ENGINE BRAKE opened last week at the New Diorama Studio in London NW1. The process of making has been hugely enjoyable one, with a bright and talented team of collaborators assembled by The Plasticene Men director Simon Day.

Show premieres are terrifying things at the best of times, but if you are devising new performance work, you can find yourself plagued with doubt. As a maker (or performer) you have to trust your instinct, but you are always looking for some fresh perspective and a reassurance that the ideas of the show find an effective conduit through the form that has evolved through rehearsals. The process of arriving at this is messy and non-linear. Show content is a sublimation of the universal and the personal – woven into a complex tapestry of threads in which coherent patterns can become lost. In this frenzied atmosphere critical feedback from audience and/or reviewers can expose personal insecurities and vulnerabilities in unhelpful or destructive ways. Recognising this, I have learned to take reviews, whether positive or negative, with a pinch of salt.

A well written analysis, however, is such a breath of fresh air – for audience and creatives alike. Rosemary Waugh writes eloquently and sensitively about the show, ENGINE BRAKE in this Review in Exeunt (14th May 2018). For me it is a reassuring confirmation that the complex ideas and conversations that informed the making process have percolated through into a poetic form that – even though the threads are ‘unhemmed’ – has a coherence to it.

We enter the second of four weeks’ touring, with the show moving to Salisbury Playhouse this week (17th – 19th May), then Plymouth Drum (28th May – 1st June) and finally Bristol Wardrobe Theatre (6th – 9th June).

photo by Matt Cawrey.

Simon writes about the development process of ENGINE BRAKE in this Blog post from The Plasticene Men.

Engine Brake press review: exeuntmagazine