Directed and performed by: Sally E. Dean

Music composed by: Tobias Sturmer

Length: 60 min

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At its USA debut of Waiting for Richard at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the Daily Starr called it “moments of pin drop perfection” and at its performance at the Central Java’s Cultural Centre, the Javanese (Central Java) newspaper described it as “melancholic and fascinating…”

 

A powerfully haunting, poetic, visual and physical solo on the edge of experimental theatre, dance and live art.

Waiting For Richard is a moving painting that slowly comes to life and leaves its frame. Like a wind-up doll, an 18th century woman emerges, sitting precariously on the edge of a high platform in a timeless era, full of delicacy and constraint. As she waits, time and hope are eaten. Beauty and sensuality begin to disintegrate – transforming into the grotesque – decaying into the violent. Flesh is accidentally revealed and ravaged as the character’s urgency and insanity builds. A silent yet seductive nightmare. Tobias Sturmer’s music, composed with the material of broken porcelain, creates a chilling and fragile soundscape.

Movement inspired by Butoh, ritual art and Javanese traditional and contemporary dance/theatre. Character inspired by two women: Miss Havisham from Great Expectations and Sundel Bolong from Javanese ghost stories.

Past venues: Bullion Theatre at the Hackney Empire (as part of London’s Hackney Spice Festival in 2005), EXIT Theater (as part of San Francisco Fringe Festival 2005), and Theater Arena at Central Java’s Cultural Centre (Taman Budaya) in 2007.

Photo credit: Endy