And Tigers Mingle

Black Country Touring was invited by the National Trust to produce a project as part of "This is Britain" their project for the creation of new art in NT spaces.

We were invited to work in Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton, which is a beautiful 19th century Arts and Crafts house. It's not massive, like a lot of NT houses, but a bit smaller and the rooms more homely (that said, it's still a lot grander than my Smethwick terrace).

We in turn approached Sonia Sabri and Richard Grant aka Dreadlock Alien, a Kathak dancer and a performance poet, to work with us on using their arts and different cultural backgrounds to interpret the site in a new way.

The performance we are going to make is called "and tigers mingle" - the title is taken from some lines of poetry written on the walls of the great parlour.


We're going to be working through a series of rooms on the ground floor and trying to find a way of bringing together the two different artforms, the house (as it is, its history and what people say about it now) into some kind of short performance.

We've got two weeks to create a thirty minute "performance" tour. At this stage the challenge seems exciting and stimulating - I think when we are 8 days into the project it might seem a bit more intimidating.