Lookout

I worked with artist Andy Field to create and tour Lookout — a participatory performance project. Developed in each new location through a series of workshops with local children, every version of the piece is unique to the city it is created in and the people who call that place home.

Lookout is a one-to-one encounter between one adult audience member and one child performer taking place somewhere high up overlooking the city. Together performer and audience member look out at the city and imagine its future. The conversation they share is a quiet journey through the past, present and future guided by the streets and landmarks laid out before them.

Through dreams of utopian architecture and possible catastrophes, hopes and fears, future fashions, proposed demolitions and progress real and imagined, they explore two very different versions of the city they both inhabit. An exchange between two people who might not normally meet, about a future world they may or may not share. Lookout is an attempt to consider big questions in a small way.

Lookout is still touring and available to tour, and the next version of the project is planned for Kanazawa in 2021.

A full archive of previous versions of Lookout can be found here.
We have created versions of Lookout in over twenty cities around the world, including Auckland, Beijing, Cairo, Guangzhou, Vancouver, Sao Paulo and Lisbon.

Originally commissioned by The Arches and the Unicorn Theatre, and supported by Arts Council England.

Photo: Paul Blakemore.