For three years Heidi was performing with Figmentations Art Collective, touring an immersive theatre show Teatime Wonder Games. The show was touring in several locations of London and elsewhere in England, and had a monthly show in Teahouse Theatre, London.
Concept and Performance: Figmentations Art Collective (Kasia Kaszowska, Sebastian Dirycz, Heidi Seppälä, Andrew Leigh Syers, Katie Farquhar)
Music, tech: Sebastian Dirycz
Visual Artist: Peter Mcquillan
Choreography: Heidi Seppälä
Visiting artists: Apryl Renee Pipe, Kitty Rachel Graham, Lotus Liu, Emma Gill, Jenny Gibbons
In support with The Teahouse Theatre, Chealsea Festival
“The audience is invited to join the bizarre and surrealistic tea party and sit around the table set with white traditional tablecloth and cornucopia of crockery and table vessels in all kinds of styles, forms and shapes, with half burned out candles, tired flowers and attractive but worn and chipped tea pots and table ware.
Volunteers taken from the crowd and seated around the table becoming live ‘game pieces’, the table is the ‘game board’, and the game ‘stations’ are plates and cups, which contain different messages and tasks. The hidden messages discovered by the players trigger various ‘happenings’ and the entertaining elements of the performance. These could be: an explosion of a confetti, the appearance of a mysterious creature behind a curtain, a live music performance – or a song, a dance or someone stepping on the table and bursting into a raucous folk song in an obscure language.
There will also be challenging tasks: like – for example – testing specialities from the witty Crone’s pantry, following an obscure tiny and scribbled treasure map to uncover a buried pearl, or being asked to give a brief performance such as standing up and shouting out ‘the three best things about yourself’.
So, if you sit in front of the tea cup inscribed “drink me’ – do it! risk it! And at the bottom of the cup perhaps, you may find a secret message which may in turn rigger a melee of incidents.
As different tasks are completed the participants of the game move around the table visiting the ‘game stations’. If the participants refuse a task or fail to fulfil it they forfeit the game. The aim of the Midnight Tea Cup Game is to eradicate all the participants until one remains they will win the Secret Treasure.
The culmination of the performance will be the award ceremony and presentation of The ‘Secret Treasure’. Then joy will flood the hearts of the Teatime creatures, they will dance, sing and play music and form a procession and troupe up and down and around the table.
The performance aims to detach the audience and participants from the rush of their everyday live, leave the worries about future and regrets of the past behind and be here and now – experience the surround with all their senses. We want to help people to slow down, re-connect to their inner through, unconstrained themselves. The performance art becomes the healing tool, helps to resent the mind, it is a detox session.
Teatime is delivered under the aegises of SlowArt (slowart.me) a UK based organisation promoting intuitive, connected and organic way of creating and performing arts.”
