The making of The Luminous
Thank you for coming to see The Luminous. We hope that audiences will take away different things from it and that its many threads and layers will connect to people in diverse ways. Perhaps it made you think about the potential of protest, or about how some things change and some things never change, or about the human body – it’s power and fragility. Or maybe it made you want to go home and escape into a good book.
The original inspiration for The Luminous was sparked by our interest in three protests from different eras in which women placed themselves and their bodies at the centre; the match women’s strike of 1888, the Greenham Common protests of the 70s and 80s and the Reclaim the Night movement which began in the 70s and had a resurgence in recent years.
As Mighty points out in the play, our fictional book, Luminous, takes some liberties with historical facts. If you would like to learn more about the real events of the match women’s strike, we recommend the book Striking a Light by Louise Raw, which we used in our research. Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981-2000 reunites the women of Greenham to share their memories of their years of activism. The first Reclaim the Night protests in the UK were a response to the police instruction for women to observe a curfew during the period of the Yorkshire Ripper murders - Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter by Carol Ann Lee gives voice to the victims and survivors of Peter Sutcliffe. We were also deeply moved and inspired by The Five by Hallie Runbenhold, which tells the stories of the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper.
We hope you enjoyed the story and that you felt transported for a while. We enjoyed sharing it with you.
Catherine, Cassie and Rebecca
RedCape Theatre
Award-winning company RedCape is run by Artistic Directors Cassie Friend and Rebecca Loukes and is company-in-residence at South Street Arts Centre, Reading. Drawn to stories of ordinary people in extraordinary situations, our work is highly visual and physical and uses new writing. Previous shows include The Idiot Colony, 1 Beach Road, Be Brave and Leave for the Unknown and Thunder Road and On Track.
Biographies
Catherine Dyson is a writer and performer based in Cardiff. She is Associate Artist with RedCape and with Theatr Iolo. She is currently on a writer's attachment at the National Theatre. Credits for RedCape are On Track (writer), Thunder Road (writer and performer), Be Brave and Leave for the Unknown (writer) and 1 Beach Road (performer). Other recent writing credits include Peter Pan (Sherman Theatre Christmas show), Believers (South Street Arts Sitelines production), Bitcoin Boi (Riverfront Theatre), Transporter (in which she also performs, UK and Kolkata tour) and The Egg Man (BBC Radio 4). Writing projects in development include The Last Picture (selected for the RSC's 37 Plays Project), The Vanishers (Theatr Iolo) and I Will Still Be Dreaming (2nd prize winner in the Arch 468 Hope Prize)
Cassie Friend is a performer, director and an educator. She is co-founder and co-director of RedCape Theatre. She has performed in The Idiot Colony (Fringe First & Total Theatre award - Edinburgh Festival), 1 Beach Road, Thunder Road and On Track. And co-directed Be Brave and Leave for the Unknown and On Track on tour. After training in Paris with Jacques Lecoq, she joined Pig Iron Theatre in Philadelphia with whom she toured internationally for many years. She is Artist in Residence at South Street Arts Centre where she has directed and performed in many productions for the award winning Sitelines (Theatre in unusual spaces). She was also a compere for many years.
Rebecca Loukes is co-founder and co-director of RedCape Theatre. She trained in the body awareness practices of Elsa Gindler with Eva Schmale and Charlotte Selver and Asian martial/meditation arts with Phillip Zarrilli. She co-created and performed in The Idiot Colony and worked as co-director or dramaturg on all RedCape’s other shows. She is Associate Professor of Performance Practice at the University of Exeter. Her book Radical Sensing in Performer Training is forthcoming with Routledge.
Sabina Netherclift trained with Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She is a director, movement director and performer and co-founded Filament Theatre with Osnat Schmool. She is a resident artist at South Street Arts Centre, for whom she has co-created four shows, and directed Catherine Dyson's Believers as part of their award winning Sitelines programme. For RedCape, Sabina directed 1 Beach Road and co-directed On Track. Other directing work includes all of Filament’s work to date, four new plays for Rabble Theatre's 'Off The Block' as well as community participation projects for Turtle Key Arts, Opera North, Pegasus Opera, ENO Baylis and Royal Opera House Education.
Tina Bicât designs and makes for big and small performance of contemporary dance, circus, installation, unwieldy outdoor community events and intimate naturalistic shows. Her credits include work with Ockham’s Razor, The National Trust, NIE with the Young Vic and the Unicorn Theatre, Kew Gardens, Brunskill & Grimes, South Bank Centre, Cantata Dramatica, Dead Rabbits, The Barbican Centre, Amici Integrated Dance, The Oxford Story Museum, Turtle’s Model Theatre and of course RedCape Theatre. She won the Critics Circle award for her work with Punchdrunk, has written seven books on aspects of theatre practice and lectures in the UK and abroad on design and creative thinking. She is happiest with paint, scissors and glue in the workroom or sharing ideas in the rehearsal room.
Dougie Evans’s music has been in many award winning dance and theatre productions, BBC productions, short films, animations, National Trust audio walks, and sound installations.
They were Co-Artistic Director of Lîla Dance for 10 years, creating dance nationally touring dance work with exceptional soundtracks and a strong community focus. In addition they have collaborated with many dance and theatre companies including, Stopgap Dance, Commotion Dance, Ieva Kuniskis, Joli Vyann, La Petite Mort Theatre, Luke Brown Dance, Floods of Ink, Tim Casson, Yael Flexer & Nic Sandiland, The Ballet Boyz, Bootworks Theatre Collective, Platform-K, Micadanses, Indepen-dance, Aya Kobayashi, Ludus Dance.
Their unique sound comes from their ability to mix recordings of everyday sounds and real instruments into their work, transporting the audience so that they really feel like they are immersed into the fictional world of each work, even if that world is abstract.
Lara Paul (ASM) has been stage managing for three years, gathering her training from all over, including NSDF and Pleasance, but mostly working alongside the North Wall at St Edward’s school in Oxford. She has recently chosen to move to freelance stage management full time, and spent the summer working on Rosie and Hugh’s Great Big Adventure. Lara is very excited to be working with RedCape Theatre for the first time on The Luminous.
Cam Callagher is a songwriter and producer. Graduating from the University of Chichester with a BA in Music Composition he has focused his musical endeavours on writing, playing, and producing various Alt rock bands. His productions have received extensive Spotify editorial and BBC radio airplay, and his own band milkshed are currently touring in support of their debut EP.
Luminous tour dates 2024
25 Sept The Corn Exchange - Newbury
27 Sept The Exchange - Twickenham
4 Oct Northcott, Barnfield Theatre - Exeter
18 Oct Norden Farm - Maidenhead
24 & 25 Oct South Street - Reading
1 Nov Greenwich Theatre - London
14 - 16 Nov The Drum - Plymouth
Huge thanks to:
John Luther, Zoe Gibson, Barnaby Mc Arthur, Rick Bull, Dan Bryan, Gemma Twistleton, Hannah Wright, Mary Swan, Shaun Dawson and Ali King at Turtle Key Arts, University of Exeter Department of Communications, Drama and Film, Alan Bowyer at Primo, Su and Martin at Visions Event Solutions, David Garcia, Philippa Hambly, Andrew Dawson, Kate Newey, Rebecca Hillman, Rachel Fenton, Charity Gordon, Sue Howarth, Jo Shapland, Julia Meller, Kaite O’Reilly, Karen Quinn, Nick Sweeting, Andy and Frank Edwards, Richard, Flinn and Arran Brazier, and Martin, Roscoe and Emmett Williams.
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in The Luminous or would like to know more about some of the themes we explore, you can go to these resources and organisations:
