The Palm House

The Palm House was devised and conceived by Charlie Morrissey, Paul Harrington and Graeme Gilmour in collaboration with The World Famous fireworkers, Thor MacIntyre-Burnie and Phil Supple. It was devised with performers Lindsey Butcher, Annie Lok and Jenney Tatersall.

The piece was created and set in a huge disused glass house and was an exploration of people’s relationship to nature – both human nature and nature as a whole. The piece was looking at how our treatment of our environment is a reflection of our treatment of ourselves.

The intention was to create an experience in which we brought the outside inside – one where the audience would be able to feel the stuff of the performance – to feel the hunidity, to smell the earth and so on.

The glasshouse was filled with a deep covering of bark chippings, and fitted with various agricultural misting, and watering devices to produce fog and rain. Various pyrotechnic devices were used, flames that rose up out of the ground like vines, at one point the whole of the building was surrounded by flames shooting up from gas jets, and lights from the exterior brought the sun up.