National Theatre Wales
Branches: Wepre Forest
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Branches: The Nature of Crisis is a site-specific performance created in Wepre Forest, Flintshire by choreographer Constanza Macras for National Theatre Wales. The full performance involved a three-hour walk through the woods, but on September 15th the actors stayed behind to create a new shorter ‘remix’ which was beamed to the centre of Cardiff and streamed on The Space.
Branches has an overall theme of ‘transformation’ – the ways in which any of us can suddenly change – through stress, through having too much to drink or through magic. The cast includes dancers from Macras’s Berlin-based company Dorky Park, alongside Welsh performers. Among the characters, we see a hen party lost in the woods.
The show was beamed to St Mary Street, Cardiff, site of many nightly hen parties, and famous for groups of revelers wearing fancy dress for their nights out. On a huge billboard among the partying crowds, images from the forest were projected and the characters from Branches joined their counterparts in Cardiff. You can switch from the forest stream to the Cardiff stream by clicking on the thumbnails under the player.
Audience and passers-by were encouraged to interact with the forest livestream via text message – writing their own version of the story to appear alongside the images on the huge screen.
Part of the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad.
To find out more about the production, visit the National Theatre Wales website, or follow @ntwtweets and #ntw22 on Twitter.