Hydrocracker Residency at University Of Northampton

Hydrocracker spent the coldest week of the year in November in Northampton with a group of second year Contemporary Acting students. Fortunately, their hard work and engagement warmed us up.

We shared our thinking on site specific and immersive theatre and explored a range of questions:

• How do you give an audience agency so they can become participants in an event and not just be passive bystanders?

• How do you make the rules of the game clear and strong so an audience can “play”?

• What is the balance between structure and agency?

• What techniques do you need as an actor to navigate site specific and immersive work?

• How do you create branching narratives for an audience to explore?

• We explored some of these ideas exploring a potential new piece set in Taxis – watch this space

Northampton students leaning against and posing next to a white car.

We also spent some time with students from Public and Global Health who will be healthcare professionals of the future. They re-visited our latest digital piece - WHO CARES 2032 – about the future of healthcare and debated the issues it raised. Our work prompted the students to think about whether digital technology can help solve the current healthcare crisis, or would it leave too many people behind? Did they think individuals should take more responsibility for their health and free up healthcare professionals to tackle more pressing issues, or is that simply a way for governments to evade their responsibility?

We posed these questions as artists.  It was encouraging to see the healthcare professionals of the future grapple with potential answers.