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An upbeat spectacle which is slowly breaking apart, Signal to Noise summons a delirious late-night churn of fragments – dances, rehearsals, altercations, scenery changes and unexpected weather reports. AI voices are enlisted to perform the text – their unreal chatter and patter mixing interior monologues, unfinished jokes and off-topic interviews. It all sounds right, more or less human, more or less real. What could go wrong?
The six performers lip-sync all the voices, sometimes carefully, sometimes with unhelpful abandon, bringing life to these disembodied, never-bodied speakers. In the process they summon a strange and compelling world where the question of what’s human and what’s not, what’s real life and what’s just pretending is never far away.
Etchells' musical score mixes everything from filmic atmospheres to noise, xylophones to slowed classical strings, beats, trumpets, grunge guitars, and birdsong, but as ever with the company, the performers are the heart of the work - animating it with the energy and inventiveness that Forced Entertainment have made their calling card.
Created as the group celebrate their 40th Birthday, the show is a powerful mix of performance magic and off-hand deconstruction, a simple idea unfolded to open a unique space for the thoughts, laughter and reflections of spectators.
Infos
Duration: 90 minutes
Language: English
Mousonturm-Coproduction
20.04. Künstler*innengespräch im Anschluss in Studio 2.
am 21.04. Tastführung und Audiodeskription
— Live-Audiodeskription in deutscher Sprache für blinde und sehbehinderte Zuschauer*innen mit vorangehender Tastführung.
— Die Tastführung beginnt um 17.15 Uhr und dauert ca. 30 Minuten. Der Treffpunkt ist vor dem Eingang zum Saal.
— Die Empfangsgeräte und Kopfhörer für die Audiodeskription erhalten Sie am Saaleingang vom Vorderhauspersonal.
— sagen Sie uns gern via barrierefreiheit@mousonturm.de oder + 49 (0) 1590 184 70 05 Bescheid, wenn Sie Audiodeskription & Tastführung in Anspruch nehmen möchten
Sponsors and Supporters
Conceived and devised by the company
Director Tim Etchells
Devised and Performed by Robin Arthur, Seke Chimutengwende, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor
Dramaturgy Tyrone Huggins
Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
Text: Tim Etchells
Music & Sound Design Tim Etchells
Design Richard Lowdon
Production Management Jim Harrison
Touring Technical Manager Alex Fernandes
Signal to Noise is a Forced Entertainment production.
Co-produced by Athens Epidaurus Festival, GR; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Festival d’Automne à Paris; HAU, Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main; PACT Zollverein, Essen and Theatre Garonne, Toulouse.
Supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Supported by Freunde und Förderer des Mousonturs e.V.
More Information
“All the photographs are stories now, so the only memories are things that weren‘t photographed. It is a memory of the long flight of stone steps leading up the very steep very narrow stairwell to our first rehearsal space on the wicker in Sheffield. Although the steps feature in a VHS video I shot at some point back then I don‘t think an image of it exists. In any case there‘s no way to play the video now, it would have been shot around 1985. The tape probably got skipped—the deep past is in formats that are no longer supported. I remember loading and unloading vans up and down these stairs. Huw would stay in the van to mastermind the packaging. Fuck, he must have been what, 21 years old. Sometime, as we loaded in or out, the guys from the boxying gym upstairs would be training, running circiuts up and down the stairs. Yesterday (8th March 2024) we loaded stuff out of the current temporaray rehearsal space in Sheffield and into the van bound for Germay for the premiere of Signal to Noise. So, there we are again, moving things from the cold rehearsal space down yet more steep stone steps, these wider but with a corner to turn before your reach the street. In the space it‘s noch so cold as 85, but cold, nonetheless. It‘s 40 years of this. Moving objects and material together, passing on the stairs, sometimes talking or not, thinking, or not thinking. Climbing to and from a room in which you work together all day in this strange, strange, difficult and sometimes joyous endeavour. To organise actions and words in time and space.
To weave spells, strengths, lova, art and politics.“
Tim Etchells
Weitere Erinnerungen der Mitglieder & Weggefährt*innen von Forced Entertainment ---> forcedentertainment.com