The Glasshouse comes to the Royal Shakespeare Company
The Glasshouse, a major new interactive light and sound installation from award-winning South Yorkshire multi media specialist and film maker Wayne Sables, is to go on display at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The £60,000 project has been funded by Arts Council England, Cast in Doncaster, Flux Rotherham and both Wakefield and Barnsley Council.
The fully interactive solar-powered installation - which responds to the way visitors move around it - was inspired by Wayne’s research into the work of celebrated American inventor and systems theorist Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose pioneering work with geometric shapes and structures are a important influence on the development of The Glasshouse.
And after an acclaimed tour of venues across Yorkshire last autumn, the Glasshouse will now be lighting up the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon from August 8 to 10.
It will also feature in a series of workshops at the RSC based around sustainability, music making and members of the public creating individual glasshouses to be displayed alongside the main structure.
“After our debut tour across Yorkshire, following our launch at Cast in Doncaster, I am delighted that the Glasshouse is now on the road again,” said Wayne.
“This partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company is extremely important to us as it opens the Glasshouse to a whole new audience and is the first step towards seeing it tour not only around Britain but internationally.”
The Glasshouse has been created in collaboration with Executive Producer Amy Dalton-Hardy, York-based composer Nicholas Lewis and Sheffield arts fabrications specialists Nelson and Woodward - artist duo Annie Nelson and Chris Woodward.
It has a strong environmental theme, with solar power providing all the energy to maintain the light and sound experience at every showing.
“My aim from the very start of the project and throughout the development of the whole concept was that The Glasshouse should be a genuinely Yorkshire based work and that everybody involved should be based within 30 miles of my home in Doncaster,” Wayne explained.
“I am delighted to have been able to attract such great Yorkshire creatives to bring my vision to life and am confident that in addition to a great piece of art, we are also creating working relationships that will grow over time and deliver a whole range of similar projects.
“It’s all about creating spaces where audiences can play and experience things and everybody gets something different from it.
“I more usually work in the medium of film but this is a collaboration of colour and light, which is actually what film is about too.
“I wanted to make something really beautiful that people don’t have to think too much about but which simply transports them away from the pressures of everyday life and presents them with an experience that will both give them pleasure and also stimulate conversation.”