Ontroerend Goed: Close encounters of the absurd kind

Published on Saturday 25 July 2009 13:18

THE most talked about show of the 2008 Fringe was a Belgian production with the snappy title Once And For All We're Going To Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen. Deliriously enjoyable, it was performed by a group of adolescents who, in a series of high-energy scenes, perfectly captured the smell of teen spirit in all its raucous, funny, vulnerable glory. It made you look at teenagers in a new light and went on to be the only hit show ever to have an international tour dictated by the B

The same company, Ontroerend Goed, also provided my highlight of 2007. Performed in a Chambers Street basement, The Smile Off Your Face was very different, but equally extraordinary. It required the audience to descend a staircase one at a time, to be sat in a wheelchair, hands bound and eyes blindfolded. For the next 20 minutes, you were subjected to a sensory onslaught by unseen hands. Fingers passed through your hair, a flame tickled your chin, a woman whispered intimate questions into your ear and a piece of chocolate was popped into your mouth.

It was a rare, disorientating experience and it shared with Once And For All… a desire to disrupt the conventional relationship between actor and audience. That desire is also the impulse behind this year's Internal, a show that forms the missing link between speed dating and the confessional. Performed to just five people at a time at intervals throughout the day, it is an experiment to discover how quickly you can get to know somebody, as actor and spectator go head to head.

"The connection is that it feels very individual and it puts the spectator in a very unusual position," says performer Joeri Smet, who also worked on The Smile Off Your Face. "People are challenged to get quite close to the performer. Internal is not as sensory as The Smile Off Your Face; it focuses more on interaction and communication. The purpose of the performance is to see how personal you can get with somebody in 25 minutes."

In the first half of the show, the five actors each pick one of five spectators for a conversation in a separate space. There is a broad outline but no fixed script; the actors know what they want to find out, but they are free to respond to whatever the spectator says. After that, the audience comes together into something like a group therapy session. "It has to do with techniques of getting to know people in a very short space of time, asking the right questions and observing body language," he says.

In this way, Smet is not an actor in the traditional sense, although sometimes an audience member will be convinced he must be playing a role. In such cases, he has to say it doesn't matter if he's an actor or not, they can still have a conversation. Just the same, he does find himself getting pre-show jitters like any actor. "Every time, we're really nervous," he says. "It is exciting for us because you're so close to the people and you don't know if you're going to be able to do something interesting. You have to concentrate very hard because it's about listening well and using the information in a way that is relevant, personal and actually says something more than a superficial conversation. I feel challenged every time."

The actors have a rule, rather like priests and psychiatrists, not to let the performance spill over into real life, but the spectators he meets do make a big impression. "I remember many people," he says. "If I see them again I usually keep my distance. It might feel for them that it was too real. When I meet them afterwards I want to be clear the performance is over."

Such a degree of intimacy is not for everyone. However much I raved about The Smile Off Your Face at the time, it was common for people to shudder at the thought of exposing themselves to so personal an experience. It's the same with Internal. "It's good if people realise that about themselves and don't enter," says Smet. "In this performance there's no choice: you have to talk, you have to open up a little bit."

This kind of performance has its risks for all concerned. There was a spectator who became so smitten by one of the actors, he tracked her down via an internet casting site and made repeated calls to her. Art and real life had become blurred and she had to explain to him that the show had finished and stalking her was not acceptable.

For the audience too, such an intimate encounter can touch an unexpected nerve. "In The Smile Off Your Face it is really a very small minority that are freaked out and usually it has to do with a personal, maybe traumatic experience," says Smet, explaining that the company deals with such instances with due sensitivity. "We once had a girl who had been in a hospital for a very long time; she had had cancer, and just being in the wheelchair made her think about this period and she started crying. In Internal, people don't really freak out, but I must say, from my experience performing it, there are a lot of strange people around.

"It's also very strange how easily people open up. Sometimes you can be talking to them for two minutes and already they tell you something incredibly personal and they just continue going into it."

Far from being disturbed, audiences tend to become united by their 25-minute experience. "They come in as five strangers and very often they go and have a drink together and talk about the show for an hour," says Smet, who recommends seeing the show alone. "For me that's almost part of the show, that you provoke something that connects people."

Internal, Mercure Point Hotel, (Traverse Theatre), Edinburgh, 5-30 August (not 10, 17, 24), various times, www.edinburgh-festivals.com

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

HALL OF FAME

She may have worked hard to erase the memories of her nudge-nudge, wink wink ladette persona, but Denise Van Outen still can't resist camping it up. At this year's Fringe she will perform songs of famous blondes in a confessional-style show written by Jackie Clune.

The comedy ensemble hit is most likely to be School For Scandal, the Restoration romp starring 77-year-old Lionel Blair. Alistair McGowan will be taking on the works of Noel Coward in Cocktails With Coward.

SEX SELLS

Anything goes during August, and there are plenty of acts turned on to the idea that sex sells. It's been so long since it was acceptable to be seen at a Chippendales gig that it's now become acceptable again, as the troupe have figured out by booking a month-long residency in Edinburgh right on the back of a run in Las Vegas. For those who prefer their sex education a little less conservative, porn star and director Ben Dover's Innocent 'Til Proven Filthy! show is sure to lift the lid on the inside story of the porn king's full frontal life and times.

DRAMATIC PURPOSES

The International Festival is always a reliable place to find great quality drama, but the Fringe should not be dismissed as an arena only for fun and frolics. This year there are two productions paying tribute to the literary genius of our own Muriel Spark, with The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and A Girl Of Slender Means on the Fringe. From London's home of new writing, the Bush Theatre, to Scotland's, the Traverse, comes Sea Wall by Simon Stephens, a monologue of a broken man.

At the International Festival big scale ambition comes into play with the Romanian production of Faust being staged at Ingliston, a venue best known for its housing of the Highland Show.

Scottish playwright Rona Munro receives her first International Festival commission with The Last Witch, based on historical accounts of Janet Horne, who was the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in Scotland.

SINGING FOR THEIR SUPPER

If you aren't an avid listener of Radio 1, then it may have escaped your notice that Edinburgh is about to be swamped by fans of Scott Mills, below, as a result of him commissioning, auditioning, writing and producing Scott Mills: The Musical through the medium of Radio 1 listeners. Elsewhere, Facebook: The Musical seeks to reflect the social networking saga of our times, whereas A Team: The Musical revels in nostalgia, via power ballads, for the crack commando unit, better known as Face, Hannibal, BA and Murdock.

THROWING SHAPES

National institutions, such as our own Scottish Ballet and Michael Clark, will be delighting dance fans at the International Festival this year. At the Fringe, familiar physical theatre companies such as Kataklo are worth looking out for, as they bring their tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci, Love Machines, to Edinburgh.

www.edinburgh-festivals.com