-M[O]TH-
People Being Watched @ The Arch (Holden Street)
6:00pm, Thu 2 Mar 2006
Score: 2
Note to the director: in order to maximise the potential enjoyment of your audience, it really really helps if you assist them in being able to see the performance. This entails the following:
- Not obscuring the entire cast with smoke, wrapping the audience with same smoke, and then providing no lighting; (as per the opening act)
- Try to ensure that the performance takes place below the audience’s sight line;
- Don’t have unrepeated actions that are pivotal to the “plot” take place on one side of the stage, obscured by cast members, or in the wings;
- Try to keep the performance on the stage, not behind the audience;
- Don’t have the majority of your stage lighting at audience eye level, blinding them every time you attempt to highlight the cast;
- Don’t create so much smoke that the audience can’t see a fucking thing (as per the closer).
Seriously, the way this performance took place, there wouldn’t be a single member in the audience that could truthfully claim that they saw the whole thing. Which makes it tough, since it’s not the easiest performance to comprehend at the best of times.
Still, there’s some interesting ideas there – the cocoon and red-eye masks were great, when you could see them – but it’s pretty hard to make the audience fight through the obscurity when you make it so hard for them. The guy next to me that nodded off certainly struggled; the piercing screams at the end of the piece sure woke him up, though. And fired off my tinnitus.
The clichéd thing to do would be to take the advertising line “a grotesque fairytale” and make up some witty “nightmare” type statement. But that’d take more effort than this deserves.