MAKING art without a live audience has become a problem due to the lockdown – but some of the nation’s most exciting emerging voices have designed a solution.
This week, students from the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) will showcase their talents globally through a new digital celebration of bold contemporary performance.
The Propel festival will see experimental and eclectic new works from the Conservatoire’s Contemporary Performance Practice
programme.
From June 2 to 12, live and recorded works which explore and question human connection during the coronavirus pandemic will be premiered over various online platforms.
Students from all four year groups of the degree course have created original and innovative works during lockdown for the festival.
These include a live digital adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to be shared on a Zoom Webinar and an intergenerational choreographic work spread over 60 one-minute films, with dancers aged 60 and above.
Propel also features a panel discussion on making performance in isolation, the internet as a creative space and emerging into an uncertain landscape, as well as artist’s talks, with one on how artists can make a difference to the lives of prisoners across the UK.
Dr Laura Bissell, interim head of Contemporary Performance Practice and lecturer in research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, said: “The definition of contemporary is ‘existing’ or ‘happening now’ and, as a festival of contemporary performance, Propel attempts to examine the way in which we can continue to make new work while in quarantine.
“We are so proud of the artists from all four year groups for their bold and original concepts that they’ve developed during lockdown.
“Propel is a platform to showcase these curious, creative, collaborative and socially engaged artists who are committed to exploring the social function of performance and how it can be an act of community.
“We’re excited about sharing their work with a global audience in our first digital season of Propel.”
Full details about the 10-day long festival can be found online at rcs.ac.uk/propel.
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