storyline

Madame Marie Belle, a French fairytale writer from the 1690's, in order to pursue her writing and overcome her fear of performing, finds herself drawn ever deeper into the filmic phantasmagoria of Count Nosfeartu - a Transylvanian director/Bluebeard with narcissistic personality disorder.

Nosfeartu is the inventor and master of the kinematoscope, a device which allows him to capture the essence of his victims onto film, for his private viewing pleasure. His wife, Mina - once the object of his obsession - is now but the empty shell of her once glorious self, trapped in an eternal illusion of stardom and glamour. Watching this is his son, Lucard, who for centuries has resisted becoming his father; but Marie Belle's arrival at the castle threatens the ancient order of things...

Who is there when we are having a relationship without the other?

The Belle, the Book, the Beast draws on and extends the vampire myth. As it follows one woman's descent into a dysfunctional relationship and her addiction to it, it parallels society's obsession with watching a virtual, mediatised, version of itself : the 'trade-offs' between intimacy and recognition, presence and the promises of technology,voyeurism and the need to be seen.

stylistic and performative languages

The work is shaped stylistically by the horror genre, in particular the vampire and horror style of early 20th century cinema.

The Belle, the Book, the Beast is shaped out of the elements of light, darkness and shadow. Making use of character-operated hand-held lighting against the spatial elements of its various sites, the work is an exploration into working with technology in a revealed way. This consciously human-centric and 'lo-tech' approach attempts to bring to awareness, through the form itself, the seductions inherent in the uses of unseen, unacknowledged, technology. The use of scrim, shadowplay, projection and filmic elements blur distinctions between dream, film and reality, drawing the audience to question the levels of 'realness' we attach to each.