By Poppy
Last night we opened Flicker to an almost sold-out house in the Lilian Baylis Studio of Sadler's Wells. Despite a madly busy day - whose idea was it to have only a day in the space with a huge amount of sound, lighting and video to tech (over 100 video cues in a 55 minute opera) - it was a resounding success. Everyone from funders, to the patients & staff who have contributed to the project and even the random audience members with no connection to the production or to Metta all loved it and found it simultaneously a huge insight into Locked In Syndrome and the work of the RHN and also a profoundly moving and emotionally engaging performance.
So Will was possibly the most stressed of all of us with his several hundred cues and a somewhat recalcitrant set of computers to work from, however everything came together smoothly - if last-minutedly and everyone commented on how beautiful and powerful the video was and how much it added to the performance.
Both Jon and I were slightly shell shocked and I think it will take a few days to process fully how it all went - a surreal experience to have just three days rehearsal and end up presenting something so polished (not quite the concert performance we had originally imagined back in 2011). But we couldn't have wished for a better showcase for the work - the singers were extraordinary, the band under the masterful conducting of Andrew Gourlay were sublime and the actor - our good friend and god mother to our son Noah - Loren O'Dair was astonishing in her portrayal of the Locked In character Iris - communicating so much literally just with the movement of her eyes.