Wishes for a Better Future
Somewhere in the corridors of a half-forgotten office, two lonely people are practising their pitch. Wishes for a Better Future is a story of nostalgic tourism and contemporary rural life – and the private moments and secret interiors of the people that dream of them.
There is an elusive, eliding quality about the whole performance… It is an atmospheric, touching, thought provoking piece, a quiet moment of reflection and intimacy. Blind Ditch have a light touch and something to say – a rare and valuable combination.
Barbara Bridger Writer and Dramaturg, Lecturer in Theatre and Writing, Dartington College of Arts, 1991-2010, Co-Director of Writing 2009
Incorporating research from video interviews with tourists and locals in South Devon, Wishes for a Better Future investigates the preservation, packaging and sale of our landscapes and the people who live in them. Lost experiences of childhood holidays become a marketable commodity and the picturesque is presented as a consumable rural dream. Collisions of text and sound objects, live feed video and super-8 footage transform the set into a suburban sitting room, green hillsides, or a windswept Dartmoor crag. In this dislocated and mediated world populated with tourists, second home-owners, a corporate healer, salesmen and a beloved dog, we witness the unfolding relationship of two people who fear where old age will find them.
Wishes for a Better Future is a meticulously researched and performed piece of work… Crisp and delicate live video feed to two monitors and a series of dialogues explore the many layers and subtleties of everyday experience. A further layer is added to the work with the beautifully worked and understated text. Both performers add a confident and at times moving evocation of the words collected in a piece of work that could so easily have become social documentation, but instead is performance of a high order.
Paul Goddard – Programmer, Dartington Arts, May 2003
Collaborators: Paula Crutchlow (writer and director), Cat Radford and Henning Hegland (devising performers), Volkhardt Müller (set design and videography), John Levack Drever (sound design)
Funded by Arts Council England – South West and South Hams District Council.
