Fear Labs

Exploratory labs whereby collaborators turn personal stories of fear in to monsters using specially designed props. With it's origins in Eelyn Lee's 5-day lab at the Barbican in December, 2014, this workshop has become a creative line of enquiry in its own right.

Eelyn has run the workshop with professional actors, art students, a young orchestra, in a public library and with an amateur dramatics group on Canvey Island.

Working closely with Art Director Chriostopher Kelly, Eelyn is interested in transforming the human body using carefully selected materials and bespoke props to make monsters made of fragments of stories of fear. Particpants explore backstory of the creature they have created and develop character through performance techniques.

The Fear Lab with Cast and Crew, a drama workshop on Canvey Island explored stories of fear assiciated with the estuary and collective memories of the east coast flood of 1953, in which many Canvey residents lost their lives and homes. One of the monsters created inspired the image above - a mud monster who appears in Eelyn's film, Creature of the Estuary.

 “… No one really knows when it came and no one really knows when the first sighting was but it appears in hospitals to mentally-ill patients. This moth paralyses people when it gets on their chest but when they try to tell others about it no one believes them …”

- student participant, Seevic College