Alison Garner

Alison is a theatre practitioner and visual artist based in the East Midlands. She graduated in Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University with a first class degree in 2007. Much of Alison's work to date has centred on human experience of the places they inhabit and how this resonates through space and object. She has worked with companies as Punchdrunk, Leicester Theatre Trust and Metro-Boulot-Dodo.

In 2006 Alison set up Left Luggage Theatre with fellow Trent students and the company is currently graduate residents of the Puppet Centre Trust, Battersea Arts Centre supported by the Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre at Central School of Speech & Drama. Left Luggage Theatre specialise in site-responsive theatre in which the audience are immersed in an environment incorporating soundscape, scenography, puppetry, performance and projection.

As a visual artist working in performance her work often takes a narrative form through sharing and creating stories that can be discovered and experienced again by the audience. Alison's most recent work has been a site-specific installation commission in Leicester based on the work of Victorian explorer and naturalist Henry Walter Bates. This multi-sensory installation incorporated tactile sculpture, text, Braille, soundscape and artefacts to envelop the viewer in the imagination of the self-taught scientist and the exiting period where we were on the brink of mind blowing discoveries.

Alison was excited to be involved in the large scale site-specific production of Idomeneo and be part of a collaborative design process. "Seeking to increase access and participation in visual and narrative art is fundamental to my own practice and I wish to develop my work in a way that centres on how we process, interact with and leave our mark in the world around us. I feel Birmingham Opera Company's work fulfills these aims and it has been a great opportunity to work with them."

Some links to Alison's and Left Luggage's websites and works:

http://www.alisongarner.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/alisongarner

http://www.leftluggagetheatre.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/leftluggaetheatre