You enter David Shearing’s installation The Weather Machine to a dimly lit space with a floor of wooden palettes and occasional grass verges. The audience are given wireless headphones which emit aural messages alongside the external soundtrack that comes from a variety of speakers around the theatre.
James Bulley’s ambient soundtrack is at times alienating and discomforting, at others calming like a balm with many audience members laying back and letting the soft sounds seep over them. Likewise with the text, both in the ‘Field Guide’ we are given and the beautifully recited poetry of Kamal Kaan.
In one sense the piece is a kind human experiment, with the audience as guinea pigs to see how we react to the obscure instructions and suggestions. It is as if Shearing wants to know more about each one of us as well as giving the gist of a story with memories that are personally relevant to us. Alongside the audio and poetry are two film screens that are elegantly projected upon with Eno-esque ambient visuals that are similarly suggestive and very serene.
The experience is extremely evocative, sublime and sensual. But we also face our fears and phobias, being in darkness, being in a room with a group of strangers, and hearing sounds and seeing visuals unexpectedly out of our control. Each performance is influenced by the weather conditions of the day, so I’m just glad it wasn’t snowing!
There is a sense of magic realism despite the sophisticated technology which effortlessly radiates light and warmth, wind currents and even rain. These factors are echoed cleverly in the sounds, such as the raindrops on cymbals or the tempestuous breeze. There are a bird’s wings turning suspended from above which re-appears in the film of birds against a vast sky.
The piece really takes you on a journey and this will be different for each individual. For example, I was unable to traverse the space due to my disability, but this didn’t spoil it at all, in fact twice I was fetched mementoes of the experience, a photo and letter to be read at home. So the whole thing is entirely subjective, personalised in a way that ‘straight’ theatre never can be.
As I have been practising mindfulness for the last six months the idea of ‘the present is the only tense there is’ was a familiar if difficult concept to perceive. And the catharsis is clearly tied in with psychological ideas too, giving a profundity and complexity without being pretentious. I’d really like to read some of the feedback comments as many other audience members were actually acting in reaction to the setting quite notably.
A unique event that I’d describe as a cross between a restful pampering and a ghost train, a dialectic dichotomy I think Shearing has left us deliberately.
As seen on 7 February, Stage@Leeds