Blueprint Fringe Festival-A sense of exploration at the Queen’s Theatre.

Blueprint was a fantastic fringe festival held at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch- our theatre reviewer Ruth Kettle-Frisby shares the last review today.

The sense of exploration – through deep time and through sound, as well as space – was a theme that resonated in the second half of the end of the week.  

Usher was a fascinating achievement by second-year students at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Audience members were escorted through dark labyrinthine theatre warrens to be presented with some arresting scenes: from the stage, we gazed upon a sea of theatre seats dissected by cobwebbing red threads, sporadically filled with isolated, zombie-like figures. Glowing, thought-provoking transitions,and a celebration of the unseen prevailed in this creativechallenge to conventional spatial perspectives in theatre.

Walking on Deep Time by Sára Märc felt like an intimate journey inward as well as geographically around Hornchurch. The walk synthesised art, geology and the local landscape as an experiment that immersed and resituated us in our natural environmental context. Ros Mercer and Ian Mercer brought the landscape to life, adapting geological revelations for a toddler’s as well as an adult’s imagination. Time opened up, allowing us to pan much further out than we’re used to, equating the entire Palaeolithic period with the majority of human existence. 

Climate change took on important significance through a geological lens, and Ian drew hallowed attention to the humble soil, trodden beneath our feet in real time, as one of the most precious substances on Earth: “the thin interface between geology and biology”, where dead stuff is recycled into new life; its loss leading to migration, famine and war.

From the sloping meadow outside Queens Theatre, down into the valley by St. Francis Hospice, up to St Andrew’s Church opposite the Hornchurch Brick wall, and through St. Andrew’s Park, we travelled through time, holding the Ice Age as rounded pebbles in our hands.

Defiant Journey by cellist Jo-anne Cox, and writer and director Kate Lovell, is a political piece about the impacts of the cost of living crisis and austerity on disabled and neurodivergent people. The audience are invited to sit on beanbags and to participate at leisure, whereupon we’re welcomed with an assortment of sensory items including an egg shaker, silky scarves – oh and some iridescentlybesequinned dragon material!

Jo-anne’s sparkling performance on her purple Dragon Celloguided this immersive experience: she conjured mystery and comfort to soothe and excite the senses in the dimly lit room; a projection of nature quivering away on the wall. Accompanied by Elinor Machen-Fortune’s lushly abstracted vocals, structured with a breathy motif, the fluctuating soundscape that these women weaved progressed to intense crescendos; seemingly expressing outward exclamations of inner anxieties. 

The entire performance seemed to originate organically from within, presenting unaltered thoughts and sounds, unencumbered by explanation. The raw emotional literacy and immediacy that emerged from their duet – combined with a flutter of fantastical imagery – harmonised this unique and accessible piece in its current form.

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