After a wholly online edition in 2021, the London International Mime Festival 2022 is back ‘large and live’. Dorothy Max Prior talks to the Festival’s co-directors, Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan

It’s the week before Christmas, and there’s talk – once again – of possible lockdowns to slow the spread of Covid-19, perhaps pre- but more likely post-Christmas. There’s speculation, as new variant Omicron tears through the country, that theatres and other venues may once again be closed. Those putting on shows over the winter holiday season are biting their nails to the quick, hoping they can get through the run. Can we really still be in this situation after a calamitous 18 months of dashed hopes and lost revenue?

Meanwhile, the directors of the London International Mime Festival, Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan, are sitting tight. LIMF 2022 opens on 12 January. After going online for the 2021 edition, the festival is back ‘large and live’ in 2022, featuring 14 productions, and putting British work centre-stage. At least, that’s the plan.

‘We travel in hope,’ says Helen when I speak to them (on Zoom, inevitably). Helen and Joseph are both quietly optimistic that things will work out, but take the philosophical stance that ‘what will be, will be’. 

So, just how did they go about programming a live festival in the current climate? This can’t have been easy in these uncertain times! 

Helen takes us back to the height of the first wave of the pandemic, in 2020:

‘When it become obvious we couldn’t plan a live festival for 2021 and had to go digital, we decided to commission work from a number of British artists for the 2022 edition,’ she says. ‘It was clear, back then, that things weren’t just suddenly going to ping back to normal and be fine for 2022…’ 

Even before the onset of the pandemic, planning anything international had become something of a nightmare due to Brexit and the subsequent difficulties with visas, tax, carnets…  Hindered not helped by what Helen refers to as ‘our retro-fit government’. 

‘So little was in place, just weeks before Brexit,’ she says, ‘nobody was thinking ahead, nobody seemed to value culture’.

Then with the pandemic on top came further difficulties with international travel – the high cost of freight, the rising cost of hotels and air travel, not to mention closed borders and constantly changing quarantine rules. Thus, Joseph and Helen took the sound forward-looking decision that for the 2022 edition, they would need to plan for a largely British festival.

‘So, all in all, we cut our cloth according to our means,’ says Helen.

‘We didn’t cut off our nose to spite our face!’ adds Joseph with his customary humour.

They therefore, a year ahead or more, commissioned a number of British companies to make work. Companies like Gandini Juggling, who LIMF have supported steadily over the years, seeing them rise from small studios at BAC to the Royal Opera House and to Sadler’s Wells, who have co-commissioned the new work. Having toured the world with their homage to Pina Bausch, Smashed, the company now turn their attention to another giant of contemporary dance, Merce Cunningham. In LIFE A Love Letter to Merce Cunningham, Sean Gandini and company co-founder/director Kati Ylä-Hokkala have created an original piece of work firmly rooted in the Cunningham universe. The world premiere is on 12 January 2022 – the opening show for this year’s London International Mime Festival. 

Joseph describes Gandini Juggling as one of the ‘mature’ companies that LIMF are supporting, going on to note that another company edging up into that category is Barely Methodical Troupe, who are (like Gandini) a contemporary circus group who have been supported along their developmental path by LIMF. They bring a revival of KIN, to the Peacock Theatre for this year’s festival – a high octane whirl of acrobatic storytelling that playfully explores competitiveness and male-female dynamics.

Then, says Joe, there’s Theatre Re, who are another good-sized ensemble company whose work has been consistently programmed by LIMF. Their fourth show, Bluebelle, weaves together plots and characters from ancient folktales collected by Angela Carter, Italo Calvino, the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault; together with interviews with parents and carers. Staged in Theatre Re’s striking corporeal mime style of lyrical, visual theatre, and accompanied by live music, Bluebelle reminds us that life is shaped by the stories we tell and leave behind.

Another world premiere, and also an ensemble piece that like Bluebelle is presented at Shoreditch Town Hall, is The PappyShow’s What Do You See?, a multidisciplinary performance weaving together words, song, movement, visual design and audiovisual effects, and asking us all to consider the question: When you look at someone, what do you see?

‘Director Kane Husbands didn’t just want to just make a show about Black identity, he wanted to address and celebrate all identities,’ says Helen. So, What Do You See? is created, under Kane’s direction, by a team of 12 performers, and a creative team of 27 people, representing a spectrum of intersectional identities in Britain today, including people of many different ethnicities and ages, with differently-abled bodies of all shapes and sizes – and celebrates all of those identities.

‘They are in the rehearsal room at the moment,’ says Helen, ‘and you can feel  the explosion of energy and the freshness of the work’.

Joe adds: ’Two years ago at the Purcell Room we presented their previous show, BOYS. It started as the audience were coming in, and the good feeling and energy that they exuded got the audience going before they had even started. There is an excitement about their onstage presence that appeals not only to young people but also to (ahem) not-so-young people like myself. We are very proud to be bringing that work to audiences. What Do You See? is a piece of theatre that is at least as much about atmosphere as about its sound message…’

‘When we were asked a long time ago if we could see any positives from Brexit, the only one that we could both see was that it might be good for British work… assuming we do get to present the work,’ says Helen.

On a smaller scale, other British companies who have been commissioned for this year’s festival include Opposable Thumb, who follow up their fabulous Coulrophobia with another two-man show, Big Boys Don’t Cry, presented at Jacksons Lane. Using potato crisps, puppets, dead bodies and Action Men, company co-founders/performers Adam and Dik take us into the beating heart of the modern male and attempt to answer the burning question: what maketh a man? Nature or nurture? Mind or body? Cheese ‘n’ Onion or Prawn Cocktail?

Then, there’s Jean-Daniel Broussé (one half of the award-winning circus duet Nikki & JD). He has been commissioned to make a new solo work, (Le) Pain – an autobiographical piece about his family of origin that will be seen at The Place as part of LIMF 2022. JD’s story is that he was born to inherit the French bakery run by four generations of his family. Instead, he studied history and literature, then ‘ran away to join the circus’, training at London’s National Centre for Circus Arts. In this, his first solo show, JD ‘travels through a universe of bread-making, physical heroics and growing up queer in strait-laced provincial France’. His collaborator and director on this project is the renowned Ursula Martinez.

‘We have ovens,’ says Helen, ‘he’ll be baking bread onstage!’

The London International Mime Festival has, over the many decades of its existence, presented work at many different venues – but a consistent partner over many years is the Barbican. With a desire to commission/present some international work in 2022, and to also present a major British theatre company on a decent-sized stage, conversations with the Barbican started.

‘The Barbican were willing to take the risk along with us,’ says Helen, speaking of the decision that they would co-present Compagnie 111’s: aSH, a piece created by Aurélien Bory for Shantala Shivalingappa that is the final part of Bory’s trilogy of large-scale solos for female dancers. In aSH, Shantala Shivalingappa pays homage to Shiva, God of creation and destruction, taking the audience on a journey linking ancestral culture and innovative technology.

Vanishing Point (Scotland’s foremost artist-led independent theatre company) will also be seen on the main stage of the Barbican with Interiors, which is inspired by Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1895 play, Interior. Director Matthew Lenton’s original, highly visual staging premiered in 2009 and has toured across Europe, Asia and South America. Interiors is about sounds, silence, the path of fate and the darkness outside the window.

Meanwhile, in the Barbican’s smaller space, The Pit, there will be two shows presented, one from the UK and one international work.

Thick & Tight return to London International Mime Festival at the Barbican with Short & Sweet, an amuse-bouche platter of nine new works designed to excite, provoke and satisfy. Created by company co-founders/co-directors Eleanor Perry and Daniel Hay-Gordon, this ‘thoroughly modern variety show’ mixes dance, drag, lip-syncing and satire, bringing a host of famous and infamous characters to life, from Sid Vicious to Twiggy, Grace Jones, Rasputin, and everyone’s favourite avant-garde duo, John Cage & Elaine Paige. Oh, and there are eight Edith Sitwells in the mix, too!

Also at The Pit: French company Stereoptik (Romain Bermond and Jean-Baptiste Maillet) are back with their latest handmade spectacle, Stellaire – a love story unfolding through space and time, set in a magic-lantern world. Using paper, chalk, charcoal, sand, silhouettes and projection, these virtuoso visual artists create wondrous cartoon-theatre that emerges before the audience’s eyes.

Another crucial element of this year’s Festival continues from 2021: the commissioning of a series of five short films. Last year’s commissions were for UK artists – including Andrew Dawson, whose film, Joseph points out, has gone on to be shown at short film festivals worldwide. This year, the emphasis is on overseas artists. As Joe says, ‘this time we thought, given the problems of bringing in work from overseas, we’d preserve the ‘international’ element of the Festival through film commissions. We went to people whose work we know and like and asked them to create a short film between 3-10 minutes long that isn’t driven by spoken text’. 

‘The artists have a completely free hand to do what they like,’ says Helen, ‘and as things stand, we are as much in the dark as you are!’

The commissioned artists include Dewey Dell (Italy), an offshoot of the legendary Castelluci company, whose work features choreography, music and drama inspired and nourished by images from art history and the animal kingdom; and Hiroaki Umeda (Japan), a Tokyo-based choreographer, photographer and video artist creating mesmerising visual environments for his visceral live performances. As someone who uses video in his work, commissioning him to make a short film seems like a good move!

Then, there’s Delgado Fuchs (Switzerland), who Helen and Joseph first encountered at the Avignon Festival where they presented what Helen describes as a ‘happening in an art gallery’. Their body-based work involves dance, performance, installation, photography, video, fashion and fine arts, and fits no conventional categories.

Gabriela Muñoz from Mexico is a clown best known for her portrayal of a woman desperate for companionship and marriage in Perhaps, Perhaps, Quizas, seen at LIMF 2018. Her Instagram feed is full of the most wonderful visual images – photographs that have been recently gathered into a book – so it will be very interesting to see her switch from still to moving image. 

Finally, Patrick Sims (France/USA) is the founder and former creative director of Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes, then creating his current company Les Antliaclastes, who have been seen at LIMF numerous times; making anarchic and eclectic work which uses a unique blend of different puppetry techniques and styles, together with masks, automata and other machines, and original organic soundtracks. He has a fine eye for detail, so this will be one to look out for. ’Expect something like a cross between the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer,’ says Helen, ‘although, of course, he may surprise us with something completely different!’

‘We need also to mention Abel & Gordon, our film collaboration with the Barbican,’ says Joseph. Long-time friends of the festival, Belgium-based comedy duo Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel present three of their early shorts. In Rosita (1997) the pair are a fortune teller and her assistant, working out of a dilapidated caravan; in Merci Cupidon (1994) attraction sparks between their two oddball singletons in a strange, out-of-the-way nightspot; and in Walking on the Wild Side (2004), an awkward misunderstanding occurs between a man and a cleaning-lady. Phenomenal physical performers, the duo is steeped in the grand French physical-comedy tradition of Jacques Tati and Pierre Étaix, who are also represented in the programme. 

There is also a further film element to the Festival with the showing of a programme of shorts by legendary puppeteer Heather Henson, and the presentation of a filmed piece called COLD, which Joseph says is ‘a gripping piece of work – really good film-making.’ 

Described as ‘a dark fairy tale about love, grief, madness and redemption’, COLD was created by acclaimed Lecoq-trained physical theatre-maker Claire Coaché, and her husband, the award-winning playwright and film-maker Lisle Turner. It is based on their own experiences of baby loss and first-person testimony from other grieving parents – giving a lie to the cliché that physical and visual theatre can’t deal with serious subjects, which Joe says is ‘a hoary old fallacy that we still live with, 40 years on’.

Both of the above will be screened online on mimelondon.com from 12 January.

Workshops have always been an important part of the Mime Festival’s programme, and this year is no exception. Last year, the workshop programme went wholly online – allowing for a worldwide engagement. This year, the online element is maintained, including the instantly sold-out offering by legendary American clown Avner the Eccentric, and from closer to home, a mask workshop by Vamos Theatre.

In person, there will be numerous offerings, including the always-popular Angela de Castro. Then, there is The Brides project by David Glass, which Helen describes as ‘ a development workshop. Participants don’t pay, but apply to be part of the group,’ adding that ‘David is all over the place building bridges, making connections. I admire his tenacity!’

So there we are – the London International Mime Festival 2022, ready to launch! 

‘More by judgement than luck we’ve put together a festival that has a balance of new names and established artists, says Joseph. ‘a mature programme with exciting new departures. And film is now an important part of the programme…’

‘We just hope for the artists’ sake it can go ahead and audiences will turn up,’ adds Helen. ‘We have all our Covid protocols in place – and we are ready to jump, whichever way.’

As I write this article (post-Christmas) comes the good news that there will be no further lockdowns, and theatres can stay open. The London International Mime Festival post on social media that it is All Systems Go for the live shows.

Let’s leave the last word to Joseph: ‘We are very excited and confident about what we think is a great programme for what is now the country’s longest running annual international theatre festival – I’m as delighted to be doing it now as I was when it started.’

Featured image (top): Theatre Re: Bluebelle. Photo Chris Nash.

Visit mimelondon.com for further information and bookings.

The five commissioned short films are hosted on mimelondon.com  and the Festival’s YouTube channel and are free-to-view from 12 January 2022.

London International Mime Festival is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. 

When your world spins, and seismic shifts occur that mean that nothing is ever going to be the same again, what do you do? Make a show about it! This is the story of the new Scarabeus Aerial Theatre project, Emerging.

‘I felt that suddenly my life had gone completely upside down – and not the upside down I know as an aerialist – upside down in a very different way.’

Daniela Essart is talking to me just before Trans Parent Day, which falls on the first Sunday of November – a day that originally marked and celebrated the large number of people who are both trans and parents, but which in recent years has also included the parents of trans gender young people. Daniela and her partner in life and work, Søren Nielsen, fall into that second category.

The couple are co-directors of Scarabeus Aerial Theatre: Daniela is artistic director and creator-director of the company’s shows; Søren Nielsen is executive and technical director.

In April 2019, their world – as Daniela puts it – turned upside down in a new and unfamiliar way when the person that they considered to be their daughter, Naissa, came out publicly as trans-male. 

Now, Daniela and Naissa are co-creating a new show, Emerging. It is a show about transitioning and transformation; about art as a healing mechanism; about knowledge, advocacy, and alliance with the genderqueer and trans community. 

Emerging will have a separate but linked documentary film touring with it. Show and film are in progress now, and will premiere at The Lowry in Salford in autumn 2022. Naissa has worked with his parents’ company before, but this is the first Scarabeus project for which Daniela and Naissa will carry an equal artistic responsibility for the content of the work – and there are sound and specific reasons for this: the show aims for complete honesty about the upheavals in their lives, to explore the topic in innovative ways, and to present Naissa’s and Daniela’s points of view with equal balance.

The story of how this project has come about is an extraordinary one, weaving together life and art in a complex and challenging way.

So let’s start at the beginning…

‘Will you take me by the hand and guide me through the appearing and disappearing of you, because this is what I fear the most; to lose you, my child.’ – Daniela

‘It is painful.  It is beautiful.  It is important.’ – Naissa

‘We realised we were navigating an extremely complex journey,’ says Daniela, who had thought that ‘things had somehow been resolved’. By which she means that Naissa, who had always been a ‘tomboy’ (to use the common vernacular) as a child, had gone on to consider themselves to be non-binary as a teenager. And Daniela had thought that the old worries about feminine identity were somehow resolved in this decision to present as an androgynous person. But this wasn’t the case. Naissa was, at that time, in the middle of a dance foundation year at the Northern Contemporary School of Dance (now studying for a degree at the London Contemporary Dance school), but that most crucial of necessities for a dancer – to be at ease in one’s own body – was missing. A simple ‘how are you?’ question that Daniela put to Naissa whilst driving back from a Scarabeus project they were both working on became a dropped bombshell. Not OK. Not well at all. Not happy inside the body of a woman. Not able to relate to the image in the mirror…

Naissa subsequently took the decision to come out publicly as trans, to start taking hormones, and to have ‘top surgery’. Decisions Daniela found very hard to deal with.

‘I really could not understand why my child – who was brought up free to wear whatever she wanted and always looked androgynous in any case – why Naissa could not see that she-or-he could absolutely pass and didn’t need to do this further, invasive, and irreversible treatment at such a young age. This is someone who was brought up without drugs and medicines and other interventions to the body. I tried to negotiate a postponement. Everything seemed to happen so quickly. You are trying to buy time, to delay… Any argument I tried to put forward, I just encountered the determination that these things needed changing.’

From Naissa’s perspective, his decision was clear-cut and unavoidable, not open to negotiation.

‘For me, my transition isn’t about how I’m seen by other people,’ he says when we speak on Zoom a week or so after I meet with Daniela, ‘it’s to feel comfortable in my skin. My transition doesn’t feel anything to do with gender – it is about being in a body I want to live in – becoming myself, not becoming a man.’

So there we have it: two very different points of view. Two people – a parent and their adult child – who love each other, but find it difficult to work things out. What to do? 

‘Our transitions together have been for different lengths, different paces. I feel ready for this, and I never want to hurt you. I love you so dearly, and I want you on my journey with me, where we can work together.’  – Naissa

‘What do I know about what it means to live in a body that doesn’t feel like home? Me, who has a body that has served me well all of my life! I have travelled through many internal and external landscapes, but this is completely new and unexplored for me; it feels mysterious and elliptical, shape-shifting and somehow dangerous.’  – Daniela

A good friend suggested that the two write to each other. As Daniela puts it ‘Everything is so emotional. It’s very difficult to listen without suggesting or answering back. Listening, really listening, is an incredible skill.Writing letters gives you the time to distil what you want to say to the other person. You say it in a less triggering, less reactive, way.’

So the person writing the letter can take the time to think about it, and the other person can take the time to read it and re-read and accept – or, at least, acknowledge – a differing point of view…

And Naissa says, ‘When I came out I was living in Leeds – then I came home for three months before starting my degree – it was difficult to be around something that was so hard for my mum, and whenever I saw her it would be quite painful and emotional. With letters, you can say what you want to say uninterrupted – similar to when you hold space for people so they can say what they want to say, and the other person can’t influence how you say something…’

And whilst Daniela and film-maker Sky Neal – a long-time Scarabeus collaborator – were talking about this letter-writing process, Sky, a mother herself, and someone who knows both Daniela and Naissa well – suggested they make a short documentary film that would give justice to both stories. 

‘I realised,’ says Daniela, ‘that if you do any kind of search on the internet you’ll find tons of material about different perspectives on gender, you’ll find a lot of Ted talks, or websites that talk about trans gender from the point of view of trans gender people and you may find a little bit about how as a parent you can support your trans child – what you don’t find is a place where there is an equal representation and a dialogue about how this journey makes you completely reconsider everything – your values, what you believe in life. There is neither an artistic representation nor an accurate documentary representation. And as a mother, I felt that my voice was completely unheard.’

And so, for Daniela, the idea began to grow that this could be not only a documentary film but also a show – made and performed by Daniela and Naissa, working in collaboration with other artists, the pair using their very able skills as circus-theatre and dance artists to explore this volatile dynamic of growth, change and acceptance. Because, if you’re an artist, Daniela feels, why wouldn’t you use your art to explore one of the most complex things that had occurred in your life?

But what did Naissa think when that idea was first mooted?

 ‘I was very resistant at first,’ he says, ‘mostly because at this time our relationship was very – potent. Emotional, and sensitive. Charged. I wasn’t sure it’d work out, but we had a week’s work outdoors in the woods arranged with choreographer Becky…’

This being Becky Namgauds, a young choreographer who both Naissa and Daniela admire and were keen to work with. Sky was also involved in filming the footage that would later be used for the Emerging teaser

‘We started to work in Queens Woods in Highgate, near our home, during the 2020 lockdown,’ says Daniela. ‘Legally, we had to work outdoors because of the pandemic – so we saw it as a gift rather than a restriction. We decided to rig directly from trees. Naissa wanted to work with a bungee harness close to the floor and I wanted to work with an aerial cocoon. Becky also encouraged us to work on a floor-based contact dance duet’.

‘Becky is great,’ says Naissa, ‘Really good at helping pull out ideas without directing – facilitating the space and facilitating support and care – helping us creatively communicate…’ He also reflects on the vital role dance plays in his life, saying: ‘For me movement and dance are very much about communicating. I like dancing because it makes me feel I can communicate something I can’t verbalise, and hopefully people will feel that without the need to label it.’

From there, as things eased up in summer 2020, they went to Cornwall to work at greater length with Sky, who is based there.

‘We wanted to work with the metaphor of the elements,’ says Daniela. ‘We used the rocks and the water. I wrote a piece of text called Elemental. I felt very much that Naissa was a water creature – changing, morphing – and that I was a rock, but one that was crumbling…’

Naissa remembers it as a difficult but rewarding experience: ‘Sky filmed each of us reading from our letters, plus some movement on the beach. Daniela did some aerial work in the forest – and then there was the abseiling on the cliffs – a really beautiful moment.’

Ah yes, indeed a beautiful moment! One that will be incorporated into the show as film footage (because transporting a cliff-face round the country would pose a fair few difficulties!). I tell Naissa that Daniela and I have had an interesting conversation about how different people view this image, particularly in relation to the text that appears with it: ‘Travel slowly and safely.’ I see it as two people in a situation where risk has been carefully calculated, and safety precautions have been responsibly thought through. Other people see it as a moment of great danger – a point of no return, almost.

‘The only thing I could think about was that we were really on the edge,’ says Naissa, ‘and – this isn’t morbid at all, but there was something very freeing about the thought that if I were to fall, it’d be OK!’

Musing on the time spent in Queens Wood and Cornwall, Naissa says: ‘It was hard, but the more we did it the less hard it became, and I realised that the reason, probably, why it was so hard for me was because there were loads of things I didn’t feel able to communicate…’

‘You my perfect child, who grew inside me, whilst I felt every movement, kick and turn of you. You who I love more than anyone else in the entire world. I look at you, exquisite human being, with the most beautiful face, the loveliest and most attractive of bodies, which enables you to do what you most love in the world – dance, move… Why should you need to change it, tamper with it?’  – Daniela 

‘My whole life has not worked up to this, this is not my final completing goal in life. This is a necessary step that I need to continue on my journey to have some grounding in my life. I am still Naissa as you have always known me, you are still Mamma to me. I just have to take these steps towards the changes in my body that will make me feel at home.’ – Naissa 

After some months of reflection, the project moved on with another research and development period in April 2021 – this time indoors at the National Centre for Circus Arts (NCCA) in Hoxton, with the support of a modest Arts Council England grant.

There was just a week booked in the NCCA creation studio, but before that came a lot of preparation – Daniela as director of the project liaising with Naissa, choreographer Becky and numerous other collaborators, including  Scarabeus co-director Søren and rigger Graeme Clint, video designer Nina Dunn, and stage manager/photographer Henri T. Filmmaker Sky also came in for two half-days.

‘We really looked at this one specific scene using the cocoon, with a text I wrote about giving birth to Naissa,’ says Daniela. This text had been enclosed with Daniela’s first letter to Naissa. There was also work on the bungee harness by Naissa, exploring broken dialogue, and the dynamic of love versus frustration. When I talk to Naissa, I muse on the image of the bungee as an umbilical cord – although it’s not something he particularly feels himself about the apparatus: ‘It never occurred to me, but I suppose that is how it could be seen, visually. I’m really interested in the bungee – I feel most in my element. It feels safe in the way that I know exactly how I’m expressing myself, how I’m moving. I feel in control, and in communication.’ 

Another key piece of equipment is a big suspended net, modified in various ways by video artist Nina, who projected abstract textures and concrete images of sea water, the sky, and sunflowers onto the white net and the two performers.

‘I think I was very worried that the net – which was Daniela’s idea – would be received as a typical image of entrapment and all of that kind of stuff,’ says Naissa, ‘But with the lights off, and projections on it, it looked like a surface not a net. Every step you take affects the other person – so it became a metaphor for relationships and communication, where if you take a big leap it’s going to throw the other person off, but if you tread carefully together you can go on the journey.’

Daniela sees it as ‘the web of life, a metaphor for how, in a relationship, you continuously affect each other. There is a ripple effect – you are continuously connected’. She tells me that she was inspired by the visual artist and sculptor Chiharu Shiota, who weaves enormous web-like installations that people can walk through; and her vision for the new show is for it to be an immersive piece, with audience placed around and underneath. She is working with rigger and maker Joe White on the creation of a web that can be rigged and toured relatively easily.

The two performers also explored the use of two suspended Cyr wheels, strung with webbing so that they looked like giant dreamcatchers – Scarabeus will also be commissioning the making of two large hoops for the show’s tour. 

So, the first stage of research and development is done, a premiere booked for autumn 2022, and the film-making is in progress. What happens next?

Daniela is keen to emphasise that the documentary film being made by Sky, and the live performance work, are being viewed as separate enterprises, each sourcing funding independently. The documentary will be around 15–20 minutes long, and could potentially be shown in the same venue as the show during the tour. But it will also have its own independent life.

The next stage of the creative process for Daniela is to work on scripting the piece. There are plans for her to work with a dramaturg on the creation of the show’s script – ideally someone from within the LGBTQ+ community who has experience with multi-discipline art-making that incorporates the use of text. As writer-director, Daniela is already musing on the staging and the relationship with audience: ‘I have some specific ideas about how I want it to start. The audience will come into an installation – a space created in a certain way.’

Because the physical dance and circus-theatre work in the show will be intense, Daniela feels that the text will almost certainly be pre-recorded and incorporated within the soundscape, which is going to be created by composer/musician Domenico Angarano, who is a music lecturer at London Contemporary Dance, and thus somebody that Naissa knows and has worked with. The score will be completed by summer 2022 so that it is ready (or as near as possible) for when the company return to the rehearsal studio. Daniela has a meeting planned with Nina Dunn to talk about the use of multiple projections in the space, and the two will work together on the creation of films and projections that use historic family photos and video. Discussions are in progress (led by Søren) about the rigging issues and the construction of the bespoke circus equipment. Then, there will be discussions with Becky on how to negotiate the next phase of physical performance work.  ‘So far we haven’t touched the things that are the most difficult and painful,’ says Daniela, ‘things which you can’t skive away from if you are making a piece that wants to make people understand the navigation of a complex journey’.

Naissa, though, feels that it is getting easier, and especially values the contact dance work initiated by Becky: ‘At the beginning of my coming out, we were both very resistant to each other and so I think the contact work can be seen as a way to trying to approach things with love – for my mum, there was resistance because she was worried about my health and safety, and I really didn’t see it that way until recently… So it became about trying to approach things with tenderness and love even if we disagree.’

As things stand, Naissa and Daniela are both going to perform in the show. Both talk to me about the need for physical and emotional safeguarding in the rehearsal/performance space – which they feel they have managed to achieve so far, with the support of the team. For Naissa, the fact that he was undergoing such drastic physical changes, on top of the emotional and psychological shifts that they were both making – added to the pressure. But he feels he was supported all along the way. ‘With each stage of work I was further along the road with adjusting to the hormones. The more it was settling in, the more I felt I was inhabiting my own skin not someone else’s. There are changes in the way I move, and how I am in the space. And everything has drastically changed since I’ve had chest surgery. Last time we worked together I was four months on hormones, and Becky noticed that my energy was very different, and I was much more happy. It is nice that other people can feel it too!’

Naissa now has the final year of his degree to get through before re-engaging with the making of Emerging – so is grateful for a bit of a gap before the next creation period. There is also another reason why these relatively large gaps between the practical work sessions are a blessing: ‘It’s nice to have such big chunks of time in between because, personally, it feels very heavy – even though it is a positive thing, it is emotional to go back in there, so it works for me that it is quite spaced out. Each time I go back in I have more perspective and more understanding and empathy for myself and for my mum.’

For Daniela, the process feels fresh and good as, for the most part, she is collaborating with people who are outside of the usual Scarabeus circle of artists – often people who are nearer to Naissa’s age than to hers, and in some cases, people from the LGBTQ+ community, which feels right.

‘I have deliberately chosen people who don’t know me and Naissa personally – mostly people who I haven’t worked with before. I needed that tabula rasa – to work with people with no pre-conceptions of who I am and what I create.’

For both, communication and advocacy is the main reason for it all. As Naissa puts it:

‘I don’t want to do it for myself, more for people who can’t – especially if it helps to shift perspectives for people who don’t know trans people, who don’t have trans children. If the art could be some form of activism or create some sort of impact, that’s all that I would want. I don’t really know what it’ll do for me – but I hope it’ll help other people and create empathy and love.’

In one of his letters, Naissa lists a number of words, capitalised. It feels a sound note to end on, as a summary of the process of creating Emerging:

PATIENCE    LOVE    QUESTIONS   

LAUGHING CRYING

COURAGE   

Emerging is co-created by Daniela Essart (artistic director & performer) and Naissa Essart-Nielsen (collaborator & performer) for Scarabeus Aerial Theatre.

For more on the company, and updates on the progress of Emerging, see www.scarabeus.co.uk 

Emerging is due to premiere autumn 2022, and is commissioned by the Lowry and supported by Jacksons Lane

The Emerging film teaser was funded by Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Emergency Funds. Shot and directed by Sky Neal, with additional footage by Mark Morreau. See: https://vimeo.com/485166726 

The Emerging R&D in April 2021 at National Centre for Circus Arts was funded by Arts Council England.