Went out to Shunt Vaults tonight with my pal Maryanne and her friend James. It's a trove of midweek secret-London curiosities hidden under London Bridge station. The home of an artists collective where anything can happen and randomness abounds. The emphasis is on a newly emerging nexus of experiential, social gaming and theatrics with a good dollop of the old dressing-up box thrown in for good measure.
First up was:
'The Stanley Arms'- a visual radio show devised by Rebecca Kilgarriff, and put together with some serious help from George Tomlinson and Melanie Wilson. The audience play the roles of locals sat in their pub listening to the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands as it unfolds around us. Our only information sources were the radio, external sounds and the lights at the window. The dry humour and minimal presentation were effective.
Then we saw:
Five in
the
Morning - by Rotozaza 
Anton
Hampton, Silvia Mercuriali, Greg McLaren, Melanie
Wilson
'Standing in front of a blank slate of white walls,
three shivering
swimmers, red-faced and half-smiling in tight suits, await their orders
from a series of chillingly calm disembodied voices... Welcome to
Aquaworld, a theme park where the temperature is always perfect and the
beaches have no sand... All is not what it seems in Five in the
Morning, a cerebral new brainteaser by the innovative
London theater
company Rotozaza' New
York Times. I really liked this, alienating and engrossing by turns. The narrative returns to the same still point of introspection by degrees leaving you with a half-glimpsed underlying truth that doesn't quite resolve.
Too cold for bathing costumes and drenchings though, definitely suffering for their art.
And finally:
Sandpit
#1Sandpit #1 - Why Don't We All Get Introduced www.sandpit.hideandseekfest.co.uk
The Sandpit is a project of Hide and Seek:
London's first
pervasive games festival. Low- tech,
high-fun play ably put together by Alex, Tassos and their numerous gamesmasters. We played in the second round of Gossip, a relatively complicated extended parlour-game involving hiding secrets, dishing the dirt and ganging up on your fellow townfolk. I shan't reveal Maryanne's (who played The Actress) secret, I still blush to think of it.
