Return

Return is a piece for four speaking voices, a string quartet, pipes, drums and dance. It’s an exploration into where long poem, ritual theatre and ceremony meet.

It weaves together and layers up text, music and performance as a celebration of the wheel of the year, of emerging and receding, and the common ground of death and renewal that unites us regardless and inclusive of all faiths and heritages.

It speaks of cycles and returns, of seasons, elements and the beyond human realms and rhythms; of expansion and contraction at our base and at our back that refuses the violence of fractured whiteness, patriarchy and linear consumer capitalism. It is a meditation on the need to both mark and lose all track of time; how we inhabit the greater whole and have it be frame, container and guidance.

Return was performed in the round, and by candlelight in Govan & Linthouse parish church, over the full moon (occurring at 9.24pm) on Saturday October 28th 2023. The expanded ritual will be performed again this year, in the same space, exactly a year on.

The venue is fully accessible.

Return platforms women, non-binary and/or trans performers, and will be accompanied by program notes about the concept and construction of linear clock time, of timelessness, of marking time and connection to place.

For more information, performers bios, images and updates: lisafannen.uk/return