After writing the piece I realised it was quite similar in style to other works, which include Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience and especially Commonwealth by Andy Smith. It works by setting the audience a series of instructions and sets the audience down a particular line of though, making it quite linear, despite asking the audience to use their imagination and memories of a previous performance. It sets out its relationship with the audience almost immediately, providing them with information and giving them specific instructions. Despite providing instructions to the audience, the performance seeks to not have the speaker as the centre of the audience’s attention, rather that the audience listens, follows the instructions and focuses on recollection.

Tim Crouch performing Andy Smith’s ‘Commonwealth’

The main criticism with the performance give was to give it a reason to be live, as opposed to being a purely audio experience. One way in which this could be addressed is by having the performance make more use of the audience, maximising their presence and interacting with them to reinforce the idea of the piece. Testing whether the audience could remember an earlier part of the performance would play on the concept that people don’t fully recall previous performances they have witnessed. To the extent that they most likely can’t recall minor details from earlier in the performance they are watching. Related to this there could be potential to involve the audience more directly by having an audience member direct a section of the performance that occurred earlier.

Other further developments that could be done on this work would be to streamline the script more. As it was a continuous writing exercise there is some repetition, and so evaluation and restructuring would be required before adding any more material. It perhaps deserves some more attention as an idea, through researching the work of artists such as Handke, Smith, and similar, and working on what the piece is trying to present and the form in which it does so.

Tim Crouch’s Royal Court surprise theatre show (2013) [Picture] At: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/R5u6-iNMjpg/hqdefault.jpg (Accessed on 12 February 2016)

The audience enter to a well lit space filled with chairs for the audience, none matching. There is the noise of general pre-show atmosphere, it slowly dies down and the lights fade down before a overhead spotlight comes up on a generic theatre program. On it there are the words ‘Theatre Program’ and nothing more. After a moment a person comes on-stage, picks up the program and speaks the following words.

You are all at a theatre, almost certainly not the same theatre as each other, but still a theatre. You’ve come from your home or wherever you were staying. The theatre has house lights and ushers and people edging past to their seats. After a time the performance begins. A number of actors are on-stage and they are playing characters and parroting lines from the moment you see them.

This is the best performance you have ever seen.

Sitting here in a theatre you are watching the best performance you have ever seen. The action continues and perhaps makes you laugh, chortle, gasp, weep and think. You are witnessing the best performance you have ever seen and it is provoking a response. Eventually as the actors come and go and perform and parrot lines that have been put in their mouths to put in your ears, it ends.

The actors as actors come bow and leave. Then you leave and you think about what you’ve seen for a bit and chat with people who saw it as well or people who haven’t, and so you you tell them about it. You create a construction of the performance you’ve seen for them so they can know what it was. It could save them the trouble of going themselves or merely whet the appetite of wanting to consume the performance themselves. Quite likely the latter as, after all, this was the best performance you have ever seen. Over time the moment by moment of it may fade, but you remember it and what happened and how good it had been.

But now, you are back in that theatre again, each watching the performance again, even if details are hazy you know for certain what you watching. The person who is standing in front of you is of little interest compared to the performance you are at. They merely provide  facile instructions concerning recollection but you attention is really on the performance in front of you. By far the best performance you have ever seen, and how astoundingly lucky you are to witness it again, the quality totally on point with when you saw it originally, how blessed you are by the opportunity.

The person continues to drone however, but they are of far less interest to you than the main event you came to see. Everyone with you is witnessing the performance, the theatre you are in is full. Some may also think that this performance is the best they have seen.

It ends.

The actors are actors not characters and you go and forget the moment to moment and when asked what you can remember, recall instead the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, the laughter and the tears. This makes it so that when you are recalling the performance it is just the best. The best performance you have ever, you can explain why this is the case, but its moments are lost. Even as you sit in the theatre now, watching it again, pieces are missing. Moments are missing. You are still watching the best performance you have ever seen, but it is not quite the same, as the person drones on in front of you, detracting somewhat from the experience. Eventually after having sat here in the theatre and watched the best performance you have ever seen again and again, with some moments coming and going, and with it not quite being the same every time, the person, who is droning on, becomes greater than the best performance you have ever seen. Not better than it, but they overwhelm it, and they are becoming more distracting. making it harder to re-watch the best performance you have ever  seen. Even when they stop droning on and are just standing there, they slowly become too much.

When you’re watching them and not re-watching the best performance you have ever seen. You  just leave.