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The Village was a multi-location immersive theatre piece devised and staged by Persona Collective inside Soho & Chinatown. The live shows took place from 30th March until 19th April 2023. This project celebrates the diversity & tolerance of Soho’s local community & indie businesses with a narrative based on real voices and in real unique locations in the local area. This projects was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

 

The audience found themselves stepping into an intimate journey across multiple secret locations throughout Soho & Chinatown; weaving through hidden passageways. Their journey was a multi-sensory experience - somewhere between fiction and reality. Each group of audience were following one character’s story, whilst witnessing threads of multiple narratives throughout their journey. Audience members described the experience as “being immersed inside of a film” or as “hyper-real, it was never clear whether something was reality or an artistic construct”.

 

Through out the project we worked closely with the LGBTQ+ communities and Soho’s local businesses & residents. Together we co-created a multi-location immersive theatre & build a set/installation in a gallery, all in Soho. 

Since December 2022, the collective were running a series of free workshops with the members of the community and surroundings through the community programme called LOVE+ project. Participants from PERFORMANCE+ had the opportunity to learn how to act, dance and get ready to perform in front of an audience, while the other group of participants from DESIGN+ were learning to design the lighting and sound as part of the live show.

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The Collective for this project

Rocío Ayllón - Artistic Director & Producer 

Ting-Ning Wen - Assistant Director & Choreographer

Georgia Rowan - Choreographer

Abbie Adams - Creative Producer 

Yagoda Sovinska - Producer, Photography, Props & Costumes

Emma LD - Graphic Design & Props / Art Direction

Emily George - Concept, Photography & Graphic Design

for 'The Village' Poster

Jack Wates - Art Installation / Set Design

Jakub Nowacki - Costume Designer

 

Lighting Design Team 

Satu Streatfield - Lighting Design Director & Labs Facilitator

Anna Fil - Lighting Designer

Shu - Ang, Yeh - Lighting Designer

Steve Lowe - Lighting Technician 

Sound Design Team 

Jose Macabra - Sound Designer Director & Labs Facilitator

Enrico Lovatin - Sound Designer

Vit Trojanovsky - TROJΛNOVSKX - Sound Designer

Finn Boxer - Sound Operator

Cast & Creators

Valentine Bordet

Ning Chou

Melanie Gautier

Emily George

Amanda Kamanda

Francesca Kos

Pilar Morales Pérez

Sally Plowman

John Quan

Kieran Saikat Das Gupta

Tony Towell

Harper Walton

Kim Way

Ting-Ning Wen

Anna Fill 

Amy Kingsmill - 'Fallen' - Performance Art 

Zell Couver- Live Music  - Violin 

Tony Shrimplin 

Collaborators

Jason Tang - Writer & Researcher

Nikki McFarland - Assistant Production

Art Installation Production Team

Jack Wates - Designer & Constructor

Marcel Croxson

Alex Mead

Josh Richards

 

Sound Design Assistants

Zell Couver

Shutting Cui

Jovienne Jin

Haein Kim

Ella Macfarlane

Artem Spivak

Lily Tiger Tonkin Wells

Video & photo documentation

Olga Lagun - Cinematographer

Edmund Fraser - Photographer 

Chaperones - routes guides

Vanya Gostev

Nikki McFarland

Special Thanks to:

 

Rebecca Marcus Monks  - The Koppel Project                                                        Tony Shrimplin  - Museum of Soho                                              Sami Sabik - Electronic engineer 

Cindy and Stephan - The French Protestant Church                                                Tim Lord and Joel Levack - Soho Society                                    Paul Simon - Enliten Architectural Lighting

Daniel and Ashanti - We are Cuts

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