What Do You See In Me? ^expired Free

When the pandemic mothballed Extraordinary Bodies' latest national tour, the professional circus company rapidly moved towards the production of a low-fi lockdown film.

What Do You See In Me? is a prequel to the stage show that was due to premier in a theatre setting at The Lowry in Salford last April, but never made it into rehearsal.

Filmed in the artists' homes in cities including Bristol and Munich– on their mobile phones - it is written by Hattie Naylor (The Night Watch, Royal Exchange; Bluebeard, Bristol Old Vic; The Three Musketeers, The Dukes) with an original score by Ted Barnes (Beth Orton/ Clayhill).

This story of isolated, yet interconnected, marginalised lives is told through physicality, dance and music. The stuff of everyday life makes up the sets and impromptu props: one performer dances casually, alone with a Dyson; another, pregnant, twists, stretches and sways against the frame of her metal bed, with its sea of scattered paperwork; and a third performs a weightless, aerial display on a pull-up bar in her doorway.

The short (12 minute) film asks us to pay attention to our view of others, the judgements we make and the values we hold as a society. Our Covid-climate threatens to take us back to a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality, where a pre-existing condition justifies a DNR, where forgotten shielders are left to go it alone and where poverty or ethnicity jeopardises our place in the pecking order of society more than ever. What Do You See In Me? gives us a glimpse of the delicate, funny and spirited human lives behind the labels.

The nine-strong integrated cast features disabled performers John Kelly, a musician and disability and human rights campaigner, drummer/sound designer Jonathan Leitch, plus British Sign Language user David Ellington, an aerial performer and actor.