Projects
Cats Eyes
Cats Eyes
Imagine my play for voices, The Nine Lives of Thomas Cat, is an immersive experience using sound and projections to plunge audiences into the absurdity and wonder of adventure on the high seas and living with Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Then make that happen.
Captain Cat is iconic as Dylan Thomas’ blind sea captain in Under Milk Wood. But neither Dylan nor the myriad of famous actors who played the Captain have sight loss like I do. The Nine Lives of Captain Cat is a play for voices that reimagine the backstory of this character through the lens of someone who shares his sight impairment and can bring that lived experience to his backstory. Not simply how did Captain Cat lose his sight, but how did he meet Rosie Probert, how did they lose each other, find each other again, then both adjust and thrive during his transition through impairment?
I experience Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a phenomenon whereby the brain fills in gaps in the vision of someone who has sight loss. I can see shapes and visions that appear out of nowhere due to cognitive anomalies that fill me with awe and wonder and often turn my world into an absurd environment where gods and demons walk through the everyday.
The play offers a unique opportunity for exploring Charles Bonnet Syndrome as an integral feature of the staging and presentation, plunging audiences into Captain Cat’s world in an immersive experience that will explain and entertain, delight and confuse.
Explore
£5000
Aims of the project
This Explore funding will help me take my script, which has not yet been produced in full, to a new exciting level. It will enable me to discover and research the latest immersive practice and possibilities, make connections with individuals and organisations who can help me develop my ideas into practical realities and take me to a place where I can construct a blueprint for applying to the Experiment strand to take things further.
This play for voices, The Nine Lives of Thomas Cat, takes Dylan’s blind sea captain and reimagines him through a disabled sight-impaired lens. This magnifies and authenticates the character and provides a window into a still-disabling world.
I want to use immersive practice to give the story back to sight-impaired, other disabled people and the wider world, in an enhanced and enriched form, enabling audiences to relate to their own choices and turning points. I want to explore using sound and projections to challenge but not overwhelm.
To understand the unique way in which I see the world, both literally – not super sharp but rather as an impressionist painting – and metaphorically. I want to celebrate the absurdity and wonder of living with Charles Bonnet Syndrome.
Meet the artist
Chris Tally Evans
Lead artist
he/him
Theatre director, musician, writer and activist. Chris was one of the first Unlimited commissions, creating Turning Points for the London 2012 Festival (Cardiff, London, Doha). His collaboration with a Brazilian dance company was performed in the Wales Millennium Centre, 2024. Chris received a Major Creative Wales Award, 2009. He presented Not Really Human: The Fight for Disability Rights in Wales and created series for BBC Radio 4. Chris has performed his work in Canada, the USA, New Zealand and Poland and in 2010 video work was exhibited at the John F Kennedy Center in Washington DC, USA.
