Judith Adams

“Judith Adams and Gaynor Macfarlane: two of the safest pairs of hands in radio”

— Radio Times Choice

Erdsee / Earthsea

October 2022

The first half of the German language translation of the radio series Earthsea is now available to stream as Erdsee via your podcast provider of choice.

You can read more about Erdsee on the Westdeutscher Rundfunk website, and more about the original 2018 dramatisation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic books here.

Erdsee / Earthsea Podcase

嵐の家 Arashi No Ie / Stormy House

~ Featured Project ~

“…he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire… Nelly: I am Heathcliff.”

Emily Brontë / Catherine Earnshaw: 
Wuthering Heights (1848)

“…here the old narrative breaks off: the rest of the story exists only in some brain that has been dust for centuries. I am able to imagine several possible endings; but none of them would satisfy an Occidental imagination. I prefer to let the witness attempt to decide for themselves the Probable Consequence of Swallowing a Soul”

Lafcadio Hearn transl. 
In a Cup of Tea, Kwaidan (1903)

Overview

嵐の家 Arashi No Ie / Stormy House is an on-going collaboration and co-creation between 59 Productions and Whitestone Arts, integrating classic texts, video (including VR and AR), traditional lullaby, binaural sound, landscape, architecture and cross-cultural mixed reality performance. At its heart, it celebrates the power of childhood imagination to conjure, through play, both redemptive artforms and new and better worlds from the implosion of the old.

The project was inspired by the prolific literature, maps and ‘making out’ (acting) of the famous Brontë children in their tiny Parsonage cellar in Haworth, West Yorkshire. Emily sited her imaginary Queendom of Gondal in the North Pacific, so our 2018 performance version explored the ghost world of Wuthering Heights from the structural perspective of traditional Japanese ghost tales, Kwaidan, translated into English in 1903 by Greco-Irish author Patrick Lafcadio Hearn. Research revealed that both writers had Celtic roots, lost mothers when very young and shared a passion for shape-shifting. (Hearn took Japanese citizenship and a new identity when he married the daughter of a samurai family. Emily simply is the voice of all the characters in her only novel). This walk-in installation premiered to great public delight in the Old Schoolroom opposite the Brontës’ original home, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, in 2018.

2020-21
we are currently exploring VR, AR and MR versions of the show for international festivals, museums, and other non-theatre buildings. More news to come.

Other Featured Projects

Earthsea / Erdsee

2018 & 2022
Le Guin layers her work with themes of self-discovery, relationships, isolation and connection, love and betrayal, violence and redemption. Earthsea has unique characters, glorious geography and the energy of its own songs, sagas and myths.

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South Riding

2019 – 2021
Holtby’s landscape is both the homeland of her childhood and imaginary: a fictional Riding of Yorkshire continuously haunted by ghosts of the dead and disenfranchised.

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Drift

2015 / 2016
The story, songs and recitative were inspired by the “true tale” of Betty Mouat, a crofter from Shetland, who spent eight days drifting alone in the North Sea in 1886.

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The Baroque Story

2013 – 2020
A multi-media re-working of the Hampton Court Palace visitor introduction to the King’s Baroque Apartments in the reign of William lll and Mary ll.

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The Left Hand of Darkness

April 12th & 19th 2015
Dramatisation of the award-winning, ground-breaking and deeply influential novel by Ursula K. Le Guin.

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Hampton Court Palace 500: Rewind

April 3rd 2015
A unique commission writing for 59 Production’s project celebrating the 500th anniversary of the construction of Hampton Court Palace.

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