Details

In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk... i-witness is a new show inspired by the writings of W.G. Sebald. Ten years after the publication in English of The Rings of Saturn, Volcano invites you on an extraordinary journey in the writer's footsteps. Although his actual journey covers only one small corner of England, the book is an adventure of memory and association that reaches across the globe and through hundreds of years of history. Every place and every object leads somewhere else, from crumbling English seaside resorts to the Belgian Congo or the silk houses of a Chinese Empress. But the exotic charm of these journeys is always unsettled by some epic brutality just around the corner or below the surface, with the strange effect that this detached and scholarly prose rages with violence on every page. The show is not just about walking, or Suffolk, or what Europeans did in the Congo. It is also about connections and traces, and finding beauty under the ever-present threat of destruction. i-witness is an intimate, up-close experience that uses video, dance and the sheer emotional power of live performance to lead the audience through strange landscapes, following their clues, signs and connections. It is brutal, meditative and darkly funny theatre that explores what it means to live in a world full of the echoes and whisperings of the past.