The birds create a serenity and calm our stressed-out lives need, and we are never quite certain whether they move.

Flight is the latest exhibition on a unique bridge we take for granted. People hurry across this bridge, rarely giving it a second thought. Yet where is a construction like it?

The brainchild behind all these exhibitions is curator Ylana First, who helped save the station from becoming a rusty hulk.

The fact that part of it still is a rusty hulk proves the enormous task in maintaining and restoring such a splendid structure.

Annette Chevalier's birds remind me of my three months spent on Holy Island in the Winter of 2001 when often I would see great clouds of birds whirling and swirling across the vast skies.

Such a sight touches an inner chord. The birds seem primed by some mysterious instinct beyond most of our hi-tech sophistication, changing course instantaneously, merging into an impenetrable smudge of black before suddenly diluting once more into a speckled cloud.

My own ambition for Tynemouth Station Bridge is to stage a mime play in its centre, but thus far I haven't written a single word, ha, ha! (that's a joke, by the way).

I do like plays staged in unusual locations, and was intrigued last week to read of a London production where the audience were in a car park.

They're handed binoculars which they then train on a block of flats some way distant. The scenes are played out in turn in different windows of the flat.

I wish I'd thought of that first.

Our own theatre company walked and performed a play the length of the Roman Wall, and produced a second play for early morning commuters on the Tyne Ferry, a soap opera of five minute episodes to cheer up the commuting wage slaves, five minutes per episode, Monday – Friday.

Some people enjoyed it, others were barely awake enough at 8am to take in the dramatic subtleties, and one bloke threatened to punch me.

Among my most memorable theatrical experiences was the Riverside International Festival, held each August in Stockton-on-Tees, and featuring some of the world's best outdoor theatre.

One year a play lasted four minutes with the two actors sat in the front of an American car. The audience, (maximum per performance, three), sat in the rear staring at the back of their heads while the drama unfolded.

Four minutes may not seem overlong, but is of epic proportions compared to Samuel Beckett's play Breath. Beckett's ground-breaking theatre included his masterpiece Waiting for Godot. Some other Beckett offerings were convoluted, but no-one had time to get bored in Breath.

I haven't seen a production, but from the 'reviews' recall it as being the sound of a single exhaled breath, lasting less than one minute, and heard in a black-out. End of play.

Questions present themselves. Did the audience expect an interval? What if you turned up two minutes late? What were rehearsals like? Or auditions?

How did Beckett write it? How many drafts were there? Was there a full complement of theatre staff on hand for each performance?

Plays, like novels and short stories usually start with something small, which the writer then develops.

I imagine Sam sitting at his desk, thinking, "I know, I'll start with a person breathing out, just once!"

Two months later, and having worked on the text daily, he pushes back his chair, an exhausted man, and looks at the script, which is of a person breathing out just once.

As far as I recall, the actor at the premiere was female (probably Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's favourite). Would it change the artistic perspective if it were it a male?

Breath could be done on Tynemouth Station Bridge. The actor could breathe out on Annette Chevalier's beautiful birds, causing them gently to move.

And suddenly we'd have a cross-art form, theatre meets sculpture! Perfect.

PETER MORTIMER

Mortimer at Large, Selected Columns, now published by IRON Press/North Tyneside Libraries.