Revoluton Arts presents Touchstone Tales 2:
Bury Park – inspired tales of life, love and loss
Directed by Kristine Landon-Smith
An exciting live online event of performance and stories inspired by personal testimonies of interconnected characters in a fictional family.
Touchstone Tales 2 is performed by Sagar Arya, Sudha Bhuchar, Ameet Chana, Rina Fatania, Naveed Khan, Hussina Raja and Ragevan Vasan.
The project runs in conjunction with the national Touch Test survey in partnership with Wellcome Collection, Goldsmiths University and BBC Radio4. The results of this survey will be announced on Radio 4 from Monday 5 to Friday 9 October daily at 13.45pm in Anatomy of Touch.
Sitting alongside the monologues, is a crowd-sourced film, Ramadan in lockdown Luton, edited by Lydia Howe and co-created by participants who shared footage of their Ramadan journey through the lens of touch.
Touchstone Tales is a unique collection of revealing and illuminating stories of Lutonians, seen through the prism of touch. These fictional self-portraits are written by playwright/actor Sudha Bhuchar and inspired by her residency in Bury Park during this unprecedented year, when Covid 19 stole so much human contact. Participants came together (physically and virtually) through workshops, interviews, and a crowd sourced/ co created film, Ramadan in Lockdown Luton. Bhuchar has transformed these shared narratives into a theatrical piece performed online and now captured as audio podcasts and a published text.
Ramadan in Lockdown Luton is the first ever crowd-sourced film telling the stories of Lutonians observing Ramadan and celebrating Eid in lockdown conditions. Participants filmed footage on their phones and cameras to help tell the story of this holy month and highlight the poignancy of exploring touch at a time when there was absence of touch’. What was lost and what was gained from not being able to be communal and tactile as normal? The paradoxes and unique circumstances were made apparent through the sadness of not seeing loved ones alongside the joys of finding new ways to connect.
The pieces are directed by Kristine Landon-Smith and produced for audio by Jonquil Panting of Jonx Productions. The music is by Niraj Chag with singing by Japjit Kaur.
