My first introduction to Shunt

This is from Alice Ochocka, Education and Training officer at Apples & Snakes

My first introduction to Shunt was a dark, damp tunnel under London bridge station on Monday 5th October. I felt so sure that I had been transported back to 1940s wartime London that my own modern day denim clothes looked out of place and utterly alien. The first stumbling block was finding the enigmatic doorbell to this secret world. After struggling with this for a shameful amount of time, I was at last ushered inside and found myself in the most extraordinary space I have ever experienced.

A vast maze of arches, tunnels and corridors of aircraft hangar proportions make up the Shunt vaults. The walls ache with the dampness of ghostly happenings and round every corner, more Victorian brickwork stretches forwards into the unknown. Every now and again, our quiet reveries were interrupted by screams and thuds from the London Dungeons, just a brick wall away.

Curator and one of the founders of Shunt, Hannah Ringham, led myself and five fantastic emerging artists – Molly Naylor, Joshua Idehen, Joe Hakim, Helen Mort and Byron Vincent – in an afternoon of creative thinking and writing, responding to the idea of ‘when nobody’s listening’. I loved this brief and while I hung about on the peripheries, contemplating the chairs scattered about like dice, drinking in the thick atmosphere and letting the real performers get down to it, it was a treat to reflect on the spaces in between what is said, for a change. We were encouraged to focus on fleshy pauses and the off beats of conversation, subtly playing with the audience.

Each poet responded differently, with their ideas reflecting their personalities and their individual thoughts about performance, and what it means to be heard (or not heard). Helen Mort wanted to tell stories from a stage above the door, of a tragic mountaineering event when someone realises there’s no-one on the other end of the rope. Byron was taken by an idea to wander about unnoticed, blending with the revelers and dropping comments in the style of an internal monologue.

As the final Friday performance approaches, and the artists literally take to the rafters of Shunt’s bustling bar, I know it is going to be a night to remember.