Ockham’s Razor: The Open Fund for Organisations
Ockham’s Razor present ‘Tess’. Original composition by Holly Khan.
Ockham’s Razor are an award-winning contemporary circus theatre company who combine circus and visual theatre to make work that is arresting and entertaining. They specialise in creating physical theatre on original equipment and create stories from vulnerability, trust and reliance that exists between physical performers. In eighteen years of touring, they have built a strong reputation from our 12 shows made to date, all have toured across the UK and Internationally and have been seen by over 175,000 audience members.
‘Tess’ is a bold new vision of Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Using text and physical language of circus, the 7 performers will tell this story of power, loss and endurance. The show will feature an ensemble of circus performers with women who have experienced barriers to privilege taking the role of the female characters and Tess through the show. It will weave together acrobatics, aerial, physical theatre and the distinctive simple, evocative design of Ockham’s Razor to create Hardy’s world.
The show demands a unique musical language – at once evoking the ballads and reels of the 1870s to create a sense of time and place but reimagining them through a contemporary lens. Composer Holly Khan will use her composition for strings and electronics to make a score which also evokes the shifting landscapes and seasons so central to the novel. Alongside this her compositions will be crucial to conjure the atmospheres of the novel – the longing, joy, dread and horror.