Sound is working against Melanie Wilson. On the eve of the first
showing in Dublin of Landscape II, the wilfully singular writer and
performer's latest solo show, which tours to Tramway in Glasgow for one
night only next week, Wilson is wandering an echoey corridor looking
for a place where she can be heard. Given how key sound has become to
Wilson's work ever since she brought her first solo piece, Simple Girl,
to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe back in 2007, such attention to detail
is all too fitting.
Wilson, after all, operates her own soundscapes using a console
situated on a desk in front of her as she performs her work, lending a
mysteriously hypnotic depth to her stories. Following Simple Girl and
2009's Iris Brunette, as well as a larger work, Autobiographer in 2012,
Landscape II is Wilson's most ambitious work to date, and incorporates
a panoramic film and video backdrop into her increasingly multi-media
mix. As applied to a story of three women separated by a hundred years
that move between Afghanistan and the Devon hills, Wilson's
ever-expansive palette should make for a tantalising experience.
“I was interested in womens' experiences,” says Wilson, having at last
found somewhere acoustically compatible to conversation, “and how
things are passed down from generation to generation, not just through
our own families, but by other women in other places. Then I started to
think about different types of isolation and solitude, first of all
from walking the hills in North Devon, then about women in Afghanistan,
and how in some ways they're cut off from each other by wearing the
burka, and how they live in their own world. That's a very different
experience to our, and we'll never know that sense of isolation, but I
also wanted to look at solitude as a good thing, and how being alone
and separate from the world can be quite empowering.”
Given her predilection for solo work, such parallels with Wilson's own
experience are plain to see. It's ironic, then, that her work is
becoming increasingly collaborative. While she has been looked after by
maverick producers Fuel for some time now, for Landscapes II, Wilson
has been working closely with film-maker Will Duke.
“The way sound operates in my work is very location-based,” Wilson
says, “and I've thought about using images for a while, but not just
for the sake of it, which could ruin the purity of the sound and
theatre. Because this piece is very location-based, it felt like a good
place to start working with images in quite an expansive way.”
An even bigger change for Wilson over the last couple of years has been
the development of her sound design work. While her work on
Autobiographer won her the Best Sound Design Award in the 2012 Off West
End Awards, Wilson has collaborated with theatre director Katie
Mitchell on two major large-scale productions. The first saw Wilson
work alongside fellow sound designer Gareth Fry on an adaptation of
Austrian writer Friederike Mayrocker's novel, Night Train in Cologne,
while the second, produced earlier this year, was a version of
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella, The Yellow Wallpaper.
“These are by far the most radical things that have happened to me over
the last couple of years,” Wilson says. “It was a huge jump up for me,
because technically these shows are on a massive scale, and working on
them has really helped me develop as a sound artist. The really
admirable thing about Katie is that she's really interested in artists.
When we met, she didn't know a thing about me, but we hit it off, and
she's really interested in what you think about things. She gives you a
lot of freedom and really lets you loose, but she's also really
rigorous sand demands a lot, so it was great to flex that muscle in
that way.
“I'm not a normal sound designer. The feelings and sensations of how
sound can tell a story are a passion for me, so to go into those two
shows was really terrifying for me at first, but I think I blossomed.
It was really affirming, and gave me a lot of confidence.”
So much so, it seems, that, as well as possible future collaborations
with Mitchell, Wilson has big plans of her own.
“My big new project for next year is an opera,” she says. “I've thought
about it a lot, and I spoke to Katie about it, and after working with
her I think I now have the confidence to work on that large-scale.”
Those intrigued by such a prospect perhaps shouldn't hold their breath,
however.
“I'm so much at the beginning of it,” says Wilson. “It's the beginning
of a very long journey.”
Landscape II, Tramway, Glasgow, September 25th.
www.tramway.org
The Herald, September 25th 2013
ends
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