A creative intervention into experimental and contemporary performance, designed specifically for families.
The Describers sees a collective of young people (aged 6-16) live narrate a performance as it unfolds onstage for an audience who listens through open ear headphones. The work is designed to be paired with highly visual and non-text based contemporary productions. Multiple productions can be described across a season or festival.
At each location, the team work with an ensemble of 4-8 children who, in the lead up to the presentation, undergo aesthetic education and partake in an embodied practice workshops from a partner production. The first time the children witness the works they are describing is in real time during the performance itself. The children’s descriptions might be profoundly perceptive, poetic, hilarious, surprising or completely unexpected.
The experience is designed specifically for intergenerational audiences, enabling adults and children to encounter contemporary performance alongside one another while experiencing the work through different perspectives.
The Describers offers a simple but radical proposition: contemporary performance can be transformed when children are not simply invited into the audience, but given the opportunity to shape how the work is seen, heard and understood.
