HOT TICKET: 'Right of Way' at VAULT Festival
Beth Bowden is a sublime talent in this glorious defiance of defeat.
“Was it here that I decided something needs to change?”
She doesn’t know why she decides to walk. But she does. Beth Bowden shares her journey of the South West Coast path in this heartfelt exploration of bodies, chronic illness, being a young carer, loss, grief, and choosing happiness despite it all.
She’s a 2023 Vault 5 Artist - selected from 100s of candidates as one of the leading early and mid-career artists working today. It’s not hard to see why. She is a sublime talent. She walks - like the women in her family before her. She walks for those who cannot. Bowden holds softness, anger and joy in her fingertips and shares it all with fierce honesty, leaving it all out on the stage - a defiant, glorious mess of water and soil and chalk and salt. Lots of salt.
Don’t be fooled - this is not a story of defeat. There’s grief, certainly: “I’ll never be able to walk with my mum again”, Bowden says, recounting the realisation that came hand in hand with her mother’s diagnosis of chronic pain. But she celebrates her mother’s fierce wild strength. She carries her each step of the way in this marvellously life-affirming celebration of sensation, nature and family. Bowden and Associate Artist Nina Fidderman have created a piece sublimely poetic in word and body. Alongside Creative Producer Susannah Bramwell and Production Manager Lizzie Debonnaire, this formidable team have concocted an incredible contribution so early in their careers.
Multimedia projection and raw materials envelop the senses - and the rumbling trains from above this railway arch venue only add poignance throughout. Bags of salt hung from the ceiling are jaggedly cut open, contents gushing to the floor. Throughout the piece the salt continues to fall as the pressure shifts, without reason or warning - capturing the cruelty of chronic pain. When confronting the government’s treatment of disabled people in the pandemic, Bowden dumps the metaphors. She gives us the plain and simple truth. Neither form devalues the other. We are dropped like a stone in the water - but she’s right there with us, staring at Dominic Raab’s leaked words: ‘Who do we not save?’. With such bold vulnerability, this piece has the means to make waves in the conversation of attitudes towards people living with disabilities.
She doesn’t know why she decides to walk. Or so she said. “I lied. Sorry.” Bowden herself was diagnosed with a chronic illness aged 18. She speaks so candidly about what illness takes from you, what it leaves behind. And yet, she chooses joy. A daffodil in a dungaree pocket. Chocolate cake for breakfast. The exhilarating pain of a cold, cold sea. She is alive, she is here, tapping out a pulse on her collarbone. It’s profoundly moving. She passes round her favourite walking break snack: mint humbugs. Never has the mass crinkle of sweet wrappers in a theatre been so welcome. She walks through her grief; in doing so, she finds life. This phenomenal piece holds you in a warm embrace. I hope it will be felt by people far and wide, from this indomitable woman who walks.
Right of Way plays at VAULT festival till 26th February. Tickets from £13.
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