Fond as I am of London’s Barbican Centre, I can never seem to find my way out, or indeed sometimes the way in. So it was with some misgivings that I signed up to non zero one‘s site-specific performance Would Like to Meet, which requires some guided wandering around the dreaded Labyrinth. In truth this is not, strictly speaking, the site-specific theatre that some might expect.
Would Like to Meet is really neither a specific response to the building’s fabric nor a wild subversion of it. It is a much more pedestrian affair, in the literal sense, and a much more personal one. Participants are directed up anonymous stairways, past recycling bins, through doorways of what could have been Anywhere inc. What subversion there is, is of a gentler sort: there is a pleasing twist to the notion of such participatory drama – where the spectators are the performers – taking place in the marginal, public spaces of a theatre, outside the auditoria. Everything is playfully turned inside out.
The audience size is tiny, with only six punters allowed at any one time. Each is given a pair of headphones and an MP3 player and then follows a colour-coded, tailored itinerary, which at times intersects with other members of the group. The format does engender a certain amount of performance anxiety, which in my case was not entirely unjustified. Without giving too many specifics away, I was asked to dismantle a bit of kit, failed miserably, and consequently the chap in the adjacent booth did not get quite the experience he’d been led to expect. Who knows, maybe the muffled cursing behind the arras weaved its way into his narrative. It goes to show, however, that the finest of logistical tuning can be ballsed up by human error.
Our highly visible earphones were easily identifiable, a costume of sorts, which gave a bizarre legitimacy to our wanderings. I found the people swilling round the Barbican looking on intrigued at the participants, as we were scenically dotted about the place, or engaged in a mildly out of place transaction. And conversely everyone becomes a performer, a bit part in our own drama, as we gaze down at the foyer, not just the actor-plants that the theatre company have put in place.
It’s a strangely comforting sensation, to be guided round a building by a disembodied voice, which is part audio tour-guide, part psychotherapist. Following the instructions confers a protective cocooning, as we take a mini break from decision-making.
More searching questions could have been asked here about the lengths we will go to when we are simply asked by an authoritative voice. But this would be to go beyond non zero one’s remit, which concerns itself with a much quieter exploration of our interaction with strangers, our snap assessments, and the rich and varied biographies of those at whom we barely glance.
But the mind will wander, and some of the most innocuous suggestions can be met with stubbornness and even downright mutiny. One participant reflexively disliked his “voice” and so was ill disposed to do anything it asked. Consequently I’m not convinced we squarely tackled the agenda of these young Royal Holloway graduates, who earnestly ask “can you miss someone you’ve never met?” However it did become clear at the end of the forty-five minutes that there was a certain heterogeneity of experience amongst the participants, some of whom had been led down quite different routes. I found myself rather envious of their emotional, even haunting moments. If only I had picked a different colour!
Conceptual pieties about exploring “absence . . . memories and stories” aside, at least I now know my way round the Barbican.
Until 15 May
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