Design by Will Beeston

No-one should ever underestimate the impact that a bit of sound, light, and costume can have on the process of rehearsal itself.

In The Book of Disquiet, there is often a sense of longing to be somewhere else, the South Seas, for example, where for just a moment the writer might be able to be himself (who is in fact no single self).  The sea presents an opportunity to transcend the present in both time and space.  In our adaptation, we have set one of our three locations on a beach a couple of decades ago as a couple try to come to terms with themselves and each other.

It’s a place they have fled to but once there, they begin to wonder why they went in the first place.  The man builds sandcastles wile the woman plays solitaire.  In another location, we meet Pessoa, or a Pessoa-like character who muses on the art of playing solitaire while other versions of him fret about the inevitable loss that is gained from success, and the maelstrom of a life that is caught up in the apparent changes of others.  These locations are glitches, samples, fragments of the book that finds its grander narrative in the life of the modern-day office where our characters indulge in the mundanity of a blame culture that fires their emotions but eats at their souls.