the poole confessions
To enter a dark box and tell a complete stranger hidden behind a screen everything you’ve done wrong is a strange concept. Yet confession forms a central part of many religious beliefs.
Over the summer of 2010, David collected the anonymous confessions of the people of Poole and turned them into micro-stories. He then read these stories in intimate one-to-one performances in a custom-built confessional box, located first in the Dolphin Shopping Centre then at the Lighthouse Arts Centre in Poole. After hearing a story, the listener decided on an appropriate penance and these were posted on The Poole Confessions website. Nineteen stories were produced and 183 one-to-one readings took place.
The Poole Confessions - a special commission for the Poole Literary Festival and awarded an Arts Council Grant for development - used the unique live setting of a confessional box to explore what would happen when a community’s real life confessions were collected, rewritten and performed for the whole community to comment on. The Poole Confessions explored issues of guilt and forgiveness in an increasingly secular world where it is difficult to share concerns about transgression. It reversed the usual roles so that the audience took on the part of the priest and was asked: can you forgive? Can you offer a suitable penance, an act of contrition which will absolve the sinner of their sin?
The Poole Confessions took David’s micro-fiction to new places and new audiences. His practice, in which he distils expansive emotions, sweeping plots and complex characters into 150-word pieces, worked well in the confessional box setting with audience members saying it was an intense and weird experience.
You can read some of the stories from The Poole Confessions here.
For more details and behind-the-scenes photographs, visit the official Poole Confessions website here.
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Over the summer of 2010, David collected the anonymous confessions of the people of Poole and turned them into micro-stories. He then read these stories in intimate one-to-one performances in a custom-built confessional box, located first in the Dolphin Shopping Centre then at the Lighthouse Arts Centre in Poole. After hearing a story, the listener decided on an appropriate penance and these were posted on The Poole Confessions website. Nineteen stories were produced and 183 one-to-one readings took place.
The Poole Confessions - a special commission for the Poole Literary Festival and awarded an Arts Council Grant for development - used the unique live setting of a confessional box to explore what would happen when a community’s real life confessions were collected, rewritten and performed for the whole community to comment on. The Poole Confessions explored issues of guilt and forgiveness in an increasingly secular world where it is difficult to share concerns about transgression. It reversed the usual roles so that the audience took on the part of the priest and was asked: can you forgive? Can you offer a suitable penance, an act of contrition which will absolve the sinner of their sin?
The Poole Confessions took David’s micro-fiction to new places and new audiences. His practice, in which he distils expansive emotions, sweeping plots and complex characters into 150-word pieces, worked well in the confessional box setting with audience members saying it was an intense and weird experience.
You can read some of the stories from The Poole Confessions here.
For more details and behind-the-scenes photographs, visit the official Poole Confessions website here.
< Back
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