An incredible show will open in Newcastle on July 28, 2009 on the Davy Bank of the Tyne River in the UK. This dynamic performance piece will run through August 8, 2009 and those traveling in the city would do well to book a Newcastle hotel in advance, as there are many festivals, celebrations, performances and exhibitions happening throughout the city in the coming months this summer. The show is titled, “The Beautiful Journey” and is a production that is innovative and evocative. The company, Wildworks, is the result of the director and his performers desiring an open venue, outdoor venue, desiring to reach communities through the use of those communities as the setting and backdrop for their work. Many are veterans of the traditional forms of theater, and many are still active in that spoken word kind of show performed in grand theaters. One thing that runs through the spirit of this company and the artists involved with it, is that they just can not get enough. Well, neither can their audiences.

The director of Wildworks Company is Bill Mitchell. Mitchell and the originated members of Wildworks, met while working with the Kneehigh Theater in Cornwall. This is a company with concepts that were born out of circumstance and situation. Due to the lack of a theater building in Cornwall at the time, Mitchell and his actors took to the streets, so to speak. The performed in schools, community halls, the sidewalks and parks of the city, in the middle of the landscape, the culture and the people of society. What they found was that spoken word theater lacked the power necessary in the outdoor arena, that images and content came from physical movement and visual means. What they also found was that without three walls, a curtain, and an orchestra pit separating the players from the audience, the performances became much more immediate, reflections not only of their performance, but of the environment or place and of the audience members themselves.

They began to change the process in which they work. No scripts are involved. No plan is laid out. They reach a location, be it an industrial warehouse or the banks of a river and they start with their instincts. They start with the feel of a location, the emotional responses, sometimes with a narrative in mind, but many times leaving that to the location to evoke. Once that location is found, they focus on the people, the people who work in the warehouse or live along the river bank. Their works are the heartbeat of the people for whom they will be performing for, their stories, their feelings and thoughts. Mitchell states that in this way of working, he has been profoundly moved and incredibly humbled. It is a completely different way of experiencing an audience than the experience gained performing in traditional venues. The show in the banks of the Tyne in Newcastle will run for two hours each night, and is slated to offer up fire, flowers, food, film and stunning visual imagery. The show will go on regardless of sunshine or rain, and will be one of the major events occurring in Newcastle this summer.