A Spectacle of Herself @ Battersea Arts Centre

Sometimes you get the evening of angry feminist performance art you need. Laura Murphy’s solo show blends spectacular design with a brilliant and challenging script, pressing into moments of tension or discomfort to create recognition of the anger boiling in our bellies here in the 21st century. The piece is at times circus performance, at times expressionist art, at times standup comedy, and also a lecture, a movement driven academic argument.

In particular the overlay of relationships to space exploration with relationships to gender and sexual expression which in parallel to one another as the overarching thematic movement of the piece is an emphatic expression of our current world. The truths Murphy speaks through voice and movement choices are incredibly resonant.

Watch for this to be re-mounted, and GO.

End Meeting For All - Forced Entertainment

I watched this in recording. You can watch Part 1 here. You can watch Part 2 here. Both are available until June, and Part 3 airs May 12.

Disjointed. Unfocused. Overwhelming.

Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All series are improvised public group calls between company members isolated in their homes. Each begins abruptly, and ends abruptly, yet despite the improvisational nature, a structure appears. People ignore others in the call. People get distracted and wander away. People remain deeply focused on a single object or question to the point of irritation. Technology fails (or does it?).

This reflection of our time, when interaction with our closest friends, colleagues, and family members is largely through the blue-white glare of a computer monitor, is stunning. Forced create a piece of performance that is at once anti-performance, and high-performance. We are all living in this recognizable yet utterly foreign version of our world. It is funny, it is sad, it is at times bleak.

This is theatre for isolated times.

Inside by Dimitris Papaioannou (2011 - via Vimeo)

I watched Dimitris Papaioannou’s 2011 durational work Inside via Vimeo. You can watch it here.

One hour in. The patterns of movement are beautiful, subtle. When bodies overlap through spaces, they appear to be in conversation with one another - one person sits on the bed, the one lying in it adjusts, pulling up the blanket. The performers are in their own spaces, unaware of one another and yet in relationship.

The view out the window changes, and the feeling of the space changes with it, although nothing actually changes. You look away, do something else for a moment, and are surprised when you come back and the room is full, or empty.

Although the actual pace of the movements doesn’t change, the feeling of their pace seems to quicken when there are more people in view, and slow when there are fewer. It tricks the mind.

When we reach moments where the performers really do connect physically, the emotional narrative floods forward.

I’m at two hours, and continuing to watch…but want you to start too.