In the Ink Dark

Dreamt as a living poem, it is a wander along the water, a seat beside someone on a bench, a conversation, a landscape of words written with bodies, a space for you to reflect, remember, imagine, in honour of things loved and lost

In the Ink Dark is a project in four parts from Luke Pell and collaborators - performing artists Kitty Fedorec, Rob Hesp, Janice Parker, Jak Soroka, Alex McCabe, Katie Miller, Carolina Ravaioli, Richard White, Kirsty Biff, Lucy Cash, Suzie Cunningham, Nadia Iftkhar and Fran.K, BSL performer/interpreter Rachel Amey, designer Valerie Reader, visual artist Brian Hartley, composer Scott Twynholm, garment designers Shanti Freed and Ben Whyman.

 A dance and a poem made from from memory and conversation. 

Throughout May and June 2017 a series of conversations and encounters with different people in Leith and Edinburgh led to a week of live dance performances in unique spaces across the city, opening as part of LeithLate17 in the Leith Theatre and going on to be performed in libraries across the city, RBGE Botanic Cottage and culminating at The Scottish Poetry Library on midsummer. A special reading of the poem was then given for the closing night of Edinburgh International Book Festival with DIVE Queer Party.

Site specific re-iterations of the Ink Dark have since been created in the Summer of 2019 for The Bridge Library with Platform, Easterhouse as part of Take Me Somewhere Festival, for Dundee Rep Theatre and Dundee Central Libraries, with conversations also taking place at Category is Books and the Glasgow Womens’s Library, all as part of Luminate Festival 2019. A reading of the Glasgow poem was also given as part of Oasissy take over at Queer Theory, Glasgow,

In the Ink Dark was accompanied by a series of specially commissioned podcasts - from Simone Kenyon, Robbie Synge, Claire Cunningham, David Harradine, Lucy Cash, Lucy Gaizely, Chloë Smith and Jassy Earl, Nic Green and Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin-and traced in print with a limited run publication with guest writer poet J.L Williams.

In the Ink Dark was made with Project Producers Claricia Parinussa, Annabel Cooper, Consultant Producer Vicky Rutherford O’Leary, Technical Manager Nik Paget-Tomlinson.