performance description
Start Now, it is a collaborative experimental physical theatre performance that examines documentation and our relationship to it, especially those things which are difficult or impossible to document, or even express. This is examined via a combination of text, movement and a minimal use of technology. The four performers are on stage relating directly to the audience and each other via the material. The theatre is laid bare, house lights illuminated, honestly representing the dilemma of the performers and their presence on the stage grappling with the issues of their process.
company process
The process that led to Start Now was of documenting an hour of each day over eight days in response to a text which was sent saying “start now”. This text was sent in rotation by the performers on specified days but at unspecified times. On receiving the text each member of the group had to document, in some way – sound recording, video, photography, writing, object – the hour which followed. The results of this process became the starting point for the piece, which looks not directly at the materials gathered but at the issues which were raised in the undertaking of the process. This is what translated into the stage performance; an examination of the everyday and how our personal lives intersect with wider events of the world we inhabit.
performance history
The production was devised and performed by Andre Amalio, Tereza Havlickova, Ben Jackson and Daniel Somerville in 2009. Start Now premiered at the George Wood Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London (March 2009) for two performances and was given a further performance in a developed form at Frantiskovy Lazne Theatre in the Czech Republic (November 2009) with the same performers.
audience response
“You made an extremely competent, worked-through, impeccably rehearsed and astonishingly moving piece…[it had] a profound effect on the spectator, using the perfect balance of skill and passion, risk and structure as well as minimal and perfectly judged materials – the simplest of staging elements, just yourselves, your voices, bodies and memories in space… you passed a tipping point where the whole stage picture could modulate and transform musically without having noticed how it did this… Everything worked within rhythmic structure that extended the journey of the piece into a small epic… Your text was fantastic and original, your performances evenly truthful and commanding… Exemplary!”
- Anna Furse: academic, theatre director and performance maker
