So how, and why did we make Mariana’s Song?

In early 2020, eager to try out some multi-sensory ideas, we spent a week at Northumbria University as we thought ‘let's just get into a space and try some stuff out’. We had no funding at this point, so we took a couple of suitcases of random stuff (literally) just played with what we had. Kay Hepplewhite, our lecturer when we were at uni and lovely friend and advisor to Woven Nest kindly volunteered to pretend to be a resident one afternoon, which really helped but was a weird experience for us all!

Mariana’s Song started with a story, a folk-like tale of a woman who had been rejected by the townspeople in the place she once lived and had instead taken refuge down by the sea where she had fallen in love with the ocean. By the end of the week, we had some ideas for some multi-sensory bedside workshops and how we it might develop into a piece of bedside theatre

Queue global pandemic. Whilst in total lockdown, it was pretty impossible to do anything at all with Marianas Song creatively but as restrictions loosened and we were able to meet outside. So, we traded our usual work places for meeting up at the beach to see if we could continue developing Mariana’s Song in a different way. Like the rest of the country, connecting with nature, and particularly the sea became extremely appealing in the surprisingly good weather we had in the North East, so we started swimming.

Through swimming, we started to explore the environment ourselves and the first period of developing Mariana’s Song was the most wonderful experience we’ve had as artists.

There is something about being a theatre maker that means that you’re conditioned to thinking that being ‘in a room’ is where the magic is going to happen. And don’t get us wrong, we have missed being ‘in the room’ with people desperately over the last year. But for this project, as our aim was to try and bring about a sense of being connected to nature through multi-sensory engagement, it just made so much more sense to be in the natural environment. 

Down at the coast something clicked for us. Why have we been developing tactile, multi-sensory ideas in a basement rehearsal room when we could be developing our ideas in THE tactile, multi-sensory environment that the piece is set? Simultaneously, we realised that while artists can’t go in to care homes, care staff and activity co-ordinators would have an even bigger job of engaging and entertaining residents. 

We started thinking… Could we still create something at a distance that was multi-sensory and beneficial to residents wellbeing while they remained even more isolated and deprived of sensory stimulation than they had been before covid? Could we develop a multi-sensory pack that could easily be picked up and delivered without us there by someone without a theatre/ film background? 

The process of making Mariana’s Song was the most experimental that we have ever been with our practice. There was so much space and time for trying loads of ideas - most of which must have looked very peculiar to passers by. Luckily we don’t embarrass easy. We carried a cheap go-pro like camera around and had a go at filming it ourselves to begin with, because we just wanted to go at our own pace and see what came out.

After a few months of playing and another lockdown passing us by we decided we had to pin something down. We brought the wonderful Dani Giddins on board who is just the best person we could have worked with on this project. She has worked with older people loads and just gets us and what we are about. Then we cast Lucy-Marie Curry as Mariana and filmed on a freezing cold November day.

Since then we have been working with Sunderland Culture to pilot the film and multi-sensory pack in care homes. There is still some development to be done before Marianas Song is widely available for care homes and individuals to buy to use with their residents and loved ones, but we hope by the time it is we’ll have made something that captures some of the joy that comes from taking 10 for the senses of soak up the feelings of being at the sea.