Me & My Whale

🐳 “…would you like to come back to mine for some krill?” 🐳

Sound takes centre-stage alongside a misanthropic submarine captain who falls in love with a whale. Wandering alone in the deep ocean, she gathers sounds from the wreckage of a drowned human world. While submerged, she hears a whale’s song, deep and resonant, and dives to join her. But can it last?

Me & My Whale is a performance project that calls out the damaging way we appropriate the sounds of the ocean using an absurdist blend of techniques from sound art, contemporary theatre and new music.

Featuring two performers, one submarine captain, the deep ocean, underwater singing, motion capture, generative programming, human-computer interaction, improvisation, a love song to cetaceans (both toothed and baleen), and one very lonely whale.

Resurrected for the Online Fringe Festival 2020 for your quarantine viewing pleasure, Me & My Whale is best experienced with headphones or a good speaker system to get the most out of the sound design integral to the story.

🌊 🌊 🌊

Me & My Whale was developed and toured in 2016-2019 using lottery funding by Arts Council England, with the support of The Vaults, The HopBarn, stage@leeds, Royal Exchange Theatre, Live Art Bistro, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Tour Dates
Oct 2018, stage@leeds, Leeds
Oct 2018, Partisan, Manchester
Feb 2019, Star & Shadow, Newcastle
Mar 2019, Theatre Deli, Sheffield
June 2019, The Vaults, London

Cast & Creatives

Co-Creators – Xavier Velastin, Hannah Mook
Sound Designer – Xavier Velastín
Visual Designer – Virág Pázmány
Dramaturg – Jake Walton
Movement Director & Dramaturg – Dimitra Maltsaki
Composition Advisor – Anna Clock
Visual Score Advisor – Lawrence Upton
Script Advisor – Matthew Frener
Technicians – Venus Raven, Ariane Nixon

Website & Social Media

More whales: xvwhalesong.com
meandmywhale.wordpress.com (no longer updated)
https://www.facebook.com/xaviervelastinsound/ (Xavier)
https://twitter.com/whalesong_xv (Xavier)
https://www.facebook.com/Hannah-Mook-Performance-Artist-248715005335738/ (Mook)