BLUETS

ATTENBOROUGH CENTRE FOR THE CREATIVE ARTS

DECEMBER 2016

'Radical in a Quite Unexpected and Exciting Way.' 

Created by Lisa Peck and students from the University of Sussex Final Year, Bluets explored Maggie Nelson’s text to create a series of theatrical ‘storage units’ or ‘construction stations’ – constructions of light, image, movement, sound and character. These took the form of a series of duets, where examining the distance between became a preoccupation. 

What kind of madness is it to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back? 

In the process to translate Bluets for stage the company looked for patterns in these fragments, whilst staying true to the order of the original text. Ripples of repeated dualisms emerged – light/dark, pain/pleasure, hope/despair, seeing/not seeing – which informed the way the work was staged . 

The process involved research into the science of colour, vision and memory. In particular the ways that developments in neuroscience help to understand links between perception, emotion and experience. 

At different points during the project, the company all found themselves obsessed, repelled, bleached out and subsumed by blue.