Nolan has the Legs
Patrick Nolan first saw a Legs on the Wall show when he was a directing student at NIDA.
“My first experience of Legs was All of Me” he says. “And it completely transformed the way I thought about story telling in theatre.”
Some ten years on, and with a CV now groaning with acclaimed theatre and opera productions, Nolan is to be the fabled physical theatre company’s new artistic director.
”I’m drawn to opera because I’m interested in the way you use music to tell a story. It’s not driven by words,” he says. “And similarly, I’m interested in how you do the same with the body – the dancer’s body. It’s a much more three dimensional approach because people who are trained in their bodies have a spatial awareness that’s different.”
Nolan’s experience over the past decade follows a path that is not dissimilar to the Legs on the Wall trajectory: out of the ordinary and/or large scale, spectacular multi-faceted works such as the site specific The Flood for NORPA; and Electric Lenin (composer Barry Conyngham, text Janis Balodis) also for NORPA. Early on he devised a version of Peer Gynt that incorporated video imagery and an improvised score. A production of La Boheme for Opera NZ last year was a big hit there while the premiere production of Katherine Thomson’s play King Tide was a highlight of the Sydney theatre year. In 2009 Opera Australia will have his new production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, while another opera for NZ will premiere in Auckland in September: Eugene Onegin
”I think television and cinema is so dominant these days that we tend to rely on language rather than imagery, so I’m really looking forward to be able to work with a company and with performers whose impetus and experience is different,” says Nolan, who takes over the company today.
It will be 2010 before a Nolan-generated work comes out of the Lilyfield warehouse HQ of Legs, he says. “The company has such a strong artistic base and foundation of goodwill and I want to go slowly-slowly to build on that. Particularly in a time when the arts are up against it in the world economy.”
Nolan is also aware that the GFC is a great opportunity for the company too. “The sense of anything is possible is possibly even greater in tough times,” he says. “Something else has to be possible and imagination is all. I think people more and more like the idea of coming together in public spaces – to celebrate as a community and as an audience. Legs is a company that can generate that kind of feeling and performance.”
As well as what he perceives as a hunger for the live experience, Nolan has other plans for Legs too. “I really like the idea of Little Legs – for kids. Access is really important and to bring children into the Legs mix is something I am really looking forward to.”
