIVE MEMORY TRIGGERS
We created immersive re-enactments of two artists’ selected memories, and sought theirs and each others’ feedback on these.
Members of the team also created artistic interpretations of the two memories that would act as memory triggers: a haiku, a short piece of prose, a design for a trinket, a short film, an audio clip.
What worked for me was the interaction with other people’s memories.
The act of making the memory is a form of mythmaking. This has the power to make the participants feel like they really are the heroes of their stories if only momentarily.
We learned that the immersive experience is a powerful thing and valuable. It creates a new memory, linked to the original one.
Seeing her reaction [to the immersive reenactment of her memory] made me a little emotional, but in a very positive way as I felt we’d nailed her memory recall experience. I felt proud of our work as a team and could imagine the sense of achievement we’d get from helping other people to relive their memories and experiences.
Presentation to each other of artistic interpretations of our memories: micro films, creative writing, and designs for trinkets.
Creating something symbolic/impressionistic is more effective than something realistic. Also fragments are more successful as they allow room for the imagination. A sequence of fragments works well.
The team produced some beautiful things and experiences: films, immersive sensory experiences, poems, creative prose, designs for bespoke objects (drawings), tastes etc.
We found that the ‘metaphor’ of the memory is really helpful for creating the artistic memory triggers.
FRIDAY: A FINAL WALK & DEPARTURE
The difference with the sort of performance approach we have is that it puts the audience at the centre of the performance experience. The participants become directors of their own memories.
Artists:
Katie Day | Mark Day | Chris Keenan | Jorge Lizalde | Katherine MaxwellCook | Xristina Penna | Louise Platt
Producer: Thomas Wildish
Director: Katie Day
Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England
by katie
A design fiction film providing an example of what could be created by our automated ‘Protagonist’ service.
The Team:
Katie Day is Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, a theatre company based in Birmingham.
Dr John Troyer is Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.
Concept & Content Selection: Katie Day
Example User: Hannah Nicklin
Animation & Video Production: Hazel O’Brien
Music: Mark Day
Protagonist
A software engine to automatically create a video life story from an individual’s social media content, ‘This is You’ is a practical attempt to make sense of our vast stashes of personal data in a human, emotional and narrative way.
‘Protagonist’ is a REACT Strategic Projects Feasibility Study
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), REACT (Research and Enterprise in Arts and Creative Technology) is one of four UK Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy and is a collaboration between UWE Bristol (the University of the West of England), Watershed and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter.
About the team:
Katie Day is Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, who create daring and remarkable theatre drawing the audience into the very heart of the experience. We recently produced Bandstand, a collection of audio performances for Bandstands delivered via a location-aware smartphone app. Katie Day produced Theatre Sandbox for Watershed in 2010, and brings that experience of developing theatre and technology projects to her own work on this project. “The Other Way Works is a dynamic young company that is successfully exploring the possibilities of what theatre can and might be” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Dr John Troyer is Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, concepts of space and place, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe.
July 31, 2013 by katie
Our Launch events were blessed with sunny afternoons, and we had a great turnout at both. Here are the lovely things people wrote in our comments book after they’d listened to the audios.
Bandstand Audience comments in Guest book
West Park Wolverhampton
Wednesday 10th July 2013
A very enjoyable experience!
Absolute delight. Enchanting performance that had you oblivious to the other happenings in the park. Thank you.
A lovely experience, thanks
An enchanting experience, bringing a historic park feature to life!
My friend and I listened to the man/woman stories which created a sense of tension, unease and finally was very moving and affecting. The first experience of this kind I have taken part it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
A delightful interlude in my day.
A lovely story. I much preferred the woman’s story to the man’s as I thought it was more complex and interesting.
Really enjoyed this in beautiful sunshine. Something very moving and thoughtful about the ‘voice experience’. Lovely! Thank you.
Transported to another world. Dreamlike experience. Excellent.
Totally absorbed in the story.
Lightwoods Park, Bearwood
Thursday 11th July 2013
This was so lovely. Will come back again and bring friends too. Excellent!
Amazing! Shame it finished too soon – gripping stories! A great afternoon and my second visit to this park.
I really enjoyed it. It’s excellent. It made the whole park into a kind of set, like a piece of art that was part of the play. Interesting doing the moves – becoming the characters for a moment. Loved the music and blend of different voices. Interesting watching the kids gliding on their bikes right next to where the ice rink was set. Great job!
Intrigued by the play of ‘fact’ and fiction. Sense of different landscapes – real, imagined, absent, hypothetical. Also enjoyed the threads of narrative and collisions with space/time eg frozen ice, broken slats round the bandstand.
Congratulations to all involved. A really enjoyable experience on a beautiful sunny afternoon. I liked the variety of characters and how the narrative unfolded, the integration of local knowledge and history really placed the work in the setting. Nice to be invited to move around and engage with the environment, help to keep you engaged. Will look out for more!
I thought it was great but I didn’t like listening to myself but I loved it I’m gonna come again! MAKE MORE!!
Superb experience, fantastic site-specific audio. Thoroughly absorbing. Enjoyed the natural backgrounds, sounds and rhythms. More please.
Beautifully layered and transporting. Really enjoyed it and impressed how all the voices are sewn together. Will recommend to others! Thank you!
July 24, 2013 by katie
Devised by Katie Day, Katherine Maxwell-Cook, Jane Packman and Louise Platt.
Music composed by Nuri Fontanals-Simmons.
Performed by Katie Day, Holly Denoon, Katherine Maxwell-Cook and Jane Packman
