News
‘Etiquette of Grief’
Nairn Little Theatre, Nairn
Saturday 25 May 2013, 8:00pm
Tickets: £6/8
www.nairndrama.org.uk
The Arches, Glasgow
Tuesday 12 November 2013
www.thearches.co.uk
The ritual of mourning and customs of grief take centre stage in Nairn and Glasgow as Ellie Harrison’s Etiquette of Grief embarks on new tour
Etiquette of Grief, a playful and provocative solo show by artist/performer Ellie Harrison, will make its Scottish premiere on 25 May 2013 at Nairn Little Theatre, before touring England as part of a new eight date tour of small-scale theatres, returning north of the border on 12 November 2013 for the final show at The Arches, Glasgow. The show will take audiences on an intimate journey, offering a guide to tackling both private and public grief, in all its gory and glorious manifestations.
This thought-provoking performance questions the nature of public grief and asks ‘Does the British ‘stiff upper lip’ result in a collective identity that inhibits how we grieve?’. Often witnessed when a famous figure dies, do mass outpourings of feeling bear any relation to the complicated, messy emotions of personal life?
Both heart-wrenching and heart-warming, ‘Etiquette of Grief’, which toured internationally in 2012, has received new Arts Council funding to bring the show back for a 2013 tour. Leeds-based Ellie, who graduated in 2012 from Leeds Metropolitan University with an MA in Performance Works, has created a number of solo and collaborative performance pieces for studios, galleries, found and public spaces (including ‘Heave’ in 2009). With Etiquette of Grief, she explores the sometimes uncomfortable but also funny and peculiar rituals of mourning, and the wide-ranging emotions that follow an overwhelming loss and the ways in which grief touches us all.
The ‘Etiquette of Grief’ is the first in ‘The Grief Series’ which sees Ellie using a seven-stage ‘Grief Model’ from popular psychology, and working in collaboration with other artists to produce a number of projects which include performance, photography, installation and sculpture to examine each ‘stage’ of grief, from shock and anger through to sadness and finally, acceptance.
Part two, the critically acclaimed ‘The Reservation’, an intimate one to one performance made for hotel rooms, toured in 2012 including a run of 48 shows in Leeds at The Wrens Hotel. Part three ‘What is Left’, is an ongoing participatory portrait project with Manchester-based artist, Roshana Rubin Mayhew, in which people are photographed in their homes with an object they have inherited from a loved one who has died, and will be exhibited in 2014. Part four, ‘The Rage Receptacle’, is an outdoor installation booth which premiered in Leeds earlier this year and features a multiple choice game to find out what evokes anger from the participant.
Comments Ellie: “I was inspired to make ‘Etiquette of Grief’ after experiencing my own bereavement and realising that grief is still a taboo subject; it’s OK to talk about it one-on-one with a close friend or loved one, but there’s no social space where it’s appropriate to talk about how you feel when someone you knew or loved, dies. We don’t know how to react to someone grieving and our attitudes are very much either ‘buck up and get on with it’ or ‘talk to a professional’ – both of which silence the griever.
“With this project, I wanted to create a warm environment where people can talk about grief. As well as exploring the public side of grief, I look at the personal and practical elements – the rituals that follow the loss of a loved one from organising the funeral to the practicalities of learning to take over the role of the person of that died, whether that’s leaning to cook or to pay the bills; there’s a lot of mundane and sometimes, almost comical tasks, which have to be addressed and this adds a lot of humour which sits alongside what is undeniably, quite a dark subject matter.”
Adds Ellie: “The Grief Model gives each piece a distinctly different focus whilst also contributing to a cohesive body of work and ‘Etiquette of Grief’ is an introduction to the series so I’m delighted that we’re able to tour it again. I’ve had such a fantastic reaction to the series so far that I’ve become a bit of a magnet for grief; sometimes total strangers who are familiar with my work will come up to tell me about their experiences. It’s as if I’ve given people permission to talk about death and it’s not all sadness and tears, there’s often joy and humour in remembering a person you’ve lost.
“I find the subject and the psychology behind it hugely interesting and I hope that by encompassing different artistic mediums with each project, I can engage a variety of audiences in a theme which, in some way, touches all of us.”
Tickets for ‘Etiquette of Grief’ are now on sale. To buy tickets and for more information on the ‘Etiquette of Grief’ tour and the wider ‘Grief Series’ visit www.griefseries.co.uk
The new ‘Etiquette of Grief’ tour will also visit Hull, Colchester, Peterborough, Suffolk, Barnsley and Leeds.
2013 ‘Etiquette of Grief’ tour dates
Nairn Little Theatre, Nairn
Saturday 25 May 2013, 8:00pm
www.nairndrama.org.uk
Hull Truck Theatre, Hull
Wednesday 05 June 2013, 8:00pm
www.hulltruck.co.uk
Colchester Arts Centre
Wednesday 12 June 2013, 8:00pm
www.colchesterartscentre.com
Key Theatre, Peterborough
Thursday 13 June 2013, 7:45pm
www.vivacity-peterborough.com
New Cut Arts Centre, Halesworth, Suffolk
Friday 05 July 2013
www.newcut.org
The Civic, Barnsley
Thursday 19 September 2013
www.barnsleycivic.co.uk
Stage@leeds. University of Leeds
Thursday 26th September 2013
www.stage.leeds.ac.uk
The Arches, Glasgow
Tuesday 12 November 2013
www.thearches.co.uk