We sat down for an exclusive interview with Katya Bourvis, Hannah Peel, and Tala Lee-Turton, to discuss their production Pia, which follows a woman from Barnsley over three generations of her life as her mind journeys amongst the collieries of her hometown and vivid dreams of space travel, and features a 17 piece brass band performing Peel’s Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia.
PIA will be performed at Milton Court in the Barbican on 23rd October – Tickets here
PIA moves between Barnsley’s collieries and dreams of space travel. How did these two worlds come together?
[Tala] Before PIA had a name, the work existed as movement generated in a residency self-funded by Katya in 2022, responding to certain tracks from Hannah’s beautiful record Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia. Having worked with Katya on another project, I first heard the record when Katya invited me to meet Hannah and her team in 2023, to explore future development for the residency material. I was really struck by Mary Casio. You can hear these incredibly epic brass sounds alongside Hannah’s signature analogue synths throughout the record. Sonically, a synergy between the labyrinths of Barnsley’s disused collieries and the luminous webs of constellations is very apparent. I then learnt that Hannah is also a Barnsley artist and that Mary Casio was, in fact, recorded at Barnsley Civic with a full colliery brass band, so it made sense that our town is such a centric element within the record.
I spoke with Katya about keeping Barnsley as a dramaturgical through line across the production, and we would go on to develop preexisting themes in Mary Casio, fashioning a dreamscape which oscillates between the magnitude of the cosmic and the sensitivity of the everyday. Our titular Pia extends from Hannah’s original Mary Casio character that Hannah constructed for the record- a stargazing maverick from Barnsley- in the vein of Delia Derbyshire- who has long dreamt of space travel and makes music into her old age from her garden shed.
Encouraged by the interconnectivity of age, memory, artmaking, belonging and imagination, we based Pia on Mary Casio, adding facets of other women who have inspired us in our personal and professional lives. It’s been a fascinating process. What would a production look and feel like through the singular lens of a maverick female artist, who filters the social realities of Barnsley mining culture through a sci-fi imaginarium within which she eventually cocoons herself? I suppose that’s a question we’ll only know after the premiere.
[Hannah] I loved the imagery, well a romantic view of it, of the miners’ headlamps deep underground. Like stars in night. We moved from Northern Ireland to Barnsley when I was younger, and my youngest memories there are made up of sneaking into the old Worsbrough coalpit to play, not knowing what might have happened but loving the overgrown tracks, carts and old buildings that lay scattered around. Our house looked over a slag heap (coal spoil tips) and I used to stare at that huge mountain of black across the fields. It was such a bizarre landscape to see. It felt alien, it felt like another world.
When I was commissioned to write a piece for a brass band called ‘Tubular Brass’, I already had an idea based on my late great aunt sitting in the window of her house looking out at the sky every day. She turned into the Mary Casio character, an inventor, a dreamer, someone who loved space, but never quite made it out of Barnsley up there. So, I decided to take her there, through the constellations, through memories of life, from the beginning to end accompanied by a brass band. The sound of mining.
The production follows Pia across three generations. What drew you to exploring memory, ageing and a woman’s life over time?
[Katya] I think there have been so many moments where I’ve sought out guidance from older women in my life, who have lived through more than me. I love hearing other people’s stories. These conversations made me really consider how we move through life. We do not leave earlier versions of ourselves behind, we carry them with us. That became my starting point for Pia. I wanted to work with dancers of different ages because each body holds a different relationship with time. Together, they allow us to see one woman not as separate chapters, but as a life unfolding across generations.
How do choreography, live brass music and visual storytelling work together to create PIA’s dreamlike world?
[Katya] I see each element as responsible for creating a different part of Pia’s world. The brass band is used to ground us in Barnsley, carrying the identity, history and spirit of a place in a way that feels immediate and unmistakable. The choreography brings the characters to life, revealing their relationships and characters through movement. The visuals open up another layer, pointing towards dreams, possibility and the vastness of space. Together, they allow us to move between the real and the imagined, creating a world where memory, place and hope can exist alongside one another.
For Tala: As a Barnsley artist, how did you approach presenting the town beyond traditional social-realist narratives?
I’m dramaturg as well as creative producer on PIA, which is a point of difference to some of the other productions I produce under Red Robin Productions. I knew this was going to be an opportunity to dislodge conventional readings on Barnsley culture- I hoped to be able to support the team in portraying Barnsley in sensitive and evocative ways. I organised several trips to Barnsley with Katya, visiting ageing Barnsley community groups Age UK Barnsley and Barnsley Independent Alzheimer’s and Dementia Support where we interviewed group members and their families about their lives. Our conversations with these groups have breathed rhythms into the dramaturgy that are at once rich, unexpected, funny, vibrant, achingly tender and poignantly prescient.
We also visited Barnsley Museums archive to read through stacks upon stacks of starched cream envelopes containing newspaper clippings, photographs, letters and other ephemera of the Women Against Pit Closures’ activities and endeavours. The personal is always political and I believe that the more you can share an authentic culture through its textures and stories- histories that social realities have blossomed from- the more you can engender a nuanced point of view and, crucially, an exchange with audiences.
For Hannah: How has Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia evolved through its new theatrical and choreographic context?
We as humans are all storytellers and an album is one form of that natural need to converse – it’s a form that many of us love and listen to, and then associate with in so many personal ways with memories and feelings. I made the album originally for a reason, but to see it evolve over the past few years, have space and freedom to become something else to others (creators and audience) is incredible. In some ways it has become more human, tangible, more alive. The Journey to Cassiopeia has completely taken on a life of its own now.
For Katya: What does Pia’s physical journey reveal about her inner life, memories and imagination?
Pia is a woman whose body has become an archive of experience. Her memories are revealed to us as physical echoes of love, grief, and resilience. I want to show the audience a person who is continually negotiating between what has been lost and what still remains. The enduring pull of place, the imprint of those she has loved, and the strength required to carry both personal and collective histories forward.