Sublime adventure to thrill theatre audiences
After the critical acclaim on their previous visits, the Chicago based performance duo Cupola Bobber are set to make a welcome return to the UK with their latest production, the ridiculously sublime adventure, Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me. The exciting new production will be at The Basement, Brighton on Wednesday 10 November at 7.30pm.
Infused with gentle humour and melba-dry wit, delightfully low-tech invention, and expansive imagination, Cupola Bobber create a vast internal adventure of miniscule proportions as, Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me studies the action of the Sea, both as mythology and as presence, and asks: why is it people are drawn to the Sea?
Performing the destructive magnetism of The Sea using Cupola Bobber’s home-spun minimal aesthetic and poker-faced absurdist charm, whilst channelling both Laurel and Hardy and Gilbert & George, the show builds a remarkably engaging exploration of how the Sea functions as a dwarfing muse of existential contemplation, a place of leisure, and as heartless destroyer. All this is explored through the locations of British Edwardian sea-side resorts and surrounding “work towns”, the disappeared sea-side town of Hallsands, the disappearing town of Dunwich, and 1930’s dust bowl Kansas. Lancaster.
For this new play the duo spent two days walking from Morecambe to Blackpool, discovering in Cleveley’s many parked sea-facing cars, each with one or two people inside. This reminded them of a Sebald quote, “I do not believe that these men sit by the sea all day and all night so as not to miss the time when the whiting pass." They played the OK Corral Shoot-Out arcade game on the pier in Blackpool, they rode the temporary big wheel in Morecambe. They visited the Stan Laurel museum in Ulverston, and stayed at the Stan Laurel pub. They walked across Morecambe Bay with the official Queen’s Guide to the Sands and heard stories about how many things had sunk into that sand over the decades... mail, luggage, people, horses, carts, cars, shoes. They checked out all the Morecambe and Wise books from the Morecambe library. They bought all their DVD’s. They laughed really hard at them. They read all the books in the Lancaster University’s library that mentioned Gilbert and George. They watched the films of Mitchell and Kenyon. They watched the Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West.
Founded in 1999, Cupola Bobber is collaboration between Stephen Fiehn and Tyler B. Myers. They have created four evening length performances by working slowly out of their studio on the west side of Chicago. The company have performed in multiple venues in Chicago, Austin, Portland, and New York, and toured internationally including last in the UK with the acclaimed The Man Who Pictured Space From His Apartment. In 2008 the duo were International Artists in Residence at the Nuffield Theatre Lancaster. Alongside evening-length performances, they have made video, durational performance, and published writing.
Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me is co-produced by the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster.
For more info on Cupola Bobber visit www. www.cupolabobber.com.
Tickets for Way out West, the Sea Whispered Me are available at www.thebasement.uk.com or by calling 01273 699733. Ticket are priced at £8 full, £6 concessions