Godiva Awakes
Performance Outline - The Awakening
 
As dusk falls, on the eve of the Godiva Festival, the Tailors emerge with the coat on an enormous dress makers dummy, 5 metres in height. They process through the streets of Coventry in search of the sleeping Godiva. They are bringing the coat to present to Godiva for her journey. The Head Chamberlain has been waiting for them - he joins them to point them in the right direction. They are joined by the Illuminati who light the way and a band of ‘travelling musicians’ who hail from all corners of the Globe – celebratory and boisterous, they are called the Clamorati.
 The procession travels around the city centre bringing people with it – finally arriving at a dimly lit Square – in which sits a bed chamber. A gently snoring Godiva lies deeply sleeping & dreaming. The Head Chamberlain instructs the Illuminati to weave their magic. The Illuminati acrobatically & athletically run, bounce and hang by a thread in their quest to light the square – Chandelier Fire structures, fire torches, fountains of light, spinning wheels, pyrotechnical brilliance from the top of the buildings, the branches of the trees and across the square, a beautiful spectacle but still not a stir!
 Next it is the turn of the Clamorati – They start with gently rhythms to ease her awake – her snoring only grows louder – 1,000 years is a long time. They try all manner of tactics. Their playing and choice of music becomes more raucous – Godiva scratches her nose – bated breath! Will she wake? But no..Her snoring continues.
The Head Chamberlain dismisses the Clamorati and calls for the Maestro & the Orchestrati. They appear on the Cathedral steps and take their places - A two hundred strong choir – the Voicerati sing to Godiva, within the music the echo of equus finally begins to stir her. The choir reach their crescendo and her eyes open – a moment of awe and silence.
The Clamorati rush to the Chamber – she gently yawns – a moment of magic followed by huge celebration. The Clamorati begin to play – The Maestro leads the Orchestrati & the Voicerati in jubilant celebration. Flames and pyro as the Phoenix rises above her bed chamber.
The smoke clears to reveal an empty chamber – confusion for a moment! Godiva then appears beside the trees admiring the work of the Illuminati – intrigued by the sparkle of lights.
She then takes a walk around the square finding everything including the people fascinating – so much has changed!
The Head Chamberlain sets about his business and summons her Chambermaids – They appear tall and elegant (on stilts). They are able to reach the parts other mere mortals cannot! They Wash her face & hands, comb her hair and make her ready to greet her visitors, the Communitas, from across the region.
The Communitas arrive in celebration and anticipation (carnivalesque dance & music) and ‘present’ the book to Godiva which holds all their messages to the world. They hold the book out to her - Godiva looks at the book not sure what is being asked of her. They point her to a screen.
Godiva watches a Shadow play – images of Godiva accepting the book, being dressed and setting off on a cycle powered journey to London – the London skyline, the Olympic Rings and Godiva revealing the pages of the book. The screen is lifted to reveal the Cyclopedia, an enormous bike structure proudly cycled forward, followed by the Tailors finally presenting the coat to Godiva.
Godiva understands – she moves forward and accepts the book, accepting the challenge - She will champion the region and make the journey to London.
Great joy, celebration and pyrotechnics which can be seen across the city.
Finally Godiva takes the book and walks into the old cathedral ruins to sit for the night and read the messages contained in the book and contemplate the journey ahead.  
People can visit and light a candle in support for the messages contained in the book.
 
Godiva Leads The Carnival
The next day Godiva is dressed by her Chambermaids in preparation for her journey. She ascends the cyclopedia and sets off leading her carnival procession through the city joined by the Communitas, the Illuminati, the Tailors, The Chambermaids, The Maestro, the Orchestrati and the Voicerati and other carnival groups.
 She arrives at the Godiva Festival and is welcomed. She meets and greets people throughout the day and prepares for the journey ahead.
 Finally she is ready for her journey – Godiva and two teams of cyclists will be given a formal send off from the park as they embark for London. They will follow the Roman Road Route – Watling Street.
Along the route she will seek sanctuary overnight at various towns. Each town will welcome her in their own way - stories will be shared bread will be broken and friendships made.
Finally she will arrive in London – the Olympic village. She will hold a press conference and present her book to the Prime Minister in the quest that he will pass it on to other world leaders before it is returned finally to the region.
Her journey completed, she disappears and magically reappears sleeping peacefully in her chamber until she is awoken the following year to look at the world again and see how it’s coming on….
 

The Performers

Communitas
Imagineer will partner with eleven artists across the region who will recruit eleven community groups of young dancers and performers who

will be known as the Communitas. They will explore their region, discover who they were, who they are now and determine who they would like to be in the future.They will explore the story of Godiva, examining the links between the values that Godiva stood for and those of the Olympic Games – friendship, respect, excellence, courage, inspiration, equality, determination. Each group will create their message on a page which will be put into a giant book which Godiva will carry with her to London, physically creating their message through performance as well as creating an actual page.  

Some pages will be left blank to be filled in by the messages of Olympians & Paralympians during its time in London, leaving one blank page for messages of the future.
On the night Godiva awakes the Communitas will come together and take part in the performance and present the book to Godiva.

Illuminati:
The Illuminati will have the role of lighting the University Square as part of the performance. They will all be performers with specialist skills, including aerialists, free runners, street dancers and physical theatre performers and will all work with The World Famous, who will be creating all the fire and pyrotechnics for the production.
Chambermaids:
The Chambermaids who care for Godiva will be stilt walkers, their height reflecting her status as a ‘great’ human being.
Polish stilt experts, Teatr Biuro Podrozy, will work with local performers on the development of their skills.
Clamorati:
Eight musicians drawn from different cultures will make the Clamorati – they will bring sound, humour and a sense of the whole world,, echoing the many cultures found in the towns and cities of the west Midlands
Orchestrati
Thirty professional and aspiring musicians will come together to form the Orchestrati, some playing ‘strange’ instruments which reflect past and present industries. They will be conducted by BAFTA Award Winning composer, Ilona Sekacz., who will compose the  underscore. Ilona will arrange the music and conduct both the choir and orchestra.
Voicerati:
A two hundred strong choir made up of groups from four areas in the West Midlands region. They will work on a new choral piece to awaken  Godiva, composed by  Ilona Sekacz, who will play the role of Maestro.
Tailors:
Twenty community performers who will lead the procession of the coat.
Puppeteers:
Two local performers will be trained by Trinidad based carnival artists, Alison Brown and Peter Samuel, who have over 20 years of experience in large scale puppeteering between them.
 
Project Outline
 
The Coat
The coat for Godiva Awakes, will be crafted and constructed by a number of commissioned individual visual artists, designer-makers based in the West Midlands region, reflecting the skills, ingenuity and craftsmanship of the past and present. Godiva will not be asked to ride ‘naked’ – the world has turned and times have changed – her journey this time will be epic.
The principal concept behind the outer facing patterning and detail of the coat will be the notion of ‘palimpsest’. Palimpsest derives from the Egyptian period, where used papyrus or parchment would subsequently be overwritten time and time again - the earlier writings being faded but still legible, thus building layers of text and symbols which in turn would physically merge the past with the present.
Materials for the coat will be repurposed fabrics, found and collected industrial and domestic ephemera, adhering to the ethos behind an energy efficient and sustainable Olympic Games.
After a period of research, which includes the collection of oral histories and commentaries, the artists will create coat sections utilising collated memories and current aspirations from people living and working in the West Midlands region whilst reflecting with their particular practice or craft area, an acknowledgment of past, present and emerging technologies.
 The coat will draw on the rich heritage of industry and invention, and the making and skill sharing traditions from the region throughout the years, but also the inclusion of new smaller, but nevertheless significant, industries that are currently present in world markets, i.e. the concepts and patterning from the gaming industries that have emerged in Leamington, Coventry and Birmingham. Redditch remains a leading manufacturer of fine needles and fishhooks. Worcester has a strong history of leather working and glove making where elements and samplings could feature in panels of the coat.  
The lining will contain image detail of the many technical languages used throughout the creation and realisation of the whole Godiva Project. Artist’s initial sketches and drawings, engineers problems, equation theories and testings, combined with the construction team’s CAD plans will feature, along with samples of font sizes, beat counts for the music score and the precision calculations from the pyrotechnic team. 
In terms of acknowledging the global significance of an iconic figure such as Godiva, the buttons will be a means to engage and exchange ideas and skills with artists both here and internationally. Godiva is a hugely important figure in Canada (she is the patron Saint of Engineering), and is an important morality tale taught all over the world, including places such as Trinidad and Tobago. Using digital technology to find and collaborate with artists in these places and then beginning a dialogue in order to create and fashion the coat buttons is an exciting prospect. Skills and knowledge sharing can occur by using digital and web based technology (there is a huge online craft and maker presence globally) as well as deploying a tactile means of creating and communicating by the sending and resending of a series of artists books through the international postal service. The buttons will be detachable so that the unique detail featured on each of them can be viewed and studied in various areas of the region after the initial event.
 
Godiva

A human puppet that pushes  the boundaries of carnival puppetry to new levels, Godiva will stand approximately 10 metres high. She will be made by Brian MacFarlane and Daryl Johnson from MacFarlane Design Studio in Trinidad. She will be lightweight, built from aluminium and carbon fibre and when she walks will be operated by one skilled actor/puppeteer.   
Godiva’s head, arms and hands will be latex with implanted sensors to enable complex facial expressions transmitted on to her face from the face of the actor/puppeteer.
Godiva will be built to look naturalistic, an ordinary human being and she will be able to move and walk seamlessly in different spaces and on different levels. She will be able to stand still, sit, climb stairs and move her upper body realistically.
When Godiva Awakes she will appear as if by magic and each time she does this her appearance will be in a different place in the Square – the rooftops of the buildings – in the windows of the old cathedral. Her transmission from the sleeping chamber to the Square will happen by illusion. The secrets of the technology that are used will only ever be known to the creators and animators of Godiva and they will be sworn to the secret oath of Godiva which will be handed down to future generations of animators.
 
Godiva’s Sleeping Chamber
 The chamber will be sited in University Square in Coventry City Centre. Here the two cathedrals sit side by side. The Cathedral Ruins stand as a reminder of the destructiveness of war and the new cathedral as a symbol of hope for the future, with it’s international ministry of peace and reconciliation
 The design for the sleeping chamber has been created by Frans Wesselman who will also design the glass panels for the pavilion, which will house Godiva throughout the year, where the public will be able to see her asleep. Once a year she will awake and the pavilion will be at the centre of a performance.  The base will be embedded with fragments of iron engineering from the region’s past and will be low enough for children to look over into the bed chamber.
The toughened outer panels will tell the Godiva story in “stained glass”. Much of the 13th century stained glass from the old cathedral still exists and Frans will be using them as a stimulus and possibly incorporation into the finished panels.
In the centre of the roof will be a large stainless steel Phoenix, which will permanently, slowly, revolve in the wind.  As Godiva Awakes each year, the Phoenix will rise amidst flames and pyrotechnics.
 Surrounding the sleeping chamber a circle of electricity generators in the form of bicycles will allow the public to light up the bed chamber by pedalling.
 
Cycle structure
  When Godiva leads the Carnival Procession and takes her journey to London she will be powered by the Cyclopedia, a flotilla of bikes, with three cyclists at the front to steer the structure and a triangular formation behind 50 cyclists to give the machine stability as it will stand 10 metres high. The cyclists will create the power drive behind Godiva. There will be a central and curved isle structure for the coat to rest on between the bikes.  
Animators will operate Godiva from inside the chair structure enabling her face, arms and upper body to move.  
There will be some simple movement within the structure of the horses head powered by the cycling motion, but this will be a more mechanical movement.  
The structure will be created from many recycled bikes with some newly designed machines and adapted wheelchairs manufactured from lightweight materials. 
 Cyclists will be selected from throughout the region to power the journey to London. People will be trained to do this in the months leading up to 2012 and the structure will be completed in January 2012 to enable this to happen. Specially adapted bicycles will enable disabled cyclists to take part.
Once completed the bike structure will be permanently on exhibition in Coventry Transport Museum – alongside its counterpart built in Coventry in 1896.