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Ross Mullen, Millie Taylor, Charlotte Hawkins, Jane McGinness, Peter Ireland.
Directed and written by Liz Swift and Peter Ireland.
Commissioned by Wrights and Sites for The Quay Thing.
Treading Water was presented by five people in a condemned boatyard at Exeter Quay at dusk for a week in August '98. It used two video sources, two slide projectors and an OHP. The audience were seated on an assortment of rough scrap chairs in the centre of the boatyard facing the water. The action happened all around them - on wrecked and burnt out boats, platforms made of broken wooden pallets and a landrover.
As the audience entered the space the ground was covered with a tonne of books arranged neatly in rows. Text was projected onto various surfaces around the yard along with some images of the same space in the daytime. There was also a video of the performers discussing the merits of breaking censorship laws.
There was a large illuminated sign saying:
Magic Theatre - Not for Everyone.
Three performers were dressed in old white clothes. They had life jackets which they put on during the piece. The show started with them playing a game involving the books, actions and forfeits as the texts scrolled through around them. One performer in a red dress sat at the OHP writing for most of the piece, occasionally stopping to sing or to wash away her words with canal water.
The piece was divided into 10 scenes. For the purposes of this documentation the performed script is presented separately from the other texts.
