Can you experience a wine with all your senses? In Through the Grapevine every performance is made in response to the wine you are drinking as you watch the show. This is a unique evening of humour, music and physical surprise. No previous knowledge of theatre or of wine is required — but be prepared to be thoroughly entertained as you taste them both together.
How it all began
Through the Grapevine was born on a pleasant afternoon over a bottle of Vignoble Guillaume’s 2010 Pinot Noir. Discussing the wine, we noted that wine is perhaps the only inanimate thing that, like humans, has a memory. It remembers where it came from, what was done to it, how old it is and where it has spent most of its life. It has so many stories to tell you, if you can just speak its language.
To explore this further, our wine expert, Krysta Dennis, took our wine-novice movement director Roanna Mitchell to a wine tasting. Confronted with a pen and paper for tasting notes:
‘I noted down the images and memories that appeared to me through the multisensory tasting experience. Intriguing connections began to emerge: where I wrote ‘Pinocchio’, the wine expert running the tasting described the wine as woody and cheeky. Where I noted the image of a crisp white shirt with a man’s chiselled jaw above it, he proceeded to describe this wine as ‘chiselled’ — using the same adjective. I wondered how the experience of tasting might change, if those image-experiences were brought to life in performance? And what qualities of performance might emerge in a devising process that starts from the multiple senses that are activated when we taste?’ R. Mitchell
A journey began in which we were to explore senses that are rarely used in performance-making, engaging taste, smell and the memories and images they elicit, directly in the devising process.
TESTIMONIALS
‘Grapevine is a charming, surprising and fruity little number, that cleverly combines wine and performance in a way never seen before. As you sip and taste, moments of action and interaction emerge and surround you. This is performance for all the senses!’
-Paul Allain, Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Kent, Canterbury
‘An engaging and innovative production that takes wine out of the supermarket aisle and into our cultural consciousness.’
-Jason Millar of Theatre of Wine
‘Through the Grapevine is a playful sensory immersion, that took me all the way back to the terroir.’
-Jarrod Cuffe, mixologist and event coordinator
‘It was an encounter with me, my senses, my emotions. It was rediscovering, it was allowing me to perceive in a new way. It was a moment of peace and elegance.’
-Audience member