With motherhood as a point of departure, Aftermath explores the sense that ‘something is over’ and questions what comes next.
During the making of the show, Recacha carried out an outreach programme for mothers and their small children, immersing herself again in that period of early childcare and its impact on the mother’s sense of identity and agency.
Inspired by Recacha’s own experience of motherhood and the social isolation that can accompany it, Aftermath questions what it means to live in a ‘post-everything’ world – post- feminist, post-truth and now post-time. The show imagines a world where the characters are dead, where change is no longer an option and no future awaits. Is motivation possible in such a world?
The audience is seated within the performers’ arena. They are part of the dancers’ journey and yet they are not directly involved. Aftermath comments on our reluctance to act in the face of certain situations, and on the normality of this passivity.
“giddy, ridiculous and amusing two-hander”
“Eleanor Sikorski and Charlotte Maclean weave patterns of wit and absurdity in Eva Recacha’s quietly radical show”
“The pair heat up to a giddy, edge-of-madness energy reminiscent of early French and Saunders.” – The Guardian
“It’s perfect casting with Sikorski as the acerbic, calculating wit and Mclean as the mercurial creative force; their two trajectories start on a fragile thread and fuse together to the point of familiarity and mutual admiration.”
“With its cross between The Private Life Of and Monty Python, Aftermath is as much an exploration of ennui as a picture of the divergent elements of artistic endeavour.” –
Writing About Dance
Coreography: Eva Recacha in collaboration with Charlotte Mclean and Eleanor Sikorski.
Sound design: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Lighting Design: Jackie Shemesh
Set and Costume design: KASPERSHOPHIE
Performance: Charlotte Mclean and Eleanor Sikorski
Co-writers: Charlotte Mclean, Eleanor Sikorski, Eva Recacha
Dramaturg: Simon Ellis
Production Manager: Emma Wenlock-Bolt
Producer: Johnny O’Reilly
Sound artist and composer
Cameo is a game in which narrative conventions play both as enemies and best friends. With a nod to Hitchcock and film noir, it refers to the conventional narrative correspondence of three fundamental components: non-verbal communication, sound and framing. Magnification, displacement and juxtaposition manipulate and transfer these cinematic features in a theatrical construction in which stylised actions are expanded and exchanged in order to open up their narrative potential. Cameo is an image out of focus, an open question. It does not impose a single valid answer but invites the contemporary audience to question the importance of the individual perception and interpretation.
Cameo’s music explores how to build a sonic frame for a murder scene to happen. Travelling from folley work to musical sound effects to build up the raw tension of the image.
‘Precision-crafted.’ Luke Jennings, The Observer
‘Smart fusion of structural game playing and emotion.’ Judith Mackrell, The Guardian
‘A classy creation.’ Jamila Johnson-Small, Bellyflop Magazine
Choreography and performance: Riccardo Buscarini, Antonio de la Fe and Mariana Camiloti
Sound : Alberto Ruiz Soler
Light design: Michael Mannion
Music: Muir Mathieson
Costume assistants: Julia Kalache and Mariapia Mineo
Set advisor: Cecilia Massoni
Hair and make-up: Ieva Dubinkaite
Photographer: Benedict Johnson
Finalist of The Place Prize 2011