Event: First Staging of ‘Lived Fiction’

Following the ‘work-in-progress sharing’ at Dance Ireland in Dublin in February 2023, Prof. Delia Ferri and Dr. Ann Leahy travelled to Guildford (UK) to view the first full staging of the piece ‘Lived Fiction’ commissioned by DANCING and choreographed and developed by Stopgap Dance Company.

On 6th April 2023 the piece was first performed at Ivy Arts Centre including full costumes, lighting and music as well as embedded audio-description and other accessibility measures to a small audience. The aim was to run everything together and to receive feedback on the inclusivity and accessibility of the piece and performance.

To this end, DANCING with the support of Stopgap also organised a focus group to gauge opinions and critical input on the embedded accessibility measures of the performance from an audience perspective. Dr. Ann Leahy led this focus group following the first staging with a number of participants and gathered experiences, opinions and suggestions on audience accessibility. In turn, these results serve to substantiate the empirical research under WP1 as well as to inform the future work on and embedded accessibility measures of ‘Lived Fiction’.