The audience is on the frontline
IT is probably fair to say that if Slung Low’s new show Beyond The Front Line is completely different to their last show They Only Come At Night: Resurrection, it is also going to be quite different in nature to most other theatre shows.
The concept is that Salford is under attack from the enemy and the British Army have taken up positions to defend it.
The audience, as UN inspectors with total access to the facility, takes centre stage, starting in the VIP tent.
“From there,” discloses Artistic Director Alan Lane, “the audience will be split up into smaller groups and taken to one of four trucks.
“In each of them, there will be completely different actors with completely different scripts by different writers.
“They’ll each engage with the audience in a completely different way, creating a different reality for that 20 minutes.
"Then the audience all come together again for the final bit of the show and how the audience talk about their different experience is part of the show also.
“We did something similar for the Almeida in London, with three different experiences. Like Resurrection, it’s like being actually in a film, although I suppose it’s a bit more like a live radio play because each audience member will also have a headset, with the actors using radio mikes, so that we can control what you hear as well as see!
“But you can see the ‘real’ world as well, like putting your iPod on and walking down the street. The street is still there but it’s a different experience. In the same way, you’re directly connected to the actor and to this experience.”
Although the show deals with the experience of war, it’s not based on verbatim narrative in the same way as, for instance, Black Watch or Deep Cut.
Scooby-Doo
“Resurrection was like a Scooby-Doo episode,” Alan acknowledges, “and probably much camper than some of the audience might have been expecting.
“With Beyond The Front Line, there’s much more of a sense of engaging with the things that matter. There’s an awareness of not wanting to get it wrong.
"These things are happening and people are dying everyday so you have to be very honest with it and, since we started working on this, it has really brought things home to me about what is happening in the world.
“Perhaps people have become immune to the things they’re now seeing every day on their TV and perhaps the show will make people think a little differently about what they’re seeing.
“At its simplest, the show is a requiem. It’s a way of paying tribute to people who we train and arm and then send off to do our bidding.
"That’s a completely different topic from whether they should be there or not.
“Those men don’t choose and we don’t want them to choose. In return, we undertake a covenant to look after them and their families.
"When we started working on the show, that covenant had been broken but the situation has changed somewhat and the show became more of a tribute, a requiem for fallen soldiers.”
Beyond The Frontline previews at The Lowry on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 6 and 7 then continues until Saturday, October 17 with three performances a day (except Sunday 11). As the show is a promenade piece, the audience are advised to wear sensible shoes and clothing.
Published: Thu, 01 October, 2009
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