Interview - Victoria Pratt: Innovative theatre maker is a rising star

Still only 25-years-old, Pratt is causing theatre makers nationally to sit up and take notice.

Pratt is in Bradford this week, making an expanded version of an earlier piece, Silica, which takes her back to her childhood.

An English Literature graduate of Sheffield University, Pratt has spent the past three years based in Leeds, working on projects variously as an actor, director, designer and visual artist. In May last year she was invited to Spill, a festival of new and experimental theatre work held at the studio of the National Theatre in London.

"Being given that platform was a huge step up for me," says Pratt. "It meant that people took me seriously. Having a piece of work at the National is a major help when you are meeting producers and other theatre companies."

Pratt is one of a generation of young artists who, having trained in Yorkshire, is determined to stay in the region. For generations before the likes of Pratt, artists, and theatre artists in particular, have been unable to resist the gravitational pull of the country's capital and taken their talents southwards.

Pratt, settled in Leeds, still finds herself travelling to London for work, but is delighted when the opportunity comes up to present her own work and to collaborate with other artists, in Yorkshire.

Following the festival of new work at the National last year, Pratt was wooed by a number of organisations, but one of the companies offering her the opportunity to develop her work was Development Lab. Run by producers Leonie Hart and Alan Lane, the organisation is based at Bradford University's Theatre in the Mill. It works with emerging and established artists both nationally and locally.

Pratt jumped at the opportunity to develop her piece and the funding she received from Development Lab was matched with cash from the Arts Council.

The funding has allowed Pratt to expand her Silica and to bring on a number of other international artists to collaborate on the piece.

Lighting designer Azusa Ono has travelled from Japan to work on the piece and actor David Meyer, who performs in the piece with Pratt, began his career in the legendary Peter Brook RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Silica is based on Pratt's childhood and explores the idea of memory and its loss.

"I grew up near the coast in Norwich and the rest of my family all lived around the country in coastal towns," says Pratt.

"The idea for Silica came about three years ago when I was visiting home and read an article about climate change and how the coastline is eroding. The fact that within 50 years the coast of the country, and the make-up of these places I grew up around, is going to change so dramatically, is very powerful to me."

The research part of the project, which has been a three-year labour of love, began with Pratt driving around the coastal areas of her home county with her father. "I filmed footage as we went around and that became a part of the piece I presented at the National last year," she says.

Having developed the piece over the past month at Theatre in the Mill, it has become a much larger and more intricate piece of work.

The audience stands in and around a set which is split in two, with an older actor standing in the seascape at the front of the stage and Pratt at the back in a landscape representing her memories of childhood.

While the piece is bold and experimental and was warmly received in its embryonic state, Pratt accepts that the sort of theatre she creates will not be to everyone's taste.

"I think it's fine if people come to this kind of theatre piece and don't 'get' it," she says. "That's not a failure on the part of the audience, nor is it a failure of the artists creating the piece. It can be hard for a theatre audience used to going into a space and sitting on seats to watch a piece presented on stage to suddenly accept an entirely different kind of theatre.

"I think those of us who make this kind of theatre, we're used to being in a situation where you're watching a site specific piece and a show designed to be performed to one person, but for an audience more used to a traditional sort of theatre, that can be quiet unnerving."

However, if you want to take a chance and keep an eye on someone who remains one to watch, Silica could be just the thing.

Silica, Theatre in the Mill, Bradford, May 27-29, 8pm. Tickets: 01274 233200.