What Comes Out After Dark In The Garden?

A transcription of this conversation can be found below

Photos from Lighting Up The Garden

Audio transcription

Ruby: Hello! My name is Ruby, I am an artist here at Spectra and the Community Lead, and I’m here today with Ty.

Tyrone: Hello, my name is Tyrone Williams, I am a leader, artist, director and performer.

Ruby: And we are here today to talk about a project that Ty directed and I produced. We’ve been calling it the Lantern Project, haven’t we! And then the last bit where we brought it out into the world was called…

Tyrone: Lighting Up The Garden!

Ruby: And the whole idea of the project came about, was it about a year ago?

Tyrone: A year ago, it was.

Ruby: Where we had lots of our artists all come together and talk about a project they want to make happen. And you came, and you said there’s a project I would like to make happen, and that was the lantern project wasn’t it?

Tyrone: It was yeah!

Ruby: We did lots of planning and then me and you came together and we started by asking the question “What comes out after dark in the garden?” So, the first workshop that we did, do you remember who we worked with? It was quite a while ago now.

Tyrone: I think we worked with SAFS

Ruby: We did yeah! We worked with SAFS who are South Asian Family Services and we met with the Thursday group, they have different groups every day of the week. Do you remember what the first session we did with them was?

Tyrone: The first session we made with them was designing puppets!

Ruby: Yeah! I think we made the puppets in the garden as well didn’t we? So again, we made puppets of things we thought might come out after dark in the garden. So the other thing we did with SAFS when we first started meeting with them, do you remember what that was?

Tyrone: We started to make some drawings and stories with them.

Ruby: You are a really beautiful drawer and you are very good at telling stories. So, you were a real lead in this bit as well weren’t you. We had a big roll of paper and lots of different drawing materials. We started to try and draw some stories and tell some stories to each other.

Tyrone: We did!

Ruby: The other thing we did with the group as well when they were at the garden, do you remember what we did?

Tyrone: We took the group around the garden and we showed them what movements, walking and dancing around the garden.

Ruby: That was part of telling the story as well wasn’t it. We were talking about how something might creep out of it’s den and then wander round the garden. It was a nice way of moving and exploring the garden together wasn’t it? Part of telling the stories, we also looked at some characters didn’t we, and started inventing some characters.

Tyrone: They were telling us what characters they wanted to be in real life and designing them

Ruby: I know you had the idea of a spirit tree character, we spoke about that didn’t we. And we talked about the idea of The Commons being a character as well.

Tyrone: Like we did at the puppets thing, we took them round!

Ruby: So, one of the things we did as well is we had to learn some practical skills. So we learnt how to make all of the willow frames to make the lanterns. Had you done that before, Ty?

Tyrone: I’d done it with normal Spectra, but I hadn’t done it with different companies. It was my first experience as an artist to do it.

Ruby: And you teaching the group and being part of that process. It was a big learning curve for everyone to come together and learn how to put it together. We learnt how to make the willow frames. After we made the willow frames, we covered them with the big sheets of wet-strength tissue. Do you remember what we did then?

Tyrone: We designed all the cutting stuff and drawings and putting them on the lanterns.

Ruby: to decorate them and start making them into those characters. I really liked the different shapes every made.

Tyrone: I loved it so much!

Ruby: The first time we finished one of the lanterns, we did something with it as well.

Tyrone: We put some lights underneath inside the lanterns and we turned all the lights off and we imagined the lights on the wall and everyone loved it!

Ruby: Looking at all the colours and the way it glowed. So after we turned all the big lights off and put one of the little lights in to make it glow, we sat in the room together and we looked it but we did some other stuff as well.

Tyrone: With the participants, we were dreaming about stuff and imagining in the dark.

Ruby: To help with that dreaming and imagining we put some music on. You really like music don’t you! We chose some different types of music and talked about how it made us imagine different things, the different musics, I remember there was one that you said sounded a little bit ‘beachy’, like you were on holiday somewhere. There were ones that were really calm, and ones that were more exciting.

Tyrone: That’s how the music guy was with the lanterns!

Ruby: After we’d been to visit SAFS and we had learnt lots and lots of things, we took everything and did some planning. And who did we take everything to?

Tyrone: We took everything to the director, named Kate DeRight. We told her some good ideas and then we went to a meeting somewhere.

Ruby: Where did we go for the meeting?

Tyrone: For a coffee shop?

Ruby: We told her everything we had learnt. And she came up with a really good idea. You said about the music, when it was really calm, it was really lovely, sitting in the room, and being all together listening to this calm music whilst the lanterns glowed. She said, “Have you ever heard of a sound bath?” And had you?

Tyrone: I’d never heard of one before.

Ruby: I hadn’t either. We listened to some of the music, and what did you think?

Tyrone: I really loved it when we listened to it, and then we managed to get the guy [laughter] the person there, and that’s how we got the lantern sound with it.

Ruby: Exactly. So finally, it was the big day wasn’t it. We had spent the morning, do you remember what we spent the morning doing? It was really busy wasn’t it!

Tyrone: It was. I think it was. We did the lantern making in the morning and then at four we got everyone to meet at the hospital, and then at the end we did the lanterns parade.

Ruby: We did a big procession. We did loads and loads of making in the morning, and we had lots and lots of people visit and we had lots more lanterns and decorated lots more with people. And then we invited everyone we had worked with to come downstairs and go outside into the big green space and then we processed around with the lanterns

Ty: We did and everyone joined in, we had some good customers [laughter]

Ruby: [laughing] I like customers. We did we had some good customers and they all joined in. And we also had the guy, the gong man, the sound bath artist and he joined us at the procession and he had his huge gong with him and he walked with us so it had this big ringing sound all throughout. And it wasn’t completely dark when we started

Ty: It was like evening, not in the dark

Ruby: It was that dusk, just before it goes completely dark, and it was very beautiful wasn’t it. Once we did our walk and moved around the whole space we returned to the garden, where we started. What did we do then?

Ty: Everyone had a nice hot spiced apple cup of tea

Ruby: They had a nice hot drink and we stuck the lanterns in lots of the

Ty: Garden places

Ruby: All around the garden. Some people were waving theirs all around and moving with it. I think Julian was doing that.

Ty: Someone’s children did the same thing too!

Ruby: Yes they did! While all that was happening we had the sound bath artist, he was playing still.

Ty: Some of the audiences were relaxing with him, with the sound.

Ruby: We set some chairs out, some people were sitting with the sound bath, some were walking around. But everyone had a nice drink. So, one thing you said to me on the night of the performance was that you felt very proud. Do you still feel very proud of the project?

Ty: I feel really proud. When I started Spectra I was a normal professional performer, and then I started from paid job to being a professional artist. Then since now I’ve done lots of work placements and workshops and became a lead artist. And I’ve helped some professionals like Ruby.

Ruby: Absolutely! You’ve had this huge journey haven’t you where you started as a performer with Spectra, and then you became a shadow artist as well. You’ve worked with me as a shadow artist. This is the first time you’ve been the lead artist and I’ve been helping to produce everything. It’s been very exciting you being the lead artist on this show. You come with lots of very exciting ideas and it’s always really nice hearing what you think and helping make it happen. What was your favourite moment in this whole project?

Ty: The greatest moment I did was leading roles in the workshops, the project. I’ve done it before in lots of different places, companies. But this is my greatest experience being a director and lead artist.

Ruby: There were lots of moments in the workshops that you stepped in and was the person leading it all. Every workshop we started with SAFS we did some moving. Obviously you are very good at that. That was really important that you take the lead. I would say, Ty, I’m not as good at that. It was really nice, we played to our strengths. When there was a bit of that practical making I’ve done before I got to step in and be the lead for that bit. For that big decision making and for those things where it’s so your strength you got to step in as well.

Ty: Yeah!

Ruby: Yeah, lovely!