An interactive online adventure created by Extant Theatre, the UK’s only professional performing arts company of blind/partially sighted artists.
Experience a rich multi-sensory world inspired by the Goze, blind female performers of medieval Japan who travelled around the country recounting epic tales. Flight Paths fuses old and new, bringing together archival material about the Goze, animation and filmed modern performance, in an accessible hourlong digital experience.
Flight Paths tells the contemporary stories of three performers with sight loss who migrate to the UK. Living independently in London for the first time, they each face new challenges with accommodation, language, and forging their careers and lives. With a virtual Goze to guide us, we will journey through story, music and aerial movement to encounter unique reflections on travel, blindness and migration with integrated description. For the best audio experience, we recommend using headphones, if you have them.
These contemporary stories are based on verbatim interviews with the three blind artists in the show. We’re thrilled to have Sarah Houbolt joining us to talk about her performance and this interactive, digital adaptation.
Register for your VocalEye Zoom invitation by contacting events@vocaleye.ca or call 604-364-5949. Please let us know where you’re from and if you identify as a member of the blind/partially sighted community or as a sighted supporter. This one-time registration will give you access to all upcoming Virtual VocalEye events.
The VocalEye virtual lobby opens at 6:30 pm Pacific Time for some pre-show mingling with host Amy Amantea. The pre-show introduction will begin at 6:45 pm with special guest Sarah Houbolt, joining us live from Australia. The feature begins at 7 pm. The running time is approximately 90 minutes including Q and A and a prize draw. BC residents will be entered to win one of two White Spot gift cards.
Sarah Houbolt is an internationally acclaimed Australian actor, dancer and physical theatre performer who specialises in aerials, acrobatics, hula hoop and sideshow. In addition to being an accomplished screen actor, Sarah has toured her award-winning solo show Koo Koo The Bird Girl internationally and is a regular performer at the Coney Island Circus Sideshow in New York. Her physical theatre work has seen her perform with acclaimed companies around the world including Pop Up Globe, The Dust Palace and Touch Compass Dance Co in New Zealand, Heidi Latsky Dance in New York and Extant Theatre and Yellow Earth in the UK. In 2018 Sarah was awarded the Australian Disability Leadership Institute‘s national Arts award. Currently, Sarah focuses on making short films and audio works, including for the Biennale of Sydney in 2020.
LINKS AND RESOURCES
Find out more about the Goze tradition in this lecture given by Kojiro Hirose, a blind historian from Osaka:
