The first public step and proposition of The Storm Cycle, designated Storm.1, and titled Nothing remains the same, has taken its place amongst the possibilities of the real, amongst those things that can happen – and was performed, for the 350 people who travelled to gather and meet it, in Pafiliwn Bont, Pontrhydfendigaid.

The work, shaped as two sequenced acts, drew on the first two books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, reimagining their unfolding narratives of transformation, through creation, and destruction.

Both explored and pushed our uses and delivery of narration, as an intimate unseen voice, telling its tales directly into the individual ears of the audience. 

Firstly, within the deep dark of a completely blacked out space. A darkness also inhabited by sounds and movements of a developing storm – that unfolded around us equally unseen, but increasingly heard, and increasingly felt, as it reverberated through the building and our bodies…

And secondly, against the direct and sustained visual act of a tree on fire – a burning 7m high dead oak tree, revealed just outside, when the large loading door in one end of the space rolled open, to let its light and image flood in…

[ Image: Mark Douet ]