Solo Work 

Performer, Writer and Sound Artist

"The water in front of you looks warm and inviting. You want to get closer. You need to touch it, feel it."

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Watch Here

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This is a work-in-progress audio/visual journey. A continuation of the 45 Beats Audio Series. An anonymous voice leads the listener through several water-based worlds. The piece is an exploration of water as a transformative and transitional metaphor, running through three cycles; cleansing, destruction and renewal. Developed as a part of the Wendy.Network Virtual Artist Residency. 

45 Beats: A Soundwalk in the Dark

By Ally Poole

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Commissioned by: 

Co.Lab Sound Exhibit 

Fringe Arts Bath 2020

and

"Once More With Feeling" for Live Arts Development Agency.

Performer, Writer and Sound Artist

"You are walking in a forest. You decided to take this walk to get away from the city, the noise; the people. You wanted to be alone and here you are."

Listen Here

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45 Beats: A Soundwalk in the Dark is presented for headphones. An anonymous voice, leads the listener through an unnamed woods, where the listener falls through leaves and is taken through several narrated sensorial worlds. The journey pushes the conflict between reality and fiction, the improbability of time and becoming a person that you are not. 

Her Laborious Madness

By Ally Poole

MFA Thesis at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Writer, Performer and Sound Designer/Composer

Her Laborious Madness is a one-woman performance that adapts the Borges’ short story through my lens of being a Black American woman in the 21st century.

In my piece, the character is a writer who is about to become a victim of police brutality when she asks God for more time to finish her work. She receives the time that she asked for but instead of being frozen in the moment before her death, she is transported to “the Earth’s Quietest Room” where she will spend the next year attempting to finish her novel. The room is so quiet that you can hear the blood running through your veins and after a time, the silence becomes a high-pitched drone.

The piece is the character’s journey to completing her final work and also the decent into madness that happens to her due to being trapped in a sound amplifying room; the ultimate price of “be careful what you wish for.” The work is presented through headphones.

Madness/Reverie

By Ally Poole

Scenography Project, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Performer and Sound Designer/Composer

A piece of headphone theatre interrogating-what it is like for an audience to hear someone else’s thoughts in their ear. And for an artist, what are you willing to share with an audience? The idea of who’s mind does the piece belong to shapes the work.

Madness/Reverie fuses Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl’s Love Song, Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy and Debussy's Reverie to tell the story of the mental decline of a woman madly in love.

The Restricted Section

By Ally Poole

Scenography Project, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Writer, Performer and Sound Designer/Composer

The banning of books in schools and other institutions is a common occurrence. This performance was a commentary on the banning of literature, questioning the role book banning has in society and what happens when the access to literature is restricted. Frequently banned books were portrayed as prisoners and then “locked” in the Archives to symbolize their placement in a societal solitary confinement.

The work was a one-woman performance in which Ally portrayed The Librarian, who gave the audience a tour of the Swiss Cottage Library while playing the role of judge, jury and ultimately incarcerator of banned books. The Librarian began the tour at a display of popular books and asked each audience member to raise their hands if they had read any or all of the books. The Librarian then explained that those books had been banned and took the audience on a "special tour."

The tour led the audience down to the basement archives of the library and culminated with moment piece/dance of the Librarian locking up the books, while the books spoke (via voiceover) lines of text that illustrated why they had been banned. The audience was then able to walk through the archives and explore the banned books and question why they were banned, if they should have been banned, and discuss amongst themselves the topic.