Tickets for these very special tailor-made performances will be available very soon. In the meantime, watch the trailer and find out more below.
Following on from the success of The Book of St Helens, Andy Field and Beckie Darlington are returning to St Helens this May with a very special St Helens version of their project Lookout.
Lookout is a one-to-one encounter between one adult audience member and one child performer. Two people of very different ages, meeting to have a conversation. They stand together somewhere high up, looking out at the streets and buildings of the town below, and begin to talk about its future. They see before them the world as it is now and as it might be many years from now.
Watch the trailer here
For the audio described trailer please click here.
Having toured around 22 other locations across the world including China, New Zealand, Canada, Egypt and Europe, Lookout has this year returned to its UK roots for the first time in four years to visit five new locations in England - including St Helens.
These new performances will be created with children whose lives have all been affected by the pandemic in very different ways. This is a chance for those children to look toward the future, to give shape to their hopes and fears, to dream both of spectacular sci-fi utopias and all the smaller more everyday changes they think might make their home town a better place to live.
We are delighted to welcome Andy and Beckie back to continue their work with primary school children from our town. They’ll be working with 16 children from a local primary school to plan and write the performances, continuing their work with the young people of St Helens to imagine and shape the future of their town through their own eyes.
Andy and Beckie said "We’re so happy to be able to continue our relationship with Heart of Glass and the young people of St Helens by presenting a new version of our project Lookout working with the children of this local primary school. Lookout is a very special project for us – one that has been developing slowly over the last five years, working with children in towns and cities across the world, from Shanghai to Llandudno. It means a lot to us to be able to bring this project to St Helens as the next chapter in our ongoing work with Heart of Glass to enable young people to think in radical and hopeful ways about the past, present and future of their town."
When
On 20 and 21 May 2022 Heart of Glass, Andy, Beckie and the children will invite you to a location looking out over St Helens town centre for a unique and tailor made performance about St Helens from this entirely new perspective, where the children are not only part of, but lead the conversation.
Past responses to Lookout
The project was a great opportunity for the children to think carefully not only about their futures but their city’s future too.
- Mrs McHutchison, Teacher, Blackfriars Primary School
The lookout project was amazing, I liked to talk to the audience members and tell them about my favourite parts in Glasgow and I liked to hear about theirs too.
- Shakira, Class 6, Blackfriars Primary School
Lookout is a warning and a challenge: a little thing that leaves big questions behind; an intimate encounter that manages to take in the entire city. It gives you a glimpse of a possible, even a probable, future – one that may or may not include you – and charges you to do something about it. Not for your sake, or for mine, but for the future itself.
- Matt Trueman, WhatsOnStage
More about Lookout
Originally commissioned by The Arches and supported by Arts Council England.
Created by Andy Field
Produced by Beckie Darlington
Music and Sound Design by Tom Parkinson
Dramaturgy by Sibylle Peters
Read more about Lookout and listen to past versions on the Lookout website
aplacetolookout.co.uk/
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