Behind the Lines: The Making of Wipeout

Our summer show, Wipeout is in full swing, delighting audiences with high-energy, surf-inspired antics that fuse aerial theatre, movement and storytelling in a joyful celebration of Cornish culture and creativity.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard snippets of conversations from audience members as they move around the museum; comments like:

“I wonder if they’re all surfers?”

“I bet it was difficult coming up with the right movements to mimic surfing whilst suspended in the air!”

“Do you think it’s meant to leave us feeling like we want to go and surf? Because I do!”

Amid a hectic schedule, we managed to have a chat with a few members of the team to tell us more about the logistics and thought process behind this fantastic show.

Wipeout has been brought to life by renowned local dance company CScape, under the direction of Artistic Director Sally Knight. At every stage, the show has been a collaborative effort involving more than ten creative professionals, including aerial artists Off The Wall Aerial and internationally acclaimed choreographer and director Jen Fletcher.

Months of planning, rehearsal and experimentation went into developing the show. A dedicated week of R&D saw performers drawing on the museum’s major new exhibition SURF! for inspiration. “It’s rare to walk into a creative process where so much research already exists in one place,” Jen Fletcher explains. “Archival footage from the 1970s – where a newscaster attempts to describe this ‘surf craze’ hitting Cornwall, really captured our imagination. That voice became a playful narrator in the show.”

Sally Knight discovering archival footage in the SURF! exhibition that would become inspiration for Wipeout.

Artistic Director, Sally surfed from age 15-25 and worked in a surf hire shop at Watergate Bay. She comments: “That was a huge inspiration for this piece; hiring out boards and wetsuits to folks coming down on holiday, seeing people getting in a real battle with their wetsuits!” Later, she worked for Quiksilver in London, selling the surfing dream to wannabe city surfers. She adds: “All these experiences, along with the love of catching Cornish waves, fed into the choreography and storytelling development in the show.”

Bringing the art of surfing to an aerial rig presented its own set of challenges. “None of us are surfers, but we quickly discovered that surfing in the air is the opposite of surfing on water,” says aerialist Grace Sibley-Sellwood. “You have to lift, not drop, so it’s quite a mental challenge.”

Co-founder of Off the Wall, Charlotte Luke, adds: “We realised that what feels good in the air often looks terrible! We had to rethink everything and find the gestures that truly captured the spirit of surfing. In the end, the goal wasn’t to replicate moves exactly, but to convey the joy of being on the waves. That’s what SURF! is really about.”

Both the exhibition and the show share a unifying message: surfing isn’t about skill, it’s about connection. As Jen puts it, “The best surfer is the one having the most fun – that’s a mantra that really steered my vision. We’ve tried to embed that philosophy into the heart of the performance and leave people feeling that actually, it’s just really great to get in the water and enjoy it in the way you feel most comfortable.”

Check show times and info