Kate McIntosh

Lake Life

Audience during Lake Life

Photo: Bea Borgers

Recommended for 14 and up (or 10 and up if fluent in English).
The performance is participative, with light physical contact.

Sa 9.9.2023, 18:00-19:30, MDT

Su 10.9.2023, 15:00-16:30, MDT

"Lake Life" is a collaborative game, a puzzle, a celebration — step in with two feet and, maybe, you end up leaving with three. The game is transformation, and we play it in the space between imaginary and real. 

How can we break free from the roles we are expected to play in the outside world? What, if anything, connects us all? Perhaps it’s the possibility of imagining a new world, one within which we can re-invent our ways from scratch… In "Lake Life", you are given the opportunity to open up and explore curiosity towards yourself and others, experiencing a dreamlike world of imaginary bodies, species, and self-transformation. Here, you meet the ‘The Changelings’.

In this new playful performance made for young people and adults to experience together, McIntosh and scenographer Nadia Lauro craft an immersive landscape that offers fresh ways of seeing and being together. This thought-provoking and at times surreal work is conceived to evoke curiosity and the social imagination within and in between generations, pushing the boundaries of performance, theatre and installation with off-beat humour and gentleness.

”[My previous] interactive pieces Worktable and In Many Hands, which we’d made entirely for adult audiences, became so much better when young people joined too. I knew I wanted to make a place for audiences of mixed-ages to spend time together, and especially with people they don’t know.” – Kate McIntosh on Lake Life

Please note that this is an interactive performance in English where audience participation is expected. If this raises any questions, please email info@mdtsthlm.se before booking your tickets. 

Kate McIntosh

Kate McIntosh is an artist practicing across the boundaries of performance, theatre and installation. Her works often focus on the physicality of performer and audience, the manipulation of objects and materials, and how relationships with and between audience members develop over the time and space of a performance. Guided by her ongoing fascination with the mis-use of objects, McIntosh’s practice can be characterised by a playfulness with audience, a love of theatrical images and off-beat humour. Originally from Aotearoa, New Zealand and trained in dance, McIntosh has developed an internationally recognised body of stage and trans-disciplinary work which tours extensively in Europe as well as to Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Her stage works include the performance solos All Natural (2004),Loose Promise (2007), and All Ears (2013) and the group performances Hair From the Throat (2006), Dark Matter (2009), Untried Untested (2012), In Stereo (2015 with Bree Van Reyk) and To Speak Light Pours Out (2020). Her installation works include the video-installation De-Placed (2008 with Eva Meyer-Keller), and the interactive-installations Worktable (2011), In Many Hands (2016) and Lake Life (2023). Within these creations she has invited collaborators such as Tim Etchells, Eva Meyer-Keller, Jo Randerson, Arantxa Martinez, Eduardo Abdala, Lilia Mestre, Charo Calvo, Minna Tiikkainen, Mikko Hynninen, John Avery, Bree Van Reyk, Josh Rutter and many more.

A founding member of the Belgian performance collective and punkrock band Poni, McIntosh has collaborated as a performer with many directors including Tim Etchells (UK), Wendy Houstoun (UK), Simone Aughterlony (NZ/CH), Antonia Baehr (DE), and Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre. McIntosh holds an MRes in Performance and Creative Research from Roehampton University (UK) and regularly teaches performance practice within various university courses.

McIntosh is also a co-director and founding member of SPIN - an artist-initiated production and research platform in Brussels, which also organises public gatherings for knowledge exchange.

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A project by

in collaboration with

Arantxa Martinez

Visual installation

Nadia Lauro

Sound Design

Eric Desjeux

Light Design

Eduardo Abdala

Artistic advice

Harun Morrison, Sarah Parolin, Tim Etchells

Sound research

Charo Calvo

Technical direction

Koen De Saeger in collaboration with Tatiana Carret

Studio Assistance

Maria O’Herce, Ashley Van Pouke

Drawings

Dari Gatti

Cards

Marzia Dalfini

Harness

Karolien Nuyttens

General management

Sarah Parolin

Production management

Niamh Moroney

Administration

Laura Deschepper, Elie Agniela

Production

SPIN (Brussels), Backbone Berlin GbR (Berlin)

Co-production

kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), BRONKS (Brussels), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Viernulvier Kunstencentrum (Gent), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Festival d’Automne à Paris (Paris),T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers Centre Dramatique National (Gennevilliers), MDT (Stockholm), SPRING Performing Arts Festival (Utrecht), BITTeatergarasjen (Bergen), SCHÄXPIR Festival (Linz), figuren.theater.festival (Erlangen), Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto)

Funded by

Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC)

Residency

GC Pianofabriek (Brussels)

Thanks to

Hans Bryssinck, Diederik Peeters, Laura Deschepper, Anna Rispoli, Marnie Slater, Caroline Daish, Britt Hatzius, Sheena McGrandles, Barbara Greiner, Frida Laux. Special thanks to all the volunteer audiences who helped us in the process, and Sabine Zahn and Joshua Rutter for loaning the practice "Ghost Head" from the Unwritten Library premiere May 18th, 2023 kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Belgium.

To note

Lake Life draws on elements of the science fiction character Odo and the species of Changelings, who feature in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 – 1999) a science fiction television series. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is based on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. It was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, on Brandon Tartikoff's request, and produced by Paramount Pictures. Lake Life is fanfiction, it is intended for non-for-profit contexts only. All the rights of the original Star Trek: Deep Space Nine story belong to Paramount.

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