For one week this July, HOME’s Associate Company Quarantine are inviting you into the rehearsal room. Come and observe Quarantine’s unique process of devising performance with and about the people who feature in it.
12 Last Songs is a new performance piece about labour – the work that we do. Taking place over 12 hours, it is part-durational performance, part-exhibition of people. Directed by Richard Gregory – director of What Is the City but the People?, the award-winning opening event of MIF 2017 – it is currently in development in Manchester and due to premiere in Autumn 2021.
12 Last Songs will invite people into the room to demonstrate their skills and to find out who they are. Perhaps a hairdresser cutting hair, a butcher butchering a sheep, a bricklayer building a wall… It will be a space for making, watching, talking. One that brings people together who wouldn’t otherwise meet.
We want to know how the presence of an audience might change the work. And we’re interested in bringing more voices and experiences into the room.
You won’t be watching a run-through, but observing a fragment of a long and active process.
“We start with the people in the room. Our work is made as a product of these relationships that we build with people… We cultivate a willingness to let failure occur, to let it be seen and heard. This seems to set up a public space, between us and those we meet, where interesting conversations can take place. In this somehow open space, change can occur, for us and maybe for the people we meet. There’s something hopeful in that. That’s why we do our work like this.” – Richard Gregory & Renny O’Shea, The BMW Tate Live programme
Open rehearsals
7th-11th July 2021
T2 studio space, HOME, Manchester
Wednesday 7th July: 3pm – 5pm
Thursday 8th July: 3pm – 5pm & 6pm – 8pm
Friday 9th July: 3pm – 5pm & 6pm – 8pm
Saturday 10th July: 11am – 1pm & 3pm – 5pm
Sunday 11th July: 11am – 1pm & 3pm – 5pm