As Forced Entertainment celebrates its 40th birthday, the company continues to explore the notion of theatre, this time via a distinctly Live Art presentation on stage.
The stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall is bookended by rows of costume, reminiscent of David Hockney’s LA pool paintings, but this is a piece built around audio, and there is anticipation as to how this opulent dressing-up box will play its part.
Performers doing soundcheck in North American accents populate the stage, hilariously deconstructing the words, "is this my voice; are these my hands?" in lip-sync, with intentions varying from confusion to excitement. This village of vintage LA mediary types, also populated by oblong sofas and fake plants, becomes a denser forest of velour and jumpsuits uttering into handheld mics. With changes in riff come changes in costume. Thus, the game is established.
And this is a drama-school-esque game in its purest sense—a non-narrative presentation of deconstructed, recorded sound given a broad structure of physical busyness escalating into chaos and finally deflation. A series of refined improvisations could not be more transparently realised.
The audio riffs continue as supported by by surtitles. From "are these my hands?" to "I’m done", the six performers ecstatically find actions to keep the audience held. Credit goes to the ensemble, consisting of Robin Arthur, Seke Chimutengwende, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor for their commitment to every beat and non-causal change.
Despite this piece of deconstruction being decidedly plotless, there is a huge tension present in Signal to Noise. Usually, when presented with fragmented motifs and the sort of low-content fun the piece is defined by, we are invited into a different context, something more transient and open: an art gallery, a promenade experience of a building, a show that encourages the audience to roam, explore and discover beyond the abstract performance offered.
Yet this is a proscenium theatre set-up, and we, the audience, are stationary and focused on what is essentially a ‘durational’ piece of live art, for almost two hours. For many, the desire to leave and seek alternative stimulation will be a strong impulse. For others, who can submit to the transcendental monotony conjured, Signal to Noise will constitute a fun night at the theatre.
What the piece achieves is a clear provocation on the purpose of theatre, posing the question: why should we care? The characters on stage are certainly not very much like the frequenters of the QE Hall—they seem to derive from a twentieth century version of West Coast America for a start. And they are certainly not in any real jeopardy, other than the kind of philosophical ennui suggested by their repeated patterns.
If Tim Etchells’s latest playful experiment is intended to be a meditation on life as an uncomfortable series of repeated patterns, the company’s job is done. Whether the value in this is worth the time and platform given is a question of taste.