Discovery Avenue
The Lowry + Walk the PlankSummer 2022
Stage Directions is a youth theatre project managed by The Lowry, designed to give young people aged 8–18 from underrepresented backgrounds a meaningful, hands-on insight into the world of theatre-making. Participants were divided into four age-based groups, each supported by their own team of theatre professionals, and over nine intensive days they collaborated to devise original pieces in response to a shared theme: Discovery Avenue. The resulting performances were presented to audiences of family and friends in a series of outdoor shows across the campus of the University of Salford.
For the Discovery Avenue Summer Celebration, The Lowry partnered with Walk the Plank Arts — one of the UK's leading outdoor arts organisations, based in Salford, with a reputation for creating innovative productions that engage artists and communities in a wide range of outdoor settings. Walk the Plank produced the celebration as a whole and also created a promenade performance that would weave between the young people's pieces, providing a connective thread throughout the event.
Central to the project's ethos was the idea that the young people should not only make their own theatre but witness professional artists doing the same — in real time, as part of the same event. To this end, artist Sophie Tyrrell and I were commissioned to create the linking performance piece: a professionally produced work that would run alongside and between the groups' devised pieces, giving the young participants a window into what it looks like when theatre practitioners bring an original work from concept to stage.
Taking our cue from the theme of discovery and a steer from The Lowry around the idea of "finding our direction," Sophie and I were drawn toward a more folkloric register — a world of strange creatures, ancient wisdom, and the kind of storytelling that feels both timeless and immediate. In collaboration with Walk the Plank and our commissioners at The Lowry, we developed a narrative centred on a mysterious beast that arrives accompanied by four Guardian Creatures and a Raven. Something is clearly wrong: the beast is unwell, diminished, no longer functioning as it should. Through the confusion of the Guardians and the guidance of the Raven, it gradually becomes clear that what is missing is its heart.
The four Guardian Creatures — representing Mind, Body, Spirit and Emotion — drew their inspiration from the Indigenous medicine wheel, a sacred symbol found across numerous Native American cultures, including the Lakota, Ojibwe, Cree, and Blackfoot peoples. The medicine wheel is divided into four quadrants, each representing different aspects of being — the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental states — with balance between all four understood as essential to health and wholeness. The wheel teaches that everything depends on the other directions within the four quadrants: if someone becomes unwell physically, their mind, emotions, and spirit are all affected in turn. There can be no harmony if even one of these is out of balance. It felt important to us to borrow from and learn from this framework — one that stands in such contrast to the dominant Western, colonial worldview, which has long elevated rational, intellectual knowing above all other ways of understanding ourselves and the world around us. That hierarchical model — in which the mind leads and the body, spirit and emotions are subordinate — is one that many would argue is having catastrophic consequences: culturally, environmentally, and in terms of our collective wellbeing. The medicine wheel offers a different vision entirely: not a hierarchy but a circle, not dominance but balance. Crucially, it was also understood as a guide for decision-making and navigating life's path — a complete person, in harmony across all four aspects, was considered capable of finding their true direction. It felt like a natural fit for a project built around the theme of Discovery Avenue: the idea that before we can find our way forward, we must first attend to all of what we are.
Each of the four groups of young people devised their theatrical work in relation to one of these four principles: Mind, Body, Spirit, and Emotion. The Guardian Creatures led the audience on a promenade journey of discovery across the campus, gathering a missing piece — a fragment of the beast's heart — from each group's performance. In the finale, these four pieces came together to form a whole heart. Restored and complete, the beast was healed and able to continue on its journey.
For the performance, I designed and fabricated the costumes for the four Guardian Creatures, while Sophie designed and fabricated the beast itself. Together, we also delivered workshops in which the young people created their own costumes for the finale, supported by Amy Hegarty, Laurie Nuttall and James Brown.
For the Discovery Avenue Summer Celebration, The Lowry partnered with Walk the Plank Arts — one of the UK's leading outdoor arts organisations, based in Salford, with a reputation for creating innovative productions that engage artists and communities in a wide range of outdoor settings. Walk the Plank produced the celebration as a whole and also created a promenade performance that would weave between the young people's pieces, providing a connective thread throughout the event.
Central to the project's ethos was the idea that the young people should not only make their own theatre but witness professional artists doing the same — in real time, as part of the same event. To this end, artist Sophie Tyrrell and I were commissioned to create the linking performance piece: a professionally produced work that would run alongside and between the groups' devised pieces, giving the young participants a window into what it looks like when theatre practitioners bring an original work from concept to stage.
Taking our cue from the theme of discovery and a steer from The Lowry around the idea of "finding our direction," Sophie and I were drawn toward a more folkloric register — a world of strange creatures, ancient wisdom, and the kind of storytelling that feels both timeless and immediate. In collaboration with Walk the Plank and our commissioners at The Lowry, we developed a narrative centred on a mysterious beast that arrives accompanied by four Guardian Creatures and a Raven. Something is clearly wrong: the beast is unwell, diminished, no longer functioning as it should. Through the confusion of the Guardians and the guidance of the Raven, it gradually becomes clear that what is missing is its heart.
The four Guardian Creatures — representing Mind, Body, Spirit and Emotion — drew their inspiration from the Indigenous medicine wheel, a sacred symbol found across numerous Native American cultures, including the Lakota, Ojibwe, Cree, and Blackfoot peoples. The medicine wheel is divided into four quadrants, each representing different aspects of being — the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental states — with balance between all four understood as essential to health and wholeness. The wheel teaches that everything depends on the other directions within the four quadrants: if someone becomes unwell physically, their mind, emotions, and spirit are all affected in turn. There can be no harmony if even one of these is out of balance. It felt important to us to borrow from and learn from this framework — one that stands in such contrast to the dominant Western, colonial worldview, which has long elevated rational, intellectual knowing above all other ways of understanding ourselves and the world around us. That hierarchical model — in which the mind leads and the body, spirit and emotions are subordinate — is one that many would argue is having catastrophic consequences: culturally, environmentally, and in terms of our collective wellbeing. The medicine wheel offers a different vision entirely: not a hierarchy but a circle, not dominance but balance. Crucially, it was also understood as a guide for decision-making and navigating life's path — a complete person, in harmony across all four aspects, was considered capable of finding their true direction. It felt like a natural fit for a project built around the theme of Discovery Avenue: the idea that before we can find our way forward, we must first attend to all of what we are.
Each of the four groups of young people devised their theatrical work in relation to one of these four principles: Mind, Body, Spirit, and Emotion. The Guardian Creatures led the audience on a promenade journey of discovery across the campus, gathering a missing piece — a fragment of the beast's heart — from each group's performance. In the finale, these four pieces came together to form a whole heart. Restored and complete, the beast was healed and able to continue on its journey.
For the performance, I designed and fabricated the costumes for the four Guardian Creatures, while Sophie designed and fabricated the beast itself. Together, we also delivered workshops in which the young people created their own costumes for the finale, supported by Amy Hegarty, Laurie Nuttall and James Brown.
