Performance Installation
26 - 28 July 2007
The Albany, Deptford, London

‘Headlines’ is an intense theatrical experience; it is also in tents. The director and actors get up early, collect the day's newspapers then pick a story for that day's performances. After devising four completely new performance pieces by lunchtime, the actors go to their individual, specially designed, hand-sewn tents dotted around the venue and await their audience. Audiences are given photocopies of that day's news article and it is quite an experience to stumble in and out of these tents, clutching the 'pure' form of the story with the programme notes on the other side while absorbing the Ampersand actors' interpretation of it. Only one audience member is allowed in each tent at a time; there are four tents and each performance lasts four minutes. It's the newest, freshest, most topical theatre possible.

The one-to-one experience varies from tent to tent; the news item about a documentary broadcasting the death of an Alzheimer's sufferer inspired four very intense performances that was emotionally devastating in one tent, morbidly but gently comic in the next, openly challenging in the one after and affectionate, uplifting in the last. It was tempting to run from the first, stay for a drink and a chat in the second, put up a fight in the third and go in for a hug in the fourth. That all this can be experienced in the minimum running time of 16 minutes is an extraordinary achievement.

The intimacy of the one-to-one experience is matched in intensity by the immediacy of the subject at hand, and it is exciting to know that each day, each performance and each encounter will be unique and unrepeatable. Not every news item chosen will inspire four consistently great performances; there is also the risk of being ill-informed or insensitive in handling the news, especially in the condensed devising time. The unpredictability of audiences going one-to-one with the actors is another potential risk – the tents are scattered widely, it is deeply intimate to step inside on one's own, no one outside knows what is happening. It is testimony to the company that their commitment to both process and performance is strong enough to get on with it and take the risks as they come.

The opportunity to be provoked in four different ways is Headlines' ultimate aim: while there is no pressure to attend all four tents, audiences would find it silly not to do so as each tent inevitably contradicts, challenges or complements the others. The emphasis, in the exercise and the final product, is to get the full story. The headlines can't say it all.

http://www.ampersandmedia.co.uk/Ampersand2.php

Written by Hazel Tsoi-Wiles