Creative Team
Concept, Creation and Performance: John-William Watson
Sound Design: Adam Vincent Clarke Lighting Design: Clancy Flynn
Creative Support: Beth Emmerson, Bakani Pick-Up, Joshua Cartmell (MELSH) & goodnighttheskye
Special thanks to Peter Watson
An impossible space, an impossible chair, in an impossible time.
In the company’s first ever solo work they imagine a Buster Keaton-esque tragically comedic character, existing in a world one surreal step removed from our own. Inspired by the works of surrealist painter René Magritte, they lace a simple proposition, a person and a chair, with existential ideas of consciousness. Exploring the nonsensical nature of life and death, through a lens of absurd, silent film-esque humour.
Through the company’s continued curiosity with the relationship between sound and movement, they craft a theatrical, surreal and cinematic landscape hued by the works of Bach.
Click me!
“We are surrounded by curtains. We only perceive the world behind a curtain of semblance. At the same time, an object needs to be covered in order to be recognised at all.”
⁃ René Magritte
Why This Chair Does Not Exist was commissioned by Messums West in 2022, to be presented alongside Hang in There, Baby at The Festival of Dance ‘22. The work went onto tour nationally and internationally, being presented in a variety of venues including outside as part of The City of London’s Bartholomew Fair and within a converted barn in the Normandy country side.
The work has also been presented as part of A Treachery of Images, a new solo double bill performed by John-William Watson.