The Performance
Audio transcript:
WSI made performances at every scale, from small, intimate street theatre to vast outdoor spectacles with thousands of people watching. But whatever the scale, there was always a commitment to engaging with their audience. The crack of a bonfire. Hundreds of lanterns moving slowly through the dark. A live band playing under an open sky. Music was absolutely central to WSI's identity, and their original compositions, drawing on folk, jazz, and musical traditions from around the world, were crafted with real care. The soundtrack to Raising the Titanic was written to take an audience on a complete emotional journey: from anticipation, through drama, all the way to something close to grief. Raising the Titanic followed a three-act structure, but it also included a community market and a public dance that ran into the night, breaking down every boundary between theatre and street, actor and audience, art and life.
Underneath all WSI's spectacles, there was always something serious being said. WSI came back again and again to the same big concerns: the natural world and how we're failing it; the absurdity of power; the devastating cost of war. Raising the Titanic, staged in 1983, drew on the anxieties of the moment, nuclear submarines had sunk ships during the Falklands conflict just the year before, and the notorious shipwreck became a way to speak about nuclear warfare, class inequality, and our attitudes towards the natural world. Parliament in Flames was a direct provocation, carnivalesque political theatre that took the Guy Fawkes tradition and turned it into a challenge to authority.
If you are visiting the physical exhibition, Screen 2 features footage from a 1981 Thames TV broadcast documenting that year's performance of Parliament in Flames in Catford and footage from a Channel 4 documentary broadcast on Raising the Titanic in April 1985, each capturing what the performances looked and sounded like. In this digital companion, the Performances page brings together further audiovisual material to give you a sense of the range and atmosphere of WSI's live work across different productions and contexts, including footage of the 11th Ulverston Lantern Procession, a song from Raising the Titanic, and footage of Nutcracker.
Edited clips from the Ulverston Lantern Parades: 11th Ulverston Lantern Procession
In this video, local participants gather on the street and begin to light their lanterns. The event consisted of four processions that began in different areas around Ulverston before converging together in King Street. As one group, the procession continued through Market Place to Ford Park where the participants settled into the audience to watch a pyrotechnic sculpture driven by cyclists.
Ulverston Lantern Parades, Welfare State International, 1993, WSI/5/4/27/6/2/1
Edited clip from Raising the Titanic soundtape: ‘When Man First Flew’ song
In this audio clip, the performers of the Raising the Titanic, acting as the women and children who survived the Titanic wreckage, sing a song describing a conversation between humanity and Mother Nature.
‘When Man First Flew’ in Raising the Titanic soundtape, Filmscreen Ltd, 1983, WSI/5/3/47/6/1/1
Edited clips from Ulverston Performance of Nutcracker: ‘The Skeleton Wedding’
In this performance, John Fox introduces the thematic and cultural background to the third story in the Nutcracker called ‘The Skeleton Wedding’. Tanzanian and British performers sing and dance to two songs, ‘Look out Fool’ and ‘Bones in the Ground’, demonstrating WSI’s collaborative storytelling, celebratory theatre and colourful lyricism.