Causeway Coast actor creates theatrical piece 'Dance Hall' based on his work in dementia care home

Coleraine actor Steven Millar brought his solo piece 'The Dance Hall: A Work-in-Progress Performance' to Accident Theatre in Belfast in June.

Created and performed by Millar, the solo performance is inspired by his five years working in a high-needs dementia care home.

The staging is stark: one actor, one chair, one microphone and the soundtrack of the movie 'Dirty Dancing'.

From the outset, the high volume music unsettled me, leaving me wondering had there been a technical malfunction or was the problem with my over-sensitive ears.

The narrative unfolds in fits and starts with unfinished conversations, repeated sentences and music, always music, sometimes almost inaudible, sometimes deafening.

I found myself feeling uncomfortable, uneasy and quizzical as to why I couldn't understand the flow of what was being said, couldn't stack the building blocks of the broken snippets of the conversation.

...until I realised that's EXACTLY what this clever work-in-progress performance is designed to do.

The disjointed nature of the piece is cleverly devised to draw us into the world of someone living with dementia - the fragmented memories, the barriers of communication, the vivid sensory overload of musical memories.

Steven Millar's 'Dance Hall' is a work in progress but what has already been created very cleverly immerses us as audience members in that world, asking us to connect on a deeper level with the person we are being introduced to - fragmented recollection by recollection, unearthed memory by memory, like a broken jigsaw being pieced together.

Keep an eye out for this innovative piece of theatre as it continues to be expanded. I, for one, look forward to seeing the next stage of the incarnation of Dance Hall.

Causeway Coast actor Steven Millar is taking ‘Dance Hall’ to the Lambeth Fringe Festival in October and he is lined up to star in ‘The Revenant of Riverside’ this Halloween – a brand new immersive theatrical tour based around Coleraine’s Riverside Theatre.