Romi Safarty and Dale Williamson - The Pathetic Planet

Residency 21, 22 and June 

Artists Romi Safarty and Dale Williamson will spend their residency time developing and rehearsing their ongoing performance project The Pathetic Planet, currently funded by Creative Scotland.

The show is an absurdist galactic opera featuring rigorous visual world-building based on DIY-craft, with an emphasis on recycled materials and sustainability.

Through image-based storytelling, alternative drag and dark humour, the show explores themes of existentialism, mass consumption, environmental/war anxiety and identity loss.

The narrative is set on a galactic planet and follows various characters (alien drag queens, genderless monsters, clowns, and humanoid-adult-babies) as they try to find solace, meaning and ecstasy in a catastrophic world. The characters experience a similar emotional arc from delusion to apathy, unpacking different extreme phenomena. The story is narrated by different stars, who also try to guide the characters through this electronic opera.