As the wind is the washing whisked from the line and the bins bowled over in the night, thought is everything it conjures. In the world of our heads. Journeys taken years ago, encounters to come, different choices made and choice deliberations weighed. Exquisitely insane scenarios, metamorphosing phantoms. All in the mind.

Virginia Woolf's 1917 short story The Mark on the Wall explores those mind dwellers. In an armchair in front of a fire.

ExploreTheArch’s midwinter production interprets Woolf’s enquiry into thought: the seductive quality of reminiscence, the associative nature of memory, the electric thrill of epiphany, the pleasure of speculation and the trailing incompletion of beyond the brink rumination, through live music and a ballet of objects.

With original composition and a host of paper forms, settle into your armchair at Archer Lodge this midwinter and let your thoughts dance with the darkness.

Here’s a thought. A hundred years after Woolf wrote her first self published short story on thought, the scientific community are still exploring what thought actually looks like in the brain. It’s an elusive creature.

Here’s a thought. In line with our expansive, shape shifting inner world, our immediate community and the identity of the global world seems to be morphing at the moment. This world is constantly in our vision through the web and social media placing us on high alert. Stunning our capacity to think those deep inner thoughts if we are not careful. Unless we remind ourselves of their existence perhaps.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf had three significant thoughts on Virginia’s thirty third birthday. The purchase of Hogarth House in Richmond, the acquisition of a hand press to publish their work and the writing of others and the purchase of a bulldog named John. The first two thoughts became realities and in 1917, Hogarth Press was born. John the bulldog remained a thought.

Performances at Archer Lodge took place in Dec 2017/Jan 2018

If you have a venue and are interested in booking this show, please email.
explorers@explorethearch.com

Tickets available here £13+booking fee
Numbers are restricted in this production, so early booking essential.
Limited number of free children's tickets per performance.
Tickets also available from The Bookkeeper Bookshop, 1A Kings Rd, St Leonards on Sea. Tues-Sat 10-5. Cash sales only, no booking fee.

Doors open ½hr before performance with a cash bar, courtesy of The Wine Shed.

Running time 50 minutes.

Access: The foyer and performance space are on the ground floor of the venue with level access. The WC is down three steps.

Where is the hidden book in Woolf's story? It is a book that the protagonist reaches for and hides behind herself. It has no face and no name.

Unlike the curious Whitaker's Almanack which gets more than one mention.