Whisper, Exeter Phoenix, Tuesday 23rd June, 8pm
Presented by Proto-Type theatre WHISPER is a visually decadent, aurally immersive performance that asks the audience to question what is real in a world of increasing technological sophistication.
Each audience member is given a set of headphones through which they hear the voices of three live performers narrating a fictional walk through a fictional city. Obscured behind a cinematic screen, the performers are seen as shadows, silhouettes or in stark clarity, creating a fully immersive sound environment to accompany their narration.
Perhaps most importantly, the performers’ text is written in the second person, which means that the audience hears the story as if it is about them. The combination of the immersive sound environment and the ‘you’ voice of the second person text literally places the audience ‘inside’ the performance as it can only be received through the combination of the sound coming through the headphones and the visual narrative of the performers behind the gauze.
The visual richness of the lighting design, the specificity of the live and recorded audio, and the complex staging and choreography combine in striking ways throughout the piece: in the sudden visual shifts from a full screen image of bodies walking through space, to ‘sliced’ images of fragmented bodies doing a stylised swing dance routine, to the sudden emergence of birds, gigantic ladies and rain.
The theatre is one of the few places left where people are still abiding by the rules of the 19th century: they turn off their technology and attentively sit to ‘watch’ what is happening in front of them.
This rare, shared belief in focused attention at a performance seems the perfect site of disjuncture to explore what it means to live through mediation. Whisper does just that: it asks us to question what experiences we consider ‘real’ and which ones we cannot trust by highlighting the mediations we all submit to every day.
By using a common form of ‘tuning out’ (the headphones) in such a way as to actually increase awareness of the shared experience of being in a room together, Whisper uses subverted technology as a tool for intimacy and personal connection, thereby blurring the line between theatre and daily life.
WHISPER was first developed while Proto-type was in residence at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow and was subsequently revised and expanded at Nuffield Theatre Lancaster where it had its premiere.
Whisper has since had an Arts Council England funded tour to Alsager Arts Centre (Alsager), the Wickham Theatre (Bristol), greenroom (Manchester), the Bluecoat Arts Centre (Liverpool), The Patrick Centre/Hippodrome as part of Fierce Festival (Birmingham), BAC (London), PS122 (NYC) with the support of the Jerome Foundation, and Soho Theatre (London).
The event is part of the Exeter Summer Festival. Full festival listings can be found here .
The doors open at 8pm. Tickets cost £9/£7 and are available from the Exeter Phoenix on 01392 667080 or online at www.exeterphoenix.org.uk.