Audiences were taken on a memorable journey when they checked in this week for Exit Souls: The Drama Festival, the latest end of year performance event showcasing undergraduate work from the Drama Studies course at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
Arriving in DMU’s Hugh Aston court yard, festival visitors were invited to join in a fun performance called Pop Up & Move On, given by third year Live Art students April Cernushi, Tasmin Coleman, Hannah Gorzelak and Bradley Mullen (pictured below).
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They were then directed into the PACE foyer for refreshments and some live music from students Madeleine Kerslake, Matt Smith and Lilli Wright. Then it was through to PACE 1 for the ‘Sit-down Show,’ stage managed by Tom Fisher and featuring:
• Set Aside – Acting, Scripting and Directing by first year students Charlotte Batey, Stacey Brown, Abigail Colebrook, Charlotte Perrot and Charly Spirling. The piece, based on David Hare’s The Permanent Way, explored the effects of privatisation of the railways in Britain in the late 1990s/early 2000s
• Ring Road – An interactive solo performance exploring memory, devised and presented by second year student Matt Smith
• Corruption – A look at how technology is swamping daily life, numbing our emotions and undermining our identities, from second year students Jake Brown, Amy Grimes, Emilee Harris, Chelsea Oliver, Lily Shaw-Morris and Hannah Spencer
• The Whiteboard – A playful piece devised and performed by second year students Amy Keeble, Matt Smith, Megan Ullah and Lilli Wright.
Passengers were then taken up to a darkly-lit PACE 2 and two stunning pieces of Live Art, starting with Suburban Frontiers: Semi-Detached. Here, two figures (played by third year students Michelle Haggerty-Wood and Madeleine Kerslake), their faces distorted beneath tights pulled over their heads, warped human form, gender, behaviour and relationships into a new and troubling dimension.
The final piece, Violet, Persephone, Marina and Me, showcased an intense, disturbing but beautiful solo performance given by Nicky Daniels (pictured below), another final year DMU student. Showing supreme control, Nicky gave life to a slow motion ballet expressing the performer’s desires and fears concerning motherhood.
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Those on board the latest Exit Souls adventure included a number of DMU Drama graduates, revisiting a festival that gave them their first opportunities to present their work to a wider audience.
Adam Gough, for example, won a VC’s Distinguished Student Award in his final year, last year, for his dissertation on Live Art and Shakespeare. He’s now working as a solo live artist and is part of the Young Arts Entrepreneur programme at Leicester’s Curve.
“Live Art is the most rule-breaking form of all performance, where the artist pushes physical and mental boundaries to challenge the audience to really question what they’ve just seen, often tackling big issues around gender, politics and the environment, for example,” he said as he waited for Exit Souls 2015 to get under way.
Kirsty Mealing and Jennifer Smith have established their own theatre company, Scufflebox, since graduating in Drama Studies at DMU, in 2013. Still based in Leicester and preparing to put on a 50-minute version of Hamlet at St Martin’s Coffee Shop, next month, as part of the Story City festival, the proud alumni were keen to return to Exit Souls for yet another year.
“We’re very curious to see what today’s students are up to and to check out the latest local drama talent,” said Jennifer.
Rob Brannen, DMU’s Head of School of Arts, was part of the latest Exit Souls tour party:
“Tonight showed the breadth of work being created at DMU and Exit Souls continues to show the shifts happening in contemporary performance from year to year,” he said.
“The festival is an excellent showcase opportunity for our students at the end of the academic year, giving them the chance to test their work in front of the general public.”
Posted on Friday 5 June 2015