A co-production with Vanishing Point, Fondazione Campania Dei Festival - Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and Tramway. In association with Eden Court Vanishing Point vanishing-point.org Wonderland Created by Vanishing Point Conceived and directed by Matt hew Lenton With thanks to Set, lighti ng and projecti on designer Kai Fischer Lung Ha’s Composer and sound designer Mark Melville Savalas at Film City Costume designer Becky Minto Grid Iron Dramaturg Nicola McCartney Martyn Robertson at Urban Croft Assistant Director Rebecca Morris The Nati onal Theatre of Scotland Traverse Theatre Cast Wee Stories Gabriel Da Costa, Flávia Gusmão, Pauline Goldsmith, Paul Thomas Hickey, Tron Theatre Jenny Hulse, Damir Todorović and Owen Whitelaw Royal Lyceum Theatre Citi zens Theatre Producti on Manager Fiona Fraser Christi ne Dove Stage Manager Lee Davis Euan McLaren Deputy Stage Manager Catherine Devereux Mallinson Television Producti ons Lighti ng technician Rory Kay Video technician Sam Jeff s Sound technician Ross Ramsay Photography Tommy Ga-Ken Wan / Francesco Squeglia Graphic Design Greenlight Creati ve Internati onal Distributor Aldo Grompone Manager / Producer Severine Wyper Projects Manager Eleanor Scott Press Manager Lesley Booth NOTE FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Going further Vanishing Point’s process of creati on always starts with an idea that people really have over their own consent? How should individual and grows and develops in the rehearsal room. There is no script or a story collecti ve boundaries be drawn? Almost every household now has in advance, only the possibility of these things. It is like writi ng a play, access to increasingly extreme imagery in the name of pornography. but in three dimensions. We oft en end up with a show that has grown Stati sti cs tell us more and more people are using it — or even from the idea we started with but that might not always resemble it. dependent on it. The original subject matt er is not always obviously apparent, but it is there beneath the surface. Someone may be sitti ng at the dinner table with his or her family. He or she can go next door to the computer and enter extreme and Like a lot of our work, Wonderland started with an idea — a subject someti mes disturbing worlds; then return to the table. They have not we wanted to explore. That starti ng-point was pornography and the left their home. Yet their minds have been off somewhere. Oft en, the internet, inspired in part by Hardcore, a documentary fi lm by Stephen more extreme imagery shows people being ‘pushed’ or ‘pushing them- Walker, which recorded the journey of a young Briti sh woman called selves’ beyond their limits. One infamous pornographer, featured in Felicity. We wanted to investi gate why people become involved in Stephen Walker’s fi lm, talks openly about pushing his subjects, because making hardcore or extreme pornography, and why people watch it and ‘they can go further, they just don’t know it’. He says, ‘the fatal word, what impact it has on them, when it oft en records ‘real’ experiences the word no-one wants to hear on a porno set is “no”. That’s why I want and depicts people suff ering. to work with girls who are wide-eyed and don’t know what’s coming next’. The performers oft en seem surprised or uncomfortable. Why do The internet presents us with complex dilemmas with regard to sexual they put themselves in this situati on and conti nue to do so? Why do tastes, consumerism, fantasy and our moral compass: it is wrong to people watch it? Why do some people fi nd themselves wanti ng more? watch people being abused, but what if we are watching someone How is it aff ecti ng people’s lives and futures? pretending or allowing themselves to be abused? What is ‘abuse’? How can we tell if something is real or not? How much control do Felicity went to Los Angeles with a very clear idea of what she would The noti on of when complicity, consent and performance begin and end and would not do. Yet only weeks later all her self-imposed limits had fascinated us increasingly in the creati on process. This was the ‘story’ been tested and broken. As the narrator observes, ‘she seems to have that began to assert itself: something about the details of performance, become fractured from herself’ as she performs ever more explicit, ever of reality, of truth, of reading certain situati ons in certain ways. Of how more extreme, ever more uncomfortable scenes. Yet at no point does and why someone ‘goes further’. Felicity stop. Why does she go on? The fi lm draws an uneasy conclusion, © Matt hew Lenton suggesti ng it is all to do with the relati onship she had with her father. Maybe, but how can we know? What else might moti vate Felicity? Money? Desire for stardom? Escape from the mundanity of everyday life? Or simply the fact that she likes it, because it is as exciti ng as hell? Nobody knows. One of the factors we cannot ignore is the fact that Felicity is being fol- lowed on her journey by the documentary crew. On one occasion she seems to conti nue with a frankly horrifying meeti ng in order to ‘show’ the documentary crew that she is in control. The complexity and detail of these interacti ons, as Felicity negoti ates her way through the series of meeti ngs and fi lms, is fascinati ng. Who is in control? Who is making the decisions? Who is responsible for what is happening? I was reminded of Alice, whose curiosity leads her through a rabbit hole into a chaoti c, dangerous and inexplicable world. BIOGRAPHIES directed by Graca Correa, she has worked with the Teatro Experimental de Cascais and the Teatro Experimental da Garagem and has worked with such directors as Ana Luisa Guimaraes, Diogo Infante, Cristi na Carvalhalal, Gabriel Da Costa Aderbal Freire Jr., Joana Craveiro, Nuno Cardoso, Marti m Pedroso, Jorge performer Andrade, Tiago Rodrigues, Goncalo Waddington, João Grosso and Marcos Gabriel Da Costa is French–Portuguese and works in Barbosa, with whom she created the solo work Amor. Her other credits Belgium, France and Italy. Since training at the Insti tut include Saturday Night for Vanishing Point; The Trojans at the 2009 Nati onal Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diff usion, Napoli Teatro Festi val; co-directi ng Recipe for Hearing Me at the Brussels, he has worked with the theatre directors Emma Dante, Ingrid Café–Teatro Maria Matos, Lisbon; and creati ng and performing the solo Von Wantoch-Rekowski, Sophie Maillard, Caspar Langhoff and Joelle Falt as part of a festi val presenti ng short plays in darkness. She fi rst Sevilla; the conductors Daniel Barenboim and Gustavo Dudamel; and the worked with Matt hew Lenton during the 2010 editi on of the Ecole des fi lm directors Frédéric Fonteyne and Alexandre Asti er. He was a member Maitres and in 2009 she received a grant from the Inov-Art program to of Emma Dante’s SudCostaOccidentale company in Palermo and work with Enrique Diaz at Cia dos Atores, Rio de Janeiro. parti cipated in Wim Vandekeybus’s Monkeys video project with Ulti ma Vez; the École des Maîtres’s internati onal project in 2010; Thomas Pauline Goldsmith Ostermeier’s Perform at the 2010 Venice Biennale; and workshops performer with the Mossoux–Bonté Company. His directi ng credits include Etal Pauline Goldsmith’s appearances with Vanishing Point Urbain at the BXL Bravo Festi val, Brussels, and COMIDA at the Théâtre include Mrs Peachum (The Beggar’s Opera), the Les Tanneurs, Brussels, which he wrote. He is a member of the COMIDA development of Interiors, Helena (LiOtt leti k), Last Stand and Company and the Looking For Michele collecti ve, and is a professor at The Sightless. Her other theatre credits include Allotment for Nutshell the Acti ng Studio in Lyon. He has writt en and directed three shows for at last year’s Edinburgh Festi val Fringe; Glue Boy Blues, The Maids and children, Amado Mio, Territory and The Comedy of the Art. Vivien Leigh in Elysian Fields for Glasgay; Entartet with Kai Fischer at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Bliss and Talking Heads: Her Big Flávia Gusmão Chance at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow; Rocketville for Òran Mór; Elizabeth performer Gordon Quinn for the Nati onal Theatre of Scotland; Caged Heat, Play/ Flávia Gusmão was born in Lisbon in 1978 and trained at Footf alls, Juno and the Paycock, Playboy of the Western World, Blood the Escola Profi ssional de Teatro de Cascais. Since making and Water and Caligari at The Arches, Glasgow; Not I at The Arches, for her professional debut in 1996, in Audicao Mecanica Para 13 Actrizes which she won the Stage Award as Best Actress at the 2004 Edinburgh Jenny Hulse Festi val Fringe; and Let Her Body Become a Living Lett er at the Tramway performer Theatre, Glasgow. Her fi lms include 1911, Peacefi re, Hikkimori, Boy, Jenny Hulse trained at the Royal Scotti sh Academy of Music The Magdalene Sisters, 16 Years of Alcohol, A Map With Gaps and Mary and Drama (RSAMD). Her theatre credits include Hot Mess Queen of Scots – Tragic Queen. She also performs in her own shows, most for Lati tude/Arcola; Be My Baby at the Derby Theatre; Beauty and the recently Bright Colours Only at the Societatstheater Dresden, and she Beast at the Citi zens Theatre, Glasgow; Sense for Frozen Charlott e; Every appears as a stand-up comedian in clubs in Scotland and Ireland.