PRODUCTION NOTES :

NOMINATED: BEST INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION, 2010 SYDNEY THEATRE AWARDS

seven kilometres north-east is a new performance from version 1.0’s Kym Vercoe (performer) and Sean Bacon (video artist), exploring the discomforting entanglements of place, tourism and atrocity.

The work was triggered by a visit to the famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2008. Completed in 1571, this bridge forms an historical link between east and west, made famous in Nobel-prize winning author Ivo Andrić‘s novel The Bridge over the Drina.

The nearby Vilina Vlas Spa Resort in Višegrad, was recommended in a tourist guidebook, and so Vercoe checked in. The visit was a great success, filled with tourist adventures and slivovitz-fuelled conversations with locals. Upon returning home, Vercoe discovered to her horror that certain facts about Višegrad had been omitted from the tourist guidebook. The travelogue shifts, turning to a darker reflection upon how places bear traces of the atrocities that occur within and around them, the unspeakable and unbearable acts that current residents are only too happy to see erased or obscured. Drawing upon journal notes, the writings of Ivo Andrić, tourist guidebooks, correspondence with guidebook editors, and transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, seven kilometres north-east is an evocative and deeply personal political performance.


World premiere:
September 29 - October 16, 2010
The Old Fitzroy Theatre,
129 Dowling St, Woolloomooloo

International premiere:
April 20 - 21, 2011
MESS Festival
Sarajevo, Bosnia

PRODUCTION CREDITS :

Devised and performed by Kym Vercoe
Video artist: Sean Bacon
Dramaturgy: Deborah Pollard
Musical Director: Sladjana Hodžić
Singers: Sladjana Hodžić, Mirsada Muratovic & Eneida Bagaric
Lighting Designer: Emma Lockhart-Wilson
Lighting Realisation (Sarajevo tour 2011): Chris Page
Production Manager (2010): Frank Mainoo
Touring Production Manager (Sarajevo tour 2011): Holly Woollard
Props maker: Steve Howarth
Production technician: Clytie Smith
Producer: David Williams
Publicist: Sally Blackwood

version 1.0 inc and Tamarama Rock Surfers are supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the NSW Government through Arts NSW. This project is also assisted by the Sidney Myer Foundation and the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney