Labyrinth @ Eden

"Labyrinth - Losing yourself is the key to the game"
In 2011 The Eden Project invited NoFit State to make a site specific piece of work to celebrate their 10th birthday. This was a great opportunity for Tom, Firenza and the creative team to come up with something different, and also held huge logistical challenges! Taking inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges, the show took place in four different locations across the Eden site, with the audience having three different journeys through the first half, then all coming together in Eden's covered stage for the second half finale. There was also a programme of daytime interventions and performances across the site, notably in the Mediterranean Biome and on the silver tent's four kingpoles which were constructed on the turning circle of the Eden land train. Many a visiting tourist had to wait for the swinging trapeze to finish before their train could leave! This summer residency allowed the spirit of Eden and that of Nofit State to come together to celebrate their similarities in believing in the extraordinary, and it was very special to be able to call Eden our home that year. We worked closely with Tom Critchley and Hilary Garnham at Eden, and this was the first year that Gareth Jones composed for NoFit State.

"Physical, visual, sensual, Labyrinth is an exploration of our demons and all that makes us what we are.
A young man returns to a place of memory. Here he builds a labyrinth on a hill so that the end, when it came for him, would lose its way. A circle of fire and a lion stand guard over the entrance and in the centre of the maze he makes camp in a big chamber.
In his life, he had desired many things, with a passion that lacked all scruples and all fear. Now he desired nothing except for things to last. To live on. Never end. Here, in his vast underground refuge, he descends into memory and desire amongst figures of dream and nightmare, ghosts from a real or imaginary past, through tenderness and violence, crossing light and darkness, until he can say goodbye to old demons and welcome new ones.
Labyrinth is a play, an installation, a promenade performance where singing and live music will take you through roads suspended in mid-air, crossing indoor and outdoor corridors, into fields of flying creatures looking down, along lanes and courtyards where extra-ordinary men and women will make their raucous voices heard. You will not simply watch from afar: you will enter their world. You will feel their breath, touch their faces, witness their courage in a whirly-gig of moving images and sound."
Firenza Guidi, June 2011

Watch this short clip