This project is commissioned by Farnham Maltings (UK) and Orient Productions (EG) who invested £30,000 in four new creative partnerships between Egyptian and British performing artists and companies. These pairings will develop new performance works and imaginatively test new ways of collaborating between the UK and Egypt, without meeting in person.

St John’s wort for the lonely heart/عشبة سانت جون للقلب الوحيد is Kristin Bacheva (UK) and Ahmad Auiby (Egypt) project.

Drawing inspiration from the isolation period during the 2020 pandemic, St. John’s wort for the lonely heart/عشبة سانت جون للقلب الوحيد is a poetic embodied performance about mutual caring and love. Driven by the way technology is challenging our perception of reality and the means it gives people to take care of each other, the performance explores the relationship between the physical and virtual body and extends it into a relationship of intimacy with interactive real-time visuals.
Expect poetry, movement, sound, and real-time interactive visuals.

The show was first developed as a film and later premiered as a live performance at the D-CAF Downtown Contemporary Art festival in Cairo, Egypt 29th and 30th Oct 2022.