Corner Shop venue
Just had our first meeting at the new site with Purvin & Rob Hill who worked with us on the original design and build. The new space is a large empty sports shop right in the heart of the Mander shopping centre opposite a sad and empty Woolworths, all very appropriate for a production about small corner shops.
The space is great, very similar to the previous shop space in West Bromwich but with a major difference in that the large central stairway, which rose up from the middle of the space in West Brom, this time goes down, rather like a subway. It does impact on the central space which we used for the street scenes in the previous run but will no doubt throw up interesting creative challenges for how we work around it. Purvin suggested smoke and red lights rising up from the stairwell, very atmospheric, perhaps a bit too hell-like for a show about corner shops.
The two large shop windows open out onto a busy walkway in the shopping centre so we are hoping that inquisitive shoppers will peep in, curious to see what is being created inside. We are hoping members of the public will come into the space within a cordoned area and view the work in progress, perhaps have guided tours at later stages when the different spaces have emerged.
So now to a mammoth task, the gathering of materials. A lot of wood to be ordered, charity shops to visit for dressing the different spaces, 70’s wallpaper to find, shop goods and fittings to source and wheelie bins to scrounge for those dark street corners.
Tags: emptyshops, FoursightTheatre, site-specific, thecornershop, Wolverhampton, Woolworths
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