Output details

Garage Band: A Site-specific Performance. This piece was commissioned for MAYFEST (http://mayfestbristol.co.uk) and made in association with MAYK (http://www.mayk.org.uk), with a production budget of approx £2500. Ticketed audience numbers across three days (24/05/2012 - 27/05/2012) were 180, with many more members of the public passing by.

It took the form of a piece of music theatre set in a suburban garage in Bristol. The narrative followed the attempts of a 'singer' to reconnect with his memory following a mysterious accident, which involved something heavy falling from the sky. With the substantial payout from the corporation responsible for the accident, he sets about reforming his old band and begins a search for a garage that feels like the garage from his teenage years. His memory is sketchy, but he recalls tiny details of objects and events that accompanied that time of his life and he sets about reconstructing them. He even employs two actors to take on the roles of the 'drummer' and the 'bass player' in an attempt to reconnect with something authentic through the repetition of rehearsal and the materiality of objects. The story is told through a series of songs and instrumentals. These are accompanied by animation sequences initiated by various scenographic objects that populate the garage: a tool bench; a twittering machine; a sleeping cat - objects that appear to take on a life of their own. The invited audience was from the local community as well as from the producing venue and sat on the driveway. During the course of the performance, a BBQ was lit and burgers were cooked. The audience was invited to join the band to eat and drink coke and beers with them at the end of the show.

‘Garage Band’ was a site-based performance held at a garage at 61 Conduit Place, St Werburghs and was commissioned by MAYK for Mayfest Bristol 2012. It explored how the material stage apparatus animates and generates theatrical affect. It was part of a larger enquiry into the role that the object has as actor (or actant) within such apparatuses, the wider context of which has been provided by questions about the affect of object-actor inter-animation. The performance originated from within this larger enquiry but was also a distinct work devised for the festival and intended to contribute to forms of non-anthropomorphic object theatre and to discourse stemming from Allen’s Performance Research article (RAllen1), ‘The Object Animates: Displacement and Humility in the Theatre of Philippe Quesne’ (2013). Mayfest is described by the Guardian as “a pulse-racing programme of work that offers fledgling local companies cheek by jowl with artists of international reputation” (Lyn Gardener, 2010). Led by producers MAYK, it has gained a national and international reputation as one of the leading contemporary theatre and performance festivals in the UK. Garage Band was performed between 24th and 27th May on seven occasions, with over two hundred audience members and many more passing by. It was adapted from Tom McCarthy’s novel ‘Remainder’ (2005), which follows the attempts of a singer to reconnect with his memory after a mysterious accident. The singer sets about reforming his old band and begins a search for a garage that feels like the garage from his teenage years, recalling tiny details of objects in an attempt to reconnect with something authentic through the repetition of rehearsal and the materiality of objects.