“It made me feel - uplifted, and included”

In March, we took SparkLIVE, our immersive multisensory theatre production, on the road!

Following invitations to perform at Hamilton Arts Festival and Auckland Arts Festival, we took the tour to Northland so that our more isolated communities could experience multisensory theatre ……. and it was a huge success!

SparkLIVE is a show you can touch, taste and smell, as well as see and hear, and we performed to over 600 audience members, more than 60% of whom were people with disabilities who struggle to engage with traditional theatre shows. We feel it is important for everyone to experience this unique artform. Spark LIVE also helped to make the Arts Festivals more inclusive and accessible, what a win!

Enjoy this review of the Auckland Arts Festival from Sam Brooks.

Highlights included performing at Auckland Arts Festival on World Down Syndrome Day: highly appropriate given the young actor playing the lead role, Kate, identifies as a young woman with Down syndrome.

Thanks to all those who provided feedback on SparkLIVE. Here are a few snippets.

The sensory moments were brilliant. Not something that you experience in mainstream theatre. As an adult I got to play with flour and ripped paper in a formal space.

This was the first experience of this type of theatre for sure. I have taken children with disabilities to many other shows, but your show was designed for them, definitely next level!

The sensory moments were an absolute highlight. One of my students was so engrossed with the show and didn't want the show to end. The string, bowls and spoons, blankets, smells, everything was a hit. They reminded me of all the cool things I can do to support the sensory needs of my students

There is not enough for us here in the Far North. We would love to attend more events like this.

Your performers engaged our people from start to end with all the fabulous sensory interactions.

You are all super inspiring and we truly appreciate you bringing your show all the way to the Far Far North. We would absolutely come again and would encourage others to join too.

Charlotte Nightingale performing in Spark sensory experience.

Glass Ceiling Arts Collective’s Artistic Director, Charlotte Nightingale, who is also the writer and director of SparkLIVE (and Production Manager and Tour Guide) wrote a few words to wrap up the tour. Please enjoy!

After weeks of lugging set and props out of a truck, sweating, singing and playing a uke, getting covered in flour, freezing my fingers whilst grating ice and driving around the beautiful countryside of the far north in a laden truck, I’m home. The place is quiet and peaceful, and outside my window I can hear the faint braying of one of my horses. I’m back to the place where it all began, at 3 am one early morning in lockdown with a torch and a notepad and a snoring husband beside me. I would never have guessed that this little seed would have been performed so many times to so many different people. To audiences big and rowdy to small and intimate. In venues as big as the Concert Chamber in Auckland Town Hall to the RSA in Opononi. I’m immensely proud of all we have achieved in these last few months under quite challenging circumstances, at times wondering how we would make it all happen?

I think if I have learnt anything from this project it is to value those people that have invested in it. From those that put their heart and soul into crafting it; Jackie Clarke, Hamish Davies, Lily Mae Ivatt Oakley, Sonny David Ray, Matt Goldsboro’, Myles Rae, Zoe Elvin, Brianna Linkhorn and Sam Jones. To the people that believed in it and programmed it; Hamilton and Auckland Arts Festivals to name just a couple of places. And the audiences that made it, as the audience has as much to do with the experience as any of us on stage. To Hayley our support person, chef, camp mum, runner and sometime multisensory facilitator and Indy my daughter who came along when we realised we just needed an extra pair of hands to pack the people mover. And then to Mike and Diane who in spite of it being an incredibly challenging time for them with Mike having a substantial bump to the head that required some quite major medical intervention, they still managed to continue to fundraise till the bitter end!

I always worry that I put too much on everyone, I would love a team of roadies so that it was just a little bit easier! But as I pass the next massive box to Jackie or as the four of us pull out the bed truck and carefully lay it on yet another stage I know the reason they do it all. It is because when you perform this work, you see how very little there is for this community and what a massive impact it has on people’s mental health and wellbeing. “We don’t often see our people, I mean really see them.” said a support person one day, “but today I saw Shane and I was quite overcome with emotion by it all”.

I’m particularly proud of the fact that as truck mum I managed to pack it like a game of tetris, no mean feat for someone with ADHD whose chaos strewn across the house has been the cause of many an argument. Managing to make a 3 hour pack in to a 1.5 hour pack in with break for a latte (Allpress wherever possible!) was a triumph! And for our young cast and crew members for whom this is the first experience of the headiness of life on the road, ka pai, the laughter said it all, you’ve truly been bitten by the bug. I am taking next week off, my body feels decidedly more achy than usual but I do so with a heart that is full and mind that will no doubt have a wee bit of space to plan out our where to next………

– Charlotte Nightingale, Writer/Director of Spark

What’s Next?

Glass Ceiling Arts Collective are intending to take Spark LIVE on tour to other parts of the North Island and to the South Island too. Please contact us if you would like to see Spark in your local community.