The People Do Say Words

Initial Concept By Lorna Rees

Lorna Rees is Artistic Director of Gobbledegook Theatre who make innovative, cross art form work with theatre at its core. They make work for unusual places, usually for the outdoors, creating happenings through live performance, music and installation. Lorna says:

“I’ve been working on a trilogy – 3 pieces about noticing the world: listening, looking and speaking, based on the Japanese mystic apes ‘see no evil’ ‘hear no evil’ and ‘speak no evil’. For the Flyover I’m proposing to create a piece about speaking.”

The piece will be about who has the power to say things in public. Who is allowed to say things in public space. We are interested in JOYFUL activism, in positive disruption. Being angry & dissolute can lead to apathy, being heard is different. It gives you power.

‘The people do say words’ (a phrase from an overhead conversation in the library) is about WHO has the power to speak: When do WE get to shout from the rooftops?

As people walk over The Flyover everywhere they look, there will be words – a taking over of the public space with the public’s words. Signs on sides of roadways, from windows of surrounding buildings, on the leaves in the trees, in surprising places you might not see. Audiences will be invited to stroll The Flyover in order to read or hear the words. The words being shouted from the rooftops.

The words used will be borrowed from local people. Lorna wants to use the words of people living on Gerard Street and St Joseph’s Crescent and Tom Mann Close, in Holy Cross and Marybone. Lorna will spend time talking to the local community to work out what they’d like to shout from the rooftops – intimate, local or universal issues and messages they want to convey and questions they want answering.