Rip, Fold, Scrunch was developed as part of the Exchange for Change programme and was presented on the Festival Day, 16 July 2009. It subsequently went on to tour nationally in 2011.

A Note from the Director:

Five artists, ten days, and one nursery – outcome: unsure. The basis of the project was collaboration: an interaction of ideas, meaningful dialogue with the target audience, a space for all the artists to exchange disciplines and skills and hopefully create new stories and worlds. Our ensemble certainly shared plenty of opinions, chat, and get-up and do! From the outset I wanted to ensure that the three cultural and artform contexts that we were working within – the cello and jazz vocal; the spoken text and physicality of the theatre performer; and Kathak dance and rhythms – were given an equal platform. This translated into the idea of three children who exist happily in their own egotistical worlds and then journey throughout the play to become friends. We needed to create a world for these three children to inhabit and were shown the way by the 3 year olds we met at the nursery. During our visits they showed us how to play with paint, shapes, textures and colours, splashed about in some water and went on a journey with large bits of coloured paper. It was the paper that caught our imagination most and so we started to rip and fold and scrunch, on occasion reducing the studio to a chaotic jumble of paper scraps. Throughout the development and devising period we spoke a lot about engaging with the emotional world of a child, that was once monochrome but is now blooming into colour, with possibility and experience straining at the seams. This is what we hope Rip, Fold, Scrunch reflected.