LTT Review: Shared Agendas Thursday 6-5-2010

by Jen Aitken | 2:35 pm 11/07/2010

Co-ordinated by Ali East and Martyn Roberts (3/5)

This performance was the fourteenth Shared Agendas event. Shared Agendas provides an annual forum for a cross-disciplinary, improvised exchange between musicians, dancers, actors, performers, and techies. James Reedy explains that the work exists “within a spectrum which includes both inappropriate and appropriate activity as well as auspicious co-incidence.” This latest instalment of Shared Agendas provided many an inappropriate moment and a number of beautiful auspicious co-incidences. 

Creating an improvised performance involving nigh on 15 performers is always going to be risky, but with the combined experience of all those involved I did feel like I was in very safe hands. What I particularly loved was the live camera feed, operated by Roberts. This offered a certain distancing effect within the piece as the audience was invited to engage with the performance on a whole new level, through the medium of projection. When I found the action on-stage to be cluttered and overwhelming I could retreat into the world that Roberts was creating on screen. 

What I didn’t particularly appreciate were the exclamations that began “last year in Shared Agendas ...” I wasn’t interested in then, I was interested in what was happening now. What was happening in the space was often jumbled and I craved moments of silence, darkness, and stillness. There needed to be more contrast within the performance. The performers were not often aware of the other bodies in the space and thus certain moments were not given the space and time to fully evolve before our attention was snapped away to gratify someone else’s offering; but, alas, such is the nature of improvised performance.

On the whole this was an interesting, sometimes un-nerving but fulfilling performance that was full of joyous surprises, and I hope Shared Agendas continues to be included in the annual Lunchtime Theatre line-up.

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