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Copyright Christmas

Performance, 10 - 31 December 2011. Barbican Theatre, London, UK. Directed by Mark Whitelaw, Designed by Robin Whitmore. Devised and performed by Dickie Beau, Scottee, Jess Love, Ryan Styles, H Plewis, Sheila Ghelani, Roy Kerr, Susannah Hewlett, Harold Offeh and Bird la Bird. Produced by Duckie,

Oliver award winning theatre/performance collective Duckie’s production of Copyright Christmas took a satirical look at conspicuous consumption and crass Christmas commercialism. Audiences were invited to explore a labyrinthine set that resembled the worst aspects of Ikea and Argos stores. As they traversed the set they encountered a series of characters: belligerent store managers, TV salesmen and acrobatic store elves.

Duckie invited 10 leading performers to develop and devise characters and scenarios for the production. Harold Offeh, developed an encounter for audiences with the store’s resident toilet attendant, Alma Asantewaa. This piece was developed from Offeh’s ongoing research into service roles and the dynamics of power that are created between patrons and service providers. In previous projects Offeh has explored the awkward power reversal of the resident toilet attendant. Through interventions at Tate Modern and the David Roberts Foundation in 2008, Offeh presented audiences with a difficult and embarrassing confrontation of money, labour and bodily functions.

Offeh’s Copyright Christmas piece saw unsuspecting audiences ushered into a changing cubicle only to find the other side opening out into a dingy toilet where they are confronted by Offeh’s toilet attendant character. The encounters with audiences were often constituted by comic conversations about audience member’s lack of hygiene and attempts by the attendant to spray them with various perfumes in return for a tip. This ambitious production combined elements traditional pantomime with immersive theatre, cabaret and performance art.