Mr Wilson's waterborne production Opal's Comet sets sail across Calderdale
If you happen to be walking along a towpath on the Rochdale Canal or the Calder and Hebble Navigation next week, you might be in for a magical surprise.
As part of CultureDale, Calderdale’s Year of Culture, West Yorkshire-based outdoor arts company Mr Wilson’s will be presenting their waterborne musical performance Opal’s Comet from a barge that is travelling from one end of the Calder Valley to the other over the course of six days.
It draws on traditions of storytelling, pilgrimage and folk music and takes the form of a song cycle, performed by a live band called The Greyhounds, exploring the seasons of grief and how we navigate loss and transformation. It is the brainchild of Mr Wilson’s artistic director Sonya Moorhead who founded the company with her partner Will Lenton in 2013. Their first piece of work was a street theatre commission called Mr Wilson’s Second Liners, performing up-tempo 90s dance classics as a brightly costumed brass band. Phenomenally successful, it has gone on to tour worldwide, attracting viral audiences online and building a loyal fanbase.
“Mr Wilson’s Second Liners is our flagship project and Opal’s Comet was born out of that,” says Moorhead. “It actually started life as a short story that I wrote a few years ago – it was inspired by a weird lucid dream that I had at a time when I was bereaved. I woke up with the whole narrative in my head.” This was shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 which changed the way everyone worked but had a particular impact on the arts. “The Second Liners is all about bringing people together and of course we couldn’t do that during the pandemic, so we started thinking that this could be an opportunity to make new work in response to the moment,” says Moorhead. “Everybody was experiencing grief, people were losing people and losing opportunities for connection. I started writing the story out in longhand and when we began to emerge from the lockdowns at the back end of 2021, early 2022 we decided to create something that was very uplifting and positive yet acknowledged the losses for all of us. We wanted to make something beautiful.”
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The short story featured an image of a golden ship and Moorhead’s initial vision for the show was an ambitious one. “I thought we could build this massive ship and take it all over the UK – I like to think big,” she says, laughing. She decided at this point to take some advice from an old friend Steve Gumbley, a veteran of the outdoor arts sector. “He has been a real mentor to me and he said make a little golden barge and put it on a safe boat,” she says. “He and his colleague Andy Plant worked together to create a model with descriptions from me. We knew that we wanted it to fit onto a canal barge – the canal network is so great because it goes so close to where people are.”
The next consideration was how to tell the story and Moorhead, who is a singer and songwriter as well as a theatre maker, decided upon the format of a song cycle. She worked with her band The Greyhounds – John Ellis on piano, Sarah Dale on cello, Ian Fletcher on guitar and Rachael Gladwin on harp – writing the songs. “Rather than literally tell the story we work through the emotional narrative through the songs,” she says. At the end of 2021 they did a research and development ‘test drive’ of the production in Burnley. “Because of the timing of it, it was maybe one of the first things that people had seen since we had been in lockdown and they were very emotive with their response, they were really moved by it,” says Moorhead. “We thought we have definitely made something that works here.”
They then did a second mini tour of it in 2022, touring to Burnley, Wigan and Manchester city centre working in partnership with the Canal & River Trust. Shortly afterwards CultureDale was announced, they approached Calderdale Council and won the commission. The crew of ten embark on their waterway odyssey on Wednesday. Wearing golden clothes, they all perform in character on the boat. “We start at 12 noon each day and do four hours a day, so it is 24 hours in total – there are 12 songs in the cycle, one for each month of the year,” explains Moorhead. “The idea is that we move continually, slowly through the countryside, performing all the while. Something really wonderful happens with the music when it hits the water, you get this wash of sound across the landscape. And then the sound quality changes when you are down in a lock or going through a tunnel.” The performers will also be kept busy with the business of the boat too – there is a skipper in charge but it is all hands on deck with the logistics – there are around nine locks to navigate in the first two days of the journey.
“We are hoping that people might wait for us on a bridge, walk alongside us or a really good thing to do is to walk towards us,” says Moorhead. “People love watching boats go through a lock it is a meditative experience. I’m very mindful of keeping everything going, but actually the whole show is really gentle and it gives people a chance to slow down, to reflect.”
And there are opportunities for the audience to get involved in the performance too. “We found when we have done the show before that people have really enjoyed singing the songs together, so we decided to provide the lyrics. Being able to read them and sing them yourself helps audiences to find a way into the project. They become custodians of it.” In the run-up to the performances the company have been working with schools and community groups delivering workshops.
Moorhead hopes that the show will bring some much-needed light and positivity. “I really think that joy is the act of resistance right now,” she says. “I know that the world is incredibly sad at the moment – it feels very apocalyptic but we still have the right to experience joy and colour in our lives. This is a thoughtful, uplifting piece. It is a celebration of the natural world around us too. I would like people to have a moment of solace and feel connected with their community because we are all together and whatever is happening, everything is moving. We are moving together. Through personal experience, I know that bereavement isn’t a fixed state, grief goes through stages and our collective grief is moving through phases. The performance is, more than anything, about hope. It is a message of hope.”
Mr Wilson’s performance of Opal’s Comet takes place along the Rochdale Canal and the Calder and Hebble Navigation, May 22-27. Everyone who comes is asked to comply with the Canal & River Trust towpath safety code. For more details and to download maps, including accessible points along the route, song lyrics, journey planners and other resources, visit mrwilsons.org.uk