Garter Lane Arts Centre and Imagine Arts Festival partner to present The Collector: The Presence of Absence… by Alchemy Arts Contemporary Circus
Tickets bought by Friends of Garter Lane are priced at just €12. For discounts for group bookings, please contact our box office on 051 855 038.
Energetic new circus and theatre exploring the fantastical but isolated life of a man who has closed himself off from the outside and has built his own world from the discarded scraps of society. Garter Lane is delighted to welcome Will back to the Arts Centre. The first iteration of The Collector was born out of Will’s residency in A Little Room developmental theatre at Garter Lane Studios back in 2022.
This is the story of a man and his remnants. Together they live on a short street with long shadows, in his former father’s former shop, with a makeshift imagination and a suitcase with just enough space to fit inside. To others it is a boarded-up memento of uninteresting disintegration. To him it is a glowing ember in a city of burnt-out memories. To us it is a space between the sense of things…
Directed by award-winning choreographer Eddie Kay, and blending circus, projections, physical theatre and a unique soundtrack into a beautiful celebration of the unexpected, The Collector explores social isolation, mental health, and finding wonder in the seemingly eccentric.
About Will Flanagan
Based in county Cork, Ireland, Will is a professional performer, circus artist and producer, he is the Artistic Director of Alchemy Arts, a contemporary circus and street theatre company inspired by collaborative frameworks for theatre-making that integrate a variety of performative practices from physical theatre, to contemporary dance and circus skills, having previously run the award-winning street theatre company PassePartout from 2008–2019. Will is a co-founder of The Circus Factory, Ireland’s first full time training and creation space for the Circus Arts, and was a member of its management committee from its inception until 2017. He was their Artist in Residence in 2019. One of Ireland’s most prolific circus artists, Will presents work on a bi-annual basis at the National Circus Festival, and has had sold out runs at the International Street Theatre Festival and Cork’s Midsummer Festival. He has performed throughout Europe, and the diversity of his work is characterised by the range of international venues he has performed in, from the Anton Checkov Theatre in Russia to the Indian Juggling Convention and The Land Art Festival of Taiwan.
Recent work includes the commissioned production The Presence, a series of interactive short films, and his work with the character of The Collector for RTE’s Culture Night.
“I am inspired by collaborative, devised frameworks for making that integrate a variety of performative practices – circus skills, physical theatre, contemporary dance, character acting and digital media. These are explored with the intention of creating distinctive productions that actively engage audiences and explore personal & universal modes of expression.”
This production is presented in collaboration with Imagine Arts Festival.
