The company is celebrating more than ten years of creating professional theatre with older artists and is marking the occasion with a Double Bill at Stage@Leeds on 24 and 25 July.
For ten years, The Performance Ensemble has quietly been changing the landscape of British theatre. Founded on the belief that creativity continues to grow throughout our lives, the Leeds-based company has spent a decade creating ambitious professional work with older artists, placing their experiences, imaginations and artistry at the centre of the creative process.
Long before conversations about aging became part of the cultural mainstream, The Performance Ensemble was inviting audiences to encounter later life through theatre, dance and music that is generous, thoughtful and full of humanity.
This month, as the company enters its second decade, it returns to Stage@Leeds with a Double Bill that brings together two distinctive artists whose work is rooted in collaboration.
Choreographer Tamara McLorg and director Alex Elliott have each created a new work with members of The Performance Ensemble, drawing on conversations, memories, movement and music to produce performances that could only have emerged from the people in the room.
Although very different in form, Requiem and The Rest is Silence share a fascination with the lives we build over time. Together they create an evening that reflects on memory, love, loss, friendship, humour and the quiet moments that shape who we become.
Tamara McLorg: “Requiem has been many years in the making. Set to Gabriel Fauré’s luminous Requiem, it explores a piece of music that has accompanied me throughout my artistic life. Working with members of The Performance Ensemble has allowed that long-held idea to find its final form, creating a dance that carries tenderness, generosity and emotional depth without ever becoming sentimental.”
Alex Elliott: “The Rest is Silence grows from a different place. It’s built through conversation and shared experience; the work gathers songs, stories, reflections and moments of unexpected humour into an ensemble portrait that feels both intimate and universal. Every rehearsal has contributed to its shape, revealing the richness that emerges when people are given time to listen to one another.”
Neither work begins with a script waiting to be performed. Both begin with people.
That commitment has defined The Performance Ensemble since its beginning. Under the artistic direction of Alan Lyddiard, the company has developed a national reputation for creating performances that reveal the extraordinary qualities of everyday lives. Its productions invite audiences to look more closely, discovering beauty in experiences that are often overlooked and recognising the remarkable creativity that continues throughout later life
At a time when Britain is becoming an older society, The Performance Ensemble offers an important reminder that age brings perspective, imagination, humour and artistic possibility. The company’s performers are experienced collaborators whose lives enrich the work they create together. Their performances carry a depth that cannot be manufactured and a generosity that leaves space for audiences to see something of themselves reflected on stage.
Over the past ten years, The Performance Ensemble has become one of the country’s most distinctive voices in contemporary performance, creating work that sits comfortably amongst theatre, dance and music, while continuing to challenge assumptions about who gets to make art and whose stories deserve to be heard.
The Double Bill marks another step in that journey, bringing together two artists with very different creative languages and an ensemble whose openness and curiosity shape every moment of the performance.
Main image: Performance Ensemble 2020. Photograph by Sara Teresa.
