show-gravity hotel 1
GRAVITY HOTEL 1
Malérargues, France | 2008
Gravity Hotel was an original multidisciplinary two-hander written and performed by Sally Stockwell, with composer, musician and performer Nigel Collins.
In 2008, with support from Creative New Zealand, Sally and Nigel travelled from Aotearoa New Zealand to the Roy Hart International Arts Centre in Malérargues, southern France, for a six-week residency. Over five weeks they developed the work with theatre director and long-time mentor Enrique Pardo, culminating in four performances as part of the centre’s summer Voice & Myth Festival.
Grace Cash
The work grew from the story of Sally’s great-grandmother Grace Cash, who left her husband and eloped with her lover Walter, staging a drowning before eventually making a new life in New Zealand.
In Gravity Hotel, a woman wakes dripping wet, as though she has swum through the sea. Looking for Walter, she instead finds herself trapped inside a dilapidated hotel populated by a shifting collection of characters, each revealing another facet of her inner world.
Live music, songs, physical performance and image-based theatre combine with suspended doors, ladders, frames, shadows and silhouettes to create a strange journey through memory, identity and story.
Making Gravity Hotel in Malérargues
Sally and Nigel travelled from New Zealand with costumes, props and musical equipment, including an old suitcase, wedding dress, shoes, telephone, electric guitar and Nigel’s computer-based music setup.
The work was rehearsed and performed in the centre’s old stone Orangerie, once used to shelter orange trees through winter. The space itself became part of the production. Old doors, picture frames, ladders and found pieces of furniture were suspended, shifted and repurposed to create the world of the hotel, with platforms built into the stone architecture and minimal lighting used to create shadows and silhouettes.
Music and song threaded through the work, with both performers singing. Nigel created and performed the live score, while also appearing as many of the hotel’s inhabitants.
Watch Gravity Hotel
Gravity Hotel, Malérargues, France, 2008
Vintage performance footage from the original production, with English subtitles.
Credits
Written and created by: Sally Stockwell
Performed by: Sally Stockwell and Nigel Collins
Music composed and performed by: Nigel Collins
Development / direction: Enrique Pardo
Director’s assistant / filming: Sarmen Almond
Developed at: Roy Hart International Arts Centre, Malérargues, France
Supported by: Creative New Zealand
For more about Sally’s work in the Roy Hart voice tradition, including her study with Enrique Pardo, see ‘Roy Hart Voice Work’ at her Vocal Pathways website.
