'The Claim'

‘The Claim’ was a piece of immersive, site-specific theatre which made ground-breaking use of smartphone technology and binaural sound. It was commissioned as part of the West Yorkshire Playhouse’s 2014 ‘Transform’ festival, dedicated to showcasing dynamic and innovative theatre and performance work. The piece itself, for which Matt Morrison was the writer, took the form of a smartphone-guided audio ‘tour’ of hidden spaces surrounding (and including) the Playhouse’s Quarry Theatre. This was built on the site of Leeds' Quarry Hill Flats, a major social housing project build during the 1930s. Despite becoming a symbol of architectural failure (nicknamed 'The Kremli'n), the flats were fondly remembered by the communities they housed before being torn down in 1978. ‘The Claim’ drew on detailed research into the history of the Quarry Hill project, weaving oral and social history together with dramatic reconstruction and poetic responses to the space. Most remarkably of all, the West Yorkshire Playhouse gave the creative team license to guide participants down into the building’s foundations - extraordinary subterranean ‘caves’ where the boundaries between the theatre and the landscape it rests on begin to dissolve.

'The Claim' was a collaboration between the theatre/dance collective Hannah Bruce and Company, The West Yorkshire Playhouse, The University of Westminster and the University of York.