© Marcelo Schmittner

The Dirt / Marianne Tuckman

in english

The Dirt is a very funny (also pretty sad) solo performance that explores how the climate emergency has changed the way we imagine the future. Marianne Tuckman uses her signature combination of voice, movement, and text to bring this pulsing tragicomedy to life.

In exactly the moment that it was predicted, the climate emergency has arrived. Everything has changed.

The last woman on earth is beside herself. She used to live in a nice house in a nice area and never thought climate change would actually, you know, affect someone like her.

But here we are. The Dirt has arrived at her door and is seeping into her house. Terrified, she calls her cleaner, a punk who has since been evicted, to come round and help, but despite all their efforts, the house just gets dirtier and dirtier.

Tomorrow, she had planned to have children and play with them. She wonders if this will be possible.

In this solo performance, Marianne Tuckman asks: If outside forces such as the climate crisis invade and contaminate home, how does our vision of the future mutate? And, a burning question facing my generation: is having children still an option?

performance, direction, script Marianne Tuckman creative producer João Maio sound design Marcelo Schmittner lighting design Nicolas San Martin Mohr artistic mentoring Cristina Mackerron and Rod Dixon. costume design Barte Liagaite director of photography Ndrika Anyika sound recordist Robert Wingfield first assistant camera Kojo Doku

Marianne Tuckman is a performer, deviser, dance artist and writer based between Berlin and the UK with an Mphil in creative writing (Swansea University), focussing on the relationship between text and embodied live performance.

Her mission: to make words sweat.

Her method: to love through conversation.

The communication of stories is what motivates Marianne to make work that combines humour, poetic metaphors, guttural dancing, multiple voices, and... chat. As a choreographer, she aims to initiate, organise and hold spaces for dance and talk conversations between diverse groups of people.

Marianne generally authors/ co-authors projects that she performs herself and has presented pieces in venues across Argentina, Lithuania, Germany, Greece, Norway, and the United Kingdom. She has worked as a performer with National Theater Reinickendorf (Vinge/ Muller, Berliner Festspiele), Manque La Banca, Gracefool Collective, 12 Days (Film 4), Punderson Gardens (Arket Christmas campaign), João Cidade (dance theatre) and Raul Vargas Torres among others. She is a resident at Onassis Air residency in Athens 2022/23.

Marianne is a recurring guest tutor in choreography and creative practice at Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

supporting program for The Dirt

Voices in the Foyer / Sound installation by and with Francissco Petrucci

in the foyer, 7.30-8 p.m. and from 9 p.m. onwards

Francisco Petrucci is a multidisciplinary artist keen on listening to bodies, things, people as research into the nondescript art of the everyday.


A Reading / Madeline Shann

On stage, 8-8:15 p.m.

In English

Madeline Shann is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist. Her various disciplines include theatre-making, performance, dance and choreography, writing, music, and film-making.

She works in dance, theatre, screen work and live art as a performer and in various collaborator roles for finished works and throughout research, development and production. She has worked with a range of other companies and artists including Eclipse, Sleepdogs, Gracefool Collective, Sharp Teeth, RashDash, Travelling Light and Third Angel.

Her own work explores and deconstructs mass media and pop culture messaging, and uses imagination and connection as an emancipatory tool to combat oppression, with a current focus on the environment, justice, feminism, race, joy, post-capitalist futures and the human experience of facing the age of collapse. https://www.madelineshann.co.uk/