Deafinitely Theatre’s Everyday, commissioned by New Diorama explores the term witches as a group of people come together on the new moon to refresh, revive spirit and release from the traumas they have experienced. Newcomer Aislinn is open and eager to explore with others to help them heal but struggles to admit her recent trauma but with watching her friend be brave, she too can come forward and release from the bind.
Deafinitely Theatre is deaf theatre company which was really incredible to see a story for a deaf audience that wasn’t about being deaf but about life, their complexities and surviving relationships with toxic people. It’s a story we don’t often see in theatre and felt really warming to be a part of that audience and to broaden my horizon of different theatre. Paired with incredible visual and lighting techniques to really project their witching powers it was beautiful to watch the movement and interpreted stories through body and spoken through the actions if necessary for the hearing audience to know the details of the story.
The action of the script was sometimes a bit confusing regarding why and how they might be witches and sometimes we landed in very heavy storytelling about traumatic events which often left the action quite low and quite difficult to come back from leaving the audience in a very dark place. Although those events are extremely important and discuss and arguably the main purpose for the play, it was difficult to leave those stories as quickly as the story moved on and I wonder what the play might look like if we held more space for all viewers to take a breath.
As a hearing person, I felt extremely blessed that I got to see this piece and can only imagine how much it means to our deaf community that plays are being commissioned that discuss such difficult stories of survival that are often very difficult to communicate but must be opened to everyone to hold accountability and discussion to help heal the wounds. A very emotional piece, beautiful connection with a loving message.
Playing until 11th June, https://newdiorama.com/whats-on/everyday
Reviewer: Alice Rose
Reviewed: 21st May 2022
North West End UK Rating: ★★★