Last night Neva and I went along to watch the opening performance of An Accident / A Life.
This exciting new collaboration between Marc Brew and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui unravels moments in our lives, exploring difficult things with and without words using storytelling, film, music, dance and a car.
The starting point was sharing life stories and key moments of change. For Marc, this was his car accident, where he went from ballet dancer to paraplegic in a split second.
An Accident / a Life follows on from Brew’s notable solos, For Now I am… and Remember When, both critically and publicly celebrated.
For nearly 90 minutes the entire audience sat captivated by a story of tragedy, loss, change and finding a new normal.
Marc Brewer is the reason for the story and he performs the tale beautifully, with raw emotion and you can feel the emotions throughout.
As a survivor of a car accident myself, I found the early part of the production a stark reality check, how quickly life can be altered, I have no memory of my event for the first 24 hours, and I know how lucky I am to be alive and with no life altering injuries, so hearing the details of his memories of their crash resonated with me throughout.
The story takes you through the events of the crash, then his stay in hospital in South Africa, his cardiac arrest, then his journey home to Australia and learning that he would never be able to walk again, the struggles of being seen as a person with a disability, not just a person in a wheelchair, made for a fascinating insight into his life.
The story was brought to life with interesting camera work, close up videos of his movement, a suspended car, crash dummies, interspersed with video clips and audio sounds to bring the story to life.
If you are looking for something a little different for a Saturday evening, then grab yourself a seat at Norwich Theatre tonight, but be quick because its only there for one night!