How did this project come about?
Alistair
I have three main inter-related interests: alternative approaches to health and healing; education and creativity . The Lucia project offered the opportunity to bring these interests together.
There are two very important aspects built into this project: the question of mental health and a technological approach to Theatre -in-the-Round.
How did you start pulling all these elements together?
Alistair
We have been running Bloomsday Festivals in Rostrevor for the last 7 years hosted by Light Theatre Company and through that I became increasingly interested in the Joyce family and particularly ‘mad’ Lucia, who grew up in their clearly dysfunctional world. And because I have worked in the theatre for most of my life, often with ballet and contemporary dancers where it seems to me that many creative artists generally teeter on the edge between huge talent, brilliance, even genius at times, and mental instability.
It’s the interest in James Joyce and from there the Joyce family that stimulates this project?
Yes, the starting point was the Joyce family. I found out that the daughter of James Joyce, Lucia, was quite a prominent dancer in 1920’s Paris, and then, for whatever reason, spent most of her life in institutions and in therapy. Largely without any real diagnosis, but still undergoing all sorts of terrible treatments and eventually she ended up in consultation with Carl Jung. He was the only person who actually gave her a diagnosis which was, that she was a schizophrenic.
The production crosses genres – it is a play – it is a dance performance – and you are aiming to have it performed using immersive technology?
Alistair
It started out as a play. The Light Theatre Company commissioned a play from Seán Treanor, and it was originally intended as a two hander, a dialogue between Carl Jung and Lucia Joyce. But I was always asking the question, “She was a dancer, so why did she stop dancing?” Quite honestly Iat the outset I had no idea where it was going to go. It just always seemed to me that the project needed a dancer, so I went looking for a dancer – a dancer who was capable of acting.
I think dance by its very nature tells a story and it does that very powerfully, but this story already had text, so I needed someone who could dance and work with the text.
I was in contact with my friend Chrissie Parrott AO , a prominent choreographer in Australia, and she told me about an extraordinary dancer called Talitha Maslin. I had never heard of her so Chrissie sent me videos of Talitha performing on projects they had worked on together.
I contacted Talitha, and we tried to get some funding to allow us to develop this project in Australia, but that, to date, has never happened.
What happens then?
Alistair
Suddenly, I received an email from Talitha saying she was coming to Europe and that she would be working in Berlin and Vienna.
So we started working together. It was a little out of the ordinary in that we were working online but Talitha had access to studios in Berlin and Vienna. So we developed the project remotely with the means that we had available to us.
I didn’t give Talitha the script initially because, effectively, we were starting work on the project as if it was a new project, even though I had already done quite a bit of development with Maeve McGreevy.
To see more of the work of Alistair Livingstone and Talitha Maslin go to the links below
