WEDDINGS PROJECT- 2013
As part of a larger project exploring Systems and Ceremonies we were investigating Weddings as social ritual in community settings.
We began in 2013 with a residency at The Albert, a meantime project run by What If collective, artists inhabiting empty council spaces in Kilburn to stimulate communities.
We worked with a diverse group of volunteers to find choreographic structures around the shared subject of weddings. We created a fictitious wedding event as a performance called 'The Ottis Redding'
The Ottis Redding- a show about weddings
video credit:Tony Wadham
Our idea is to take the social ritual of weddings as a recognisable container for heightened and significant sites of social activity, choreographed action and drama. We see the Wedding as a celebration where particular rules and behaviours are heightened, where people have urges to perform themselves in very specific ways and where strong emotions are often called into play. Our aim is to create an event that is highly choreographed and performed but that is also a social situation, a fictional wedding where the audience and performer roles are blurred and participation as a performer is implicit and unforced. Ultimately we hope for this to be transformative and almost shamanic for the people involved, with ideas around fertility, mating rituals, drunkenness, love, romance, neurosis, competition, and family tensions explored in distinct and contemporary ways.
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