Immersive David Bowie show to launch this spring
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
A ‘groundbreaking’ immersive David Bowie show called You’re Not Alone will launch this spring.
Located at Lightroom in London’s King’s Cross and opening on Wednesday 22nd April, David Bowie: You’re Not Alone is a 360° multimedia spectacle that will transport visitors into the iconic performances and creative mind of Bowie.
Written and directed by 59’s Mark Grimmer, who was the Creative Director for the V&A’s wildly successful David Bowie Is exhibition, You’re Not Alone will showcase some of Bowie’s defining career performances.
David Bowie is the sole voice of the show, and it will boast iconic, rarely seen and never-before-exhibited material, selected from thousands of hours of film in the vaults of the David Bowie Archive in New York.
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
David Bowie: You're Not Alone
A description reads: ‘Audiences will have the chance to feel they have travelled through time to experience Bowie in performance - up close and first-hand.
‘Each track in the show has been newly reconfigured to utilise Lightroom's specialised spatial audio system by multiple Olivier and Tony award-winning sound designer Gareth Fry (Harry Potter & The Cursed Child, David Bowie Is).’
It continues: ‘This is David Bowie, the man himself. Instead of magnifying the myth through the lens of his characters - Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, The Thin White Duke - You’re Not Alone places its focus on the man behind the masks: the provocateur, the polymath, the shapeshifting icon in his enduring, human form.
‘The film is structured in thematic chapters in a looping presentation, giving a unique insight into Bowie's perspective on the subjects most important to him, including: theatricality, spirituality, songwriting and the transformative power of creativity. There are surreal moments, like the transatlantic TV interview with Russell Harty in 1975, in which Bowie artfully takes control of the narrative and the interviewer is reduced to asking him questions about the colour of his hair. Elsewhere, the reconstructed set of the inimitable Diamond Dogs tour materialises before our very eyes, igniting a Bowie performance unlike any other captured on film.
‘Bringing together a wealth of visual material from a wide range of sources, the show combines rare performance footage, photography, drawings, lyrics, personal notes and audio recordings. David Bowie: You're Not Alone will celebrate Bowie's boundless curiosity as a force that connected people across continents and generations, as well as his enduring cultural impact today.’
Mark Grimmer says: "It says something about our relationship with artistic heroes that we're drawn to mystery, otherness, the alien... In Bowie's case, this is our construct, not his.
“Throughout his career, Bowie repeatedly resisted being figured as anything but human. Rather than undermining his mystique, we designed a show to celebrate Bowie as a champion of human creativity - focusing on the message he expressed time and again: that art, in all its forms, is our best hope for understanding what it means to be alive."
Tickets for David Bowie: You're Not Alone are on sale now here, costing from £25 for adults and £15 for students and concessions.