Choreographer Rhiannon Faith talks about the new work of dance theatre her company is bringing to Birmingham’s Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) next month...  

Can you explain the storyline that unfolds in Drowntown, Rhiannon?

The show mirrors our current world crisis, our experiences of isolation and loneliness, and our future of social-economical uncertainty. We meet six strangers, who come to the beach alone, deep in their own personal pain. When they realise they can’t leave, and that the lifeguard has left them to fend for themselves, we visit their inner spaces of suffering. There are glimpses of connectedness and support, and we see if hope can pull them together, or is it just too late…? 

What are the overriding themes of the show?

Drowntown is about brokenness within ourselves and our communities. On a beach, six strangers explore a societal sickness, where some of the symptoms are loneliness, isolation and shame. The show unravels the lives of people who are broken, searching for something or someone to save them.

What inspired you to want to create a show exploring this subject matter?  

When I see something unfair or unjust happening to marginalised groups, I want to speak up about it, bring it to people’s attention, so that it’s something we think about. We are then able to make a choice about how we want to move forward and change it. The work zooms in on the profound neglect of members of our community via the insidious construction of wealth and power. I want to dismantle barriers of shame and disgrace, and the work tackles these issues.

Have you found it emotionally challenging to work with these themes?

Yes, it’s a difficult show; it’s dark and enduring. Both making the work and seeing how it impacts audiences has been an emotional experience. The work resonates because it rips the plaster off and looks right at the wound itself. The work is autobiographical, and so the performers are sharing wounded parts of themselves. But with time, wounds heal - and it’s the healing, a moment of tenderness or compassion from a stranger, that pulls them and us through. 

Can you explain the importance of the seaside setting in terms of the show?

The seaside holds so much. It’s a place of calm, beauty, meditation, relaxation, but it’s also a place where people drown or go to die. It’s total light and total darkness. That’s what Drowntown is about: the heavy shadows in our lives, but also the will to find a moral compass and make things better. I started with a quote - “There’s a sickness aboard the land” (Scott Peck) - and we began researching nautical phrases like ‘feeling overwhelmed’ and ‘can’t keep your head above water’ that slip into our everyday descriptions of emotional experiences, and which fed into the work. We had residencies to make the work in Jaywalk, Clacton-on-Sea and Great Yarmouth - all highly stigmatised, where the communities are working with great levels of poverty and deprivation, where all the people we met were kind and welcoming. It felt like the right setting to speak about the human condition.

Can a show like Drowntown effect change?

I think a true inner experience can change us and therefore effect change. Drowntown is an invitation to think about how we look at one another, and to make a decision to look softly, without judgement.  

You made a 15-minute lockdown film connected to the show: Drowntown Lockdown. What did you aim to achieve with the film? 

The film was a digital prologue of the stage show, that we made in five days during the lockdown. It offers a window into the emotional lives of the characters who will eventually find themselves on the beach at the beginning of the Drowntown stage show.  Created to keep the team together and to sustain the dynamic of the powerful emotions involved in the piece, the film aims to offer just a small glimpse of the characters’ worlds.  It was made to recognise and respond to vulnerable members of the community with care, and to encourage us to encounter one another with openness and love.

Career-wise, what initially inspired you, and what’s been your driving force along the way? 

At the start, I think I just felt like ideas and feelings made sense to me much more when I saw them in a show. When I learned how to make that my language, I then needed to figure out what I wanted to say. My family influence me loads. They have always fought for human rights, as teachers, union leaders, lawyers, care workers. To be honest, the constant in all my work is love. I know how that might sound, but actually I think it’s brave to say. I make work about the human experience, and at the heart of that, the most essential thing that we truly know and we truly need, is love; to give it and to receive it.  If we live without it by no choice of our own, that’s where pain begins. Life can be really hard. I care about people and believe that by helping one another, things become easier. I guess that’s what is driving me right now.

What ambitions do you have for the future, Rhiannon?

I would really like to make a mainstage show.  I already have it in my head, I just need everything else to catch up. Rhiannon Faith Company has just become an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, so I’m really looking forward to the exciting projects we have planned, both touring and with our Harlow communities - Rhiannon Faith Company is based at Harlow Playhouse.  Oh, and an ethical revolution...

Rhiannon Faith Company’s Drowntown shows at Birmingham’s Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) on Wednesday 3 May.