Showing @ QMU, Studio Theatre, Wed 30th March @ 17:00 and Sat 2nd April @ 14:00

Undoubtedly, the places and people we form attachments to and hold memories of influence the people that we become. As phone company Orange eloquently put it: we are who we are because of everyone. Where Orange aim to connect human kind with generalisations, Kate Bond’s production, a combination of installation and live theatre, examines the more specific relationship between people, and how we understand others through relationships we form with the world around us.

Bond’s initial inspiration for the piece came from travelling; “I started making associations between the places I was going and things like poems, literature or music. It’s fascinating how people’s memories layer on a place.” At the early stages of development, Bond handed out postcards and asked the recipients to write on it a place, and memory. These were then given to four writers who have produced monologues based on the themes and recollections on the cards.

The Memoirist’s Archive explores one way by which humans can experience empathy. “A lot of people have been excited, interested and curious about what other people have written. I hope that people can connect with the postcards, and relate to others because of them”.  Audiences will be guided through the production by footprints and maps, appropriate to the sense of journey, progression and passage of time which The Memoirist’s Archive will encapsulate. Bond’s experiences on the Drama and Theatre Arts course have undoubtedly affected her work. She claims this piece is still the research and development of something else. “In Level Three, our lecturer at the time took us out in the pouring rain around Glasgow, talking about places and spaces – that walk has been a major influence – I wanted to recreate in other people how I felt on that walk. Maybe that’s intangible, but I’m not finished trying yet”. Theatre is either criticised or acclaimed for its ability to evoke a shared experience in audience members. The Memoirist’s Archive is another step to understanding what, how and why we are who we are.