A theatre show aimed at teenagers with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) is to go on a nationwide tour in the coming months.
The show, Tunnels, has been created by Frozen Light, a company whose artistic directors have many years of experience creating theatre for audiences with PMLD and autism.
Tunnels has been designed to play to small audiences of 6 people with PMLD and their companions. It is a multi-sensory production that fuses live music, sign and movement.
In Tunnels, the heroine, Lana, has to search for the light that has mysteriously disappeared from her city.
So, leaving the place that she calls home, Lana travels deep below the city into an underground world filled with music, smells and curious characters.
Accompanied by a small audience, a musician and an intriguing chap called Cardini, Lana must journey into new worlds and dark places if she is ever to find the light again…
Each tunnel is a different sensory experience. For instance, they appear to smell different: one of something old and musty, another of chocolate. One tunnel is warm and feels like sand but the next is cold and wet. One tunnel is deeper than Lana has ever been before and glows oddly in the dark.
“There is a lot of one-to-one sensory action involved,” said Lucy Garland, one of the founders and artistic directors of Frozen Light. “Every part of the story has a sensory element – there are things to smell, things to feel – and that gets taken around and offered to the young people [although] nobody is forced to get involved. There is minimal language in the show and we use [sign language] Makaton alongside that.”
The tour starts on January 24 at the New Wolsley Theatre in Ipswich, before going out on tour to theatres in Newbury, Canterbury, Cambridge, Colchester, Bordon, Didcot, Chipping Ongar, Basingstoke, Norwich, Harlow, Bedford, Derby, Plymouth, Caernarfon and ending on Mary 29 at the Dundee Rep.
For a full list of venues and dates, go to: http://frozenlighttheatre.com/tour-dates/
