Following last years The House of Asterion we have once again been working with the entire 3rd year of Coventry University Theatre and Professional Practice degree for research & development of an original ensemble piece. Last year The House of Asterion was concerned with youthful sacrifice and this year it’s the vastness of outer-space.

Aloclasp is a performance that examines the mind-boggling totality of the universe, its mechanics and the theories that help us understand it; from the violent birth of our own planet to its impossibly distant edges.  Presented through Kindle’s inimitable style, Aloclasp disregards conventional linear narrative in favour of a series of provocative, disconcerting and spectacular moments.

 Thursday 3rd – Saturday 5th November, 8pm, Ellen Terry Building, Jordan Well, Coventry

Read the Review from Marie-Louise Elton HERE

Read more about making of Aloclasp from 3rd year student Tim Scotson

As I write this we’re three weeks into rehearsals for the show that has come to be known as ‘Aloclasp’ and the most appropriate word I can find for it is nebulous, which seems apt. After all, even though space is unimaginably vast it isn’t exactly empty. Breaking up the vast stretches of nothing are a billion and more stars and circling those are untold numbers of planets and asteroids. The sky is littered with stars and rocks and novae and even a nebula or two. So yes; if it is anything, Aloclasp is nebulous and that is exactly what it needs to be.

There is an entire student yeargroup (something like thirty five people) working collaboratively on the project and so many people can really crowd the creative process.In my experience if you were to simply throw thirty five students in a room and tell them to make a play, you would probably be lucky to get a final product in less than four years so the fact that we will have produced Aloclasp in around four weeks could reasonably be regarded as a miracle. And without the influence of Kindle it might have taken one, but they brought with them a working method that drove home focus and constant engagement while also allowing the whole group to work together on finding the material and playing with it. The end result is that a task that might have been a chore has instead been an utter joy.

Of course as far as themes go you could hardly get more scope and resonance than ‘outer space’. For as long as our species can recall we have looked up into the heavens, at Orion and Taurus, at the majesty of the Milky Way and the darkness of the eternal void and we have wondered. It must have been the stars that first griped the human mind and so awe-inspiring were they then that our ancestors named them for their gods and heroes. Who can truly say that anything has changed?  We are just now taking our first tentative steps into the heavens of our predecessors but one day we may stride amongst the stars like titans and stand toe to toe with the gods and heroes of old. The night sky is eternal and as long as humanity exists it will look upon its grandeur and be inspired.

The temptation when making a play is usually to start with a narrative but here that seems a strangely arrogant and self-defeating goal. Space is so vast and its impact upon humanity so multifaceted that to choose just one tale to tell would seem impossible. So we eschewed linear narrative in favour of exploring the history of humanity’s love affair with the stars. Just as the human quest for knowledge will take us beyond the stars to greater vistas of revelation, so too does Aloclasp refuse to be restrained.We are inviting the audience on a journey of discovery, and I sincerely hope that they come to it with that same sense of excitement and anticipation for exploration that we have had since the project began.