A few years ago the Coming Thing was
verbatim theatre, a style which culminated in a company whose
performers wear headphones and repeat not just the words of real-life
interviewees but also the tone and timbre of the recordings as played
back to them. However, it is the nature of Coming Things that they also
Go, and the current vogue is for pieces in which we, the audience, wear
the headphones and indeed do most of the sharp-end performance.
Post-student company non zero one [
sic]
have created a 45-minute piece in which six audience members at a time
wander around the Barbican Centre, each following an individual path
and set of experiences directed by a track of
narrative/commentary/instruction played to us on headphones. Our paths
may cross those of our fellows or of company members to varying
extents; my own experience tended towards the solitary, consisting
largely of distant glimpses of someone who, the voice in my ears told
me, might or might not be the owner of that voice. In the course of my
peregrinations I deposited penny coins on ledges, conducted a brief
online chat session on a laptop left conveniently waiting for me,
refrained from drinking a paper cupful of Vimto and – this last
unintentional – garnered a very strange look from another Barbican-user
who happened to be walking past my theoretical significant-other when I
called out to her as directed.
The piece aims, or at least claims, to explore personal responses,
absences and connections both real and imagined. As with virtually all
pieces involving real or simulated one-to-one contact, the degree of
intimacy is problematic: a show’s creators generally have to choose
between inadequacy and invasiveness.
Would
Like To Meet inclines towards caution, but it does so with an
appealing coyness. In addition to the
faux-personal
strand of the piece, we are also offered a series of observations on
the Barbican Centre’s architecture and décor, though these are
seldom sparky enough to make one look at the place afresh. And
ultimately, as with most participatory pieces, there is a feeling that
the key element of theatre – audience and performers sharing the same
space and time, each with comparable amounts at stake in the event – is
absent. If we give the piece its content, in what sense is it created
for us?
Written for the Financial
Times.