Well that was different..
I went to see a performative piece called ‘Beast’ by theatre company Shunt last night, which involved me being fed food via a syringe while wearing an oxygen mask…
the piece was great! it was about the violent side of human nature and our relationship to food, the performance focused on three stages, Cannibalism, ‘refined’ dining in the Victorian era and a futuristic vision of how we will consume food.
Myself and my friends, and 15 other guests ended up being participants in this, and donned in white boiler suits with numbers on the back ended up being watched by the audience as we went through each stage of the eating process.
In cannibalism, you were led to a table in which you kneeled under and stuck your head through a hole up to the top of the table, on which a (fake) human skeleton was layed a foot from your face, this was covered in various animal meat, and a tribal woman would dance above the table, feeding the participants chicken and sausage from an open (fake) human skull. And believe me, the conotations of a human skellington and eating chicken did not go down pleasantly! Especially when your being ‘force fed’ almost.
The next stage was refined dining, all the participants wore large and lavish animal masks and sat down to a somewhat nicer meal of pie and wine, I’m not sure if it was meant to have this affect but the masks were impossible to see and eat in! Feeling blinkered, I wasn’t sure if I was meant to have the impression that this way of eating is not so ‘refined’ and we are unaware, close minded. I’m not sure, all I know is that there was a real pigs head infront of me, and the stag shot the rabbit..
The last futuristic stage was not pleasant! We were give oxygen masks and led into a plastic setting, a woman then came over, removed our masks and gave us food via syringe, a small shot of liquid and a spoonful of what must have been pate but either way was revolting!
All in all a really interesting experience and great to participate rather then watch! Not sure what it would have been like to be the audience, as there’s as little explanation as there was for us! But I really enjoyed myself and would definitely do it again! The performance was only on for 3 nights so I feel privellaged to have been able to take part!
I am looking at Shunt as my company to theoretically take on my interpretation of Gormenghast, last week I saw their performance ‘money’ to give me an insight into their current work and whether they would be suitable. After an amazingly breath-of-fresh-air kind of show it definitely backed up my decision and gave me some storyboarding ideas to interpret Gormenghast shunt style!
