"It's so grand": Theatre masters Dreamthinkspeak on life in Blackpool's famous Winter Gardens

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Taking Blackpool’s listed 19th century Winter Gardens Hotel as their home, theatre-makers Dreamthinkspeak’s new work features a woman who spends 50 years living in the old building until a global property company takeover. Creative Director Tristan Sharps explains more

“I think the thing about the Winter Gardens itself is it’s kind of an unusual building. It’s so grand. I’ve never come across a building like it.

It’s huge: it’s got an incredible range of vast spaces within it. Just the interior space is massive. The ceilings are incredibly high.

There’s a huge amount of space that is what you would call, in modern terminology, unexploited space. It’s not a building that’s been built to be economically viable.

It’s a building that has been built, from an aesthetic principle, to be an extremely interesting and wonderful place for people to come to. You very rarely build buildings like that now.

My work tries to operate at a slightly different level where it’s in the things, the spaces, the detail of the architecture where you understand a little bit about the interplay between these two people.

I live in Brighton but whenever I’m creating a project I relocate. I think that’s really important, partly because my work has to absorb the local environment.

We’ve been working out of a local workshop for the past month-and-a-half, and then we’re gonna transplant everything, as much as we can, to the building. But at the same time, because so much of what I’m doing is about responding to the building as it is, you can’t really transplant everything.

I would say the piece definitely provokes people to think a little bit outside of the box. Things aren’t delivered to you.

There’s very little performance, actually. That’s what I really wanted to explore in Absent. The soap opera of narrative is not something that is a part of my work.

The two key people in it, Maggie Morgan and the CEO of Northern Leisure Holdings, Sir Charles Dickinson, are like opposing forces, opposing philosophies, but they never meet. There’s a constant dialogue going on between them.

You see them constantly in the building as you walk through, in the architecture, the things, the atmospheres.

I never like to just take over a building and do a big design job on it. It has to be about the environment that is beyond the walls of a building and that local environment also has to be a mirror to a much wider, national and international environment.

To try to get those connections you really need to live in that place. You also need to work with lots of people who live in that place, so I normally bring a core crew of people with me and then I like to augment that with a large number of local, skilled people: technicians, artists, model-makers. That’s really important.”

• Absent runs from August 20-25, September 12-16 and 25-29 2016. Book online. Visit dreamthinkspeak.com.
  

Three places to see

Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool
A beautiful art venue situated in the centre of the town. Its stunning architecture hosts an extensive programme of temporary exhibitions including historical, modern and contemporary art, featuring established and emerging artists, as well as displays from its permanent collection.

Astley Hall and Coach House, Chorley
A Grade I-listed museum, historic house and art gallery. The Coach House features an art gallery and the hall has magnificent plaster ceilings and oak panelling,as well as a fine collection of paintings, ceramics, textiles and furniture.

Victoria Baths, Manchester
The most intact Edwardian Baths in Britain - an architectural gem, rich in stained glass, mosaic floors and decorative tiling.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/historic-buildings/art560561-dreamthinkspeak-blackpool-winter-gardens-hotel-theatre