Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers

Funded: 2018–2019

Project Leaders: Scott McLaughlin, Kat Austen, Steve Ansell

'Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers' is a piece of sustainable theatre, where musicians interpret the various ways that passersby interact with the environment. Created at University of Leeds by cultural fellow Kat Austen, composer Scott McLaughlin, and Stage@Leeds director Steve Ansell. The piece uses a loose score that maps musical-behaviours with people-behaviours, combined with Image Theatre techniques to train the musicians to work with the power relations between the human-agents and environmental-agents. The piece was performed in Leeds on the 10th of October 2018.

The score <smell-the-flowers score v1> uses a set of loose musical actions that the players can interpret in relation to different classes of behaviours exhibited by people using the space. Since the musicians were positioned all around the space, they tended to pick up on different people's behaviours, and the range of possible interpretations allowed for an interesting musical texture.

Kat Austen, with musicians (Harley Johnson, Kieran Blyth, Jake Randell, Federico Pozzer, Hannah Firmin)