MCH | BLANK

Official website for Mark C. Hewitt & Blank Productions

Snow Q
Collaborative installation project
December 2018


Text by Maria Jastrzębska
Music (for solo viola) by Peter Copley
performed by Ellie Blackshaw
Tactile visuals: Dagmara Rudkin
Digital visuals: Wendy Pye
Text performances by Rita Suszek
directed by Mark C. Hewitt

Sound design: Simon Yapp

Blogsite:
snowqproject.wordpress.com
See the documentary video »

R&D of a multimedia/performance installation in the basement annexe of The Regency Town House, Brighton. Each collaborating artist reimagined aspects of the story of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen to explore contemporary themes of social isolation, gender, sexuality, migration and exile. The work was presented on one day only, the Winter Solstice 2018.

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Audience feedback from the installation:
• "... all the elements of the installation came together beautifully. Maria's wonderful poetry was complemented by an array of stunning videos, artworks and musical pieces."
• "... wonderful interplay between images and sounds... The venue for this was perfect, emphasising the weirdness of it all. Serious congratulations to this team of creative artists and engineers for coordinating such a many-layered experience. It just asks to be repeated!"
• "Very moving - it spoke so eloquently of the lost and lonely and the endless search."
• "Beautiful and mysterious - the fluttering birds in the end cupboard broke my heart."
• "Great and dark evocative music … beautifully played."
• "Spellbinding and strikingly original, a perfectly odd and beautiful representation. Deconstructed, yet coherent and engaging – a multi-modal formula to explore further. Where and what next?? Six out of five stars!"

An additional sharing of
Maria Jastrzębska's experimental text, performed by actress Rita Suszek, was hosted by Lewes Live Literature at the company's rehearsal space in Lewes, Sussex.
Audience feedback:
• "It addressed urgent issues in a poetic playful mode. It made me dream and think."
• "I found the experimental movement in and out of Polish and English really unexpectedly exciting, producing a state of wonderment ..."
• "I didn’t always know what was going on but it drew me in enough that I didn’t want to leave."
• "The poetry was powerful, the music was moving, the acting was splendid."

In January/February 2020, this text was separately developed as a touring
live literature production, performed by Rita Suszek and Maria Ziołkowska, directed by Mark C. Hewitt. A series of filmpoems made alongside this production can be seen on the Snow Q blogsite.

SNOWQinstallation4
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