Told by an Idiot's show incorporates social distancing
At Told by an Idiot, our work always comes out of some kind of restriction. Our current show, The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, interrupted by lockdown, was created from the liberation of the performers not being able to speak. We found immense freedom in working without words to create our version of a silent movie for the stage.
We found a different kind of freedom when we collaborated with the poet laureate Simon Armitage on our show I Am Thomas (2016), where we told the whole story through song and action. For Casanova, we collaborated with the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy on a reinvention of the great lover's life. We made Casanova a woman and Carol Ann wrote an unsurprisingly highly poetic text, where everything was spoken in the third person. Some of the actors struggled with this, but the restriction helped create a stylised, visually rich story.
It is through working with restriction that we often discover the style of the piece we are making, allowing it to develop by itself rather than imposing ideas. The design and visual aesthetic of our work alone can act as a strong provocation for what we make. It may sound conflicting but as we create shows through improvisation, restriction is critical: without some kind of constraint performers can be left with almost too much freedom, making it more difficult to generate material.
Covid and the resulting lockdown has obviously impacted hugely on our work. As a company, we thrive on the live experience and audiences' reaction. That's why we are relishing the challenge of adapting our 2013 show Get Happy not only for the outdoors, but also for these socially distanced times.
Our aim is to fully embrace the social distancing into the very fabric of the piece, adapting routines and sections of the show so that the restriction feels part of the whole experience rather than something we've been forced to do. When, for example, these two men are angry with each other, they start to rip each other's clothes; only in the new version they will keep their distance and rip their own clothes off - increasingly provoking each other to go further in the destroying their own outfits.
And we lose nothing in the process. The show is a highly visual and delightfully random sketch show, featuring physical comedy, live music, acrobatics, hip-hop and (socially distanced) audience interaction. By organically (re)creating something new and special, we invite the audience to laugh with us as we reference these strange times we are all living through.
We have gone even further into the innate spontaneity that lies at the heart of all of our work. Deciding to take Get Happy to the streets doesn't feel like some kind of compromise, but an embracing of everything we hold dear: a basketball court in Woolwich is the perfect performance environment for the Idiots - full of the unexpected, open to chaos, and a genuine live experience.
Creating this way is a fun and engaging process for us. As an anarchic piece of comedy performance for the whole family, Get Happy for us must be, above all, a fun process, so that can seep through to our audience - the children, adults, mums, dads, grandparents...all of us who've been lockdown for the past few months, and are ready to have a good laugh together and revel in some high mischief and silliness. We are inviting everyone to leave their worries behind and celebrate the imagination and resilience of our children. We want Get Happy to be perfect antidote to lockdown.
Photo credit: Manual Harlan
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