SICK! Lab 2016 at Contact Theatre: What's in Store

Why do we find it so hard to be alone with our minds? What do we gain from and lose to our social groups? How much are we still defined by traditional categories: religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality? SICK! Lab is a focused, four-day programme of performances, presentations and discussions that aims to examine these fundamental questions about the human experience.

Creative director Tim Harrison has been working with Helen Medland, SICK! Festival’s artistic director, for nearly seven years now, previously running a contemporary performance venue in Brighton called The Basement. Collaborating with a wide range of people, including academics, doctors, charities, healthcare services and the public, their aim is to explore the questions connecting identity and trauma.

“Working with these people, I try to get under the skin of the questions at the heart of our thematic explorations,” explains Harrison of his role. “It’s about placing the artistic programme within a wider programme of discussions, conversations and interactions with our audiences.

“This will be the very first SICK! Lab to take place,” he continues, “so it’s a bit of an experiment that we’ll use to generate discussions that will shape the development of the next SICK! Festival in March 2017. This year, we’re just testing the idea out. We want people to come along, get involved in the conversation and bring their own experiences.”

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The programme is packed with interesting events including performances by award-winning artist and comedian Kim Noble and live artist Bryony Kimmings, with the On the Couch series promising thought-provoking presentations from artists, poets, philosophers, activists and a host of other perspectives.

There’s also a slot from Manchester’s very own celebrated author Lemn Sissay, with Harrison “really looking forward to his reflections on the changing nature of identity in the 21st century.”

On Friday 11 March, the Lab Test section of SICK! Lab 2016 is all about testing out ideas; a way of generating conversation between artists and audiences. The artists are asked to lay bare their unfinished work to a sympathetic live audience, who will provide critical feedback – a nerve-wracking prospect for any creative.

“Yes, it could seem daunting,” Harrison says. “We always make it very clear that these are works in progress. It’s important that the audience doesn’t come along expecting perfectly finished pieces of work. We encourage the audiences to be questioning but supportive. It’s also really helpful for artists to get feedback from audiences in this way. It’s great to get people outside of their comfort zones. I think it’s easy for all of us to spend lots of time talking with people who share our opinions and perspectives; we try to break that habit.”

With our lives becoming increasingly less about interpersonal interaction and more about our portrayal of a self-curated online identity, could events like this be important in learning to relate both to ourselves and each other again?

Harrison is hopeful: “In a way, we are always curating our own identities in ‘real life’ as well as online, through the clothes we wear, the way we talk, what we do and who we choose to do it with. But I do think that the arts have a particular role to play in bringing people together to talk about things. There is something about a performance, film or exhibition that can place complex ideas on a very human level that we can all recognise.

“We don’t get too many opportunities to reflect on who we are in public and in a situation that is both provocative and supportive. I guess that’s what SICK! Lab is for.”

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SICK! Lab, Contact Theatre, Manchester, 9-12 Mar, £20 for a SICK! Lab pass