With Sally Pomme Clayton, Panos Ghikas & Fotios Begklis
Thursday 17th September, 7.30
Northern Stage, Barras Bridge
Newcastle upon Tyne
A séance of live sounds, images, stories – summoning ghosts.
“I’d heard my Grandfather’s stories of spirits many times,but they were so strange, I was never sure if I’d really heard them, exaggerated them, or invented them myself.”
Performance storyteller Sally Pomme Clayton grew up hearing stories of spirits, the stories haunted her, until she brought them back to life.
In Night Visit she tells her family’s ghost stories, interweaving her live voice with recordings of her grandfather. She traces the cultural history of spiritualism, from the 1800’s when science and photography tried to capture the invisible, to its gradual rise during the mass bereavement of two World wars. Exploration of the supernatural is entwined with dreams and biography, history and myth. The search for evidence is contrasted with the biography of 18th century mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg. His dazzling visions and daring ideas are conjured in poetic fragments, as he travels through the cosmos in search of truth.
Night Visit is a collaboration with composer and improviser Panos Ghikas, and digital artist Fotios Begklis. The performance uses digital technology in beautiful, delicate and strange ways. Image and sound combine to create an immersive aural and visual world for the stories, suggesting fleeting presences, invoking multiple perspectives, triggering memories. Vibrant, dark and sometimes disorientating quadraphonic sound surrounds the audience. Panos Ghikas combines pre-composed material with live improvisation on acoustic and electronic instruments. Luminous film and photographs have been created by Fotios Begklis and are manipulated live during the performance.
This is experimental, daring storytelling. Travel through the night, encounter spirits, visit heaven and hell, voyage beyond death – as sound and speech fracture and fuse, narrative and noise cut-up and coalesce. Night Visit summons a world of sound, séance, spoken word, image, and voices from the past. Night Visit lasts approximately 75 mins straight through, with no interval.
“Night Visit – a mesmerizing performance.”
Ljungby Festival, Sweden
“Sally Pomme Clayton awakens the audience’s imagination”
The Independent
£9 / £7 concessions
available from Northern Stage