EAT YOUR HEART OUT Birmingham & Brighton
EAT YOUR HEART OUT 2009 – 2011
An Edible Performance
Eat Your Heart Out – Teaser from Kindle Theatre on Vimeo. Video: Steven Davies
EAT YOUR HEART OUT performed at A..E Harris Building 29th October – 8th November 2009
In the last remaining corner of the human world, three cooks are summoned to create a celebratory meal using only the carcass of their once great kitchen. Inspired by the Baroque era, Flemish paintings and the contemporary obsession with Armageddon, EAT YOUR HEART OUT mixes the leftovers of disaster with the ceremony of the dining room in a performance that invites the audience to literally eat the story.
Read Bella Todd’s Guardian Blog article about edible performance
Combining live music, a rubbish dump and a highly original menu, EAT YOUR HEART OUT is an edible performance by Kindle in collaboration with artists and experts from a host of different creative fields. Set in the vast expanse of @A.E Harris in Birmingham’s industrial Jewellery Quarter, the set was an apocalyptic junkyard made from Birmingham’s own rubbish and installed by designers Tony Appleby and Claire Wearn. Multimedia design company filmcafe installed a pepper’s ghost affect Queen, illuminated the set with actor controlled lighting that included: paint pot spot lights, swinging blubs and an exploding bicycle wheel/car windscreen chandelier. Regional composer-musician Phill Ward worked with Kindle performer-musicians to create a score that reinvented the decadence of the Baroque era and the unforgettable menu was conceived and delivered by food designers Blanch & Shock.
‘Recalling the orgiastic ritual of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Maurice Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen, and taking its stylistic cues from the vivid carnality of a Caravaggio, Kindle Theatre’s work in progress is a brilliant, interactively staged slab of grotesque…’ Read more of Latest 7 review here
‘One of the most fantastic stage sets I’ve ever seen’ Brighton Argus, 2009
‘…I felt Kindle’s undoubted ambition was undermined to some extent by their self-indulgence…’ Birmingham Post, 2009, Read More
EAT YOUR HEART OUT, Birghton at COACHWERKS September 2009.
Set created with Tony Appleby & Claire Wearn. Recycled waste, Magpie recycling. Lighting and video, Steven Davies
The studio version performed at Bite Size festival, Warwick Arts Centre, 2009
Installation extracts of EAT YOUR HEART OUT have been performed at:
Birmingham, PILOT nights @ A.E Harris Building, Thursday 2nd July 2009, 7.30pm (www.pilotnights.co.uk)
EAT YOUR HEART OUT Birmingham was supported by Arts Council England and the Sir Barry Jackson Trust. Development has been supported by PILOT, China plate theatre, Stan’s Cafe and COACHWERKS.
images by Steven Davies, Claire Wearn (Installation) and Alicja Rogalska (BITE SIZE)
Saw this on Fri 30th – really recommended. A great amount of creative talent and energy has gone into creating a strange future world which the audience get to walk through and interact with. The actors are right there next to you all the way, and the sinister story of the strange future the characters live in unfolds as you go through the different sets. Really good change from the often stagey world of regular theatre. Fab!
I still feel sick!!! Knew I shouldn’t have bitten into that small round ‘sweet’….was worth it though! Much better than the Rocky Horror Show!! Never knew what was going to happen next…extremely entertaining, thanks!!
Fantastic, one of the best and fresh works i have seen in a few years! thank you for a visual treat as well as an interesting dinner. i thought the way the audience was lead into the dinner hall was fab and im still humming the tune.
Kindle succeeded in immersing me for an evening in a world both fascinating and frightening, charming and abhorrent, mediaeval and futuristic. I was taken out of myself, but also repeatedly thrown back into myself, with thoughts which stimulated, provoked, and challenged. I love theatre that does this. (I’m a great fan of Punchdrunk, too).
PS as a vegetarian, I loved the rocket and kale, less keen on the offal stew — though this challenge too was appropriate to the event.
Loved this show. It was well worth the drive from London to Birminham and we felt good all the way back. Great sets, costumes, music and fun From the beginning the audience were participants and were drawn in to a weird, unsettling,challenging world – how could they have known my one fear is to be the last one to be chosen?- right into the dining room. Be brave eat up! You won’t regret t. Yum! yum!
I loved this performance. it really evoked an emotive response from the viewer, and made them consider their diet! Fantastic show, professionally pieced together and totally involving for the audience.
Congratulations – this really is something quite different and daring!