Image: Fenia Kotsopoulou for HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES
Image: Fenia Kotsopoulou for HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES
Image: Fenia Kotsopoulou for HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES
Image: Fenia Kotsopoulou for HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES
Ummm Yeah Okay And?
I awoke one morning and the church outside my window was gone.
I went to a rave and lost my surroundings.
I saw the breath of a stag on a winters morning on a David Attenborough documentary.
I saw a city disappear.
Ummm Yeah Okay And… investigates ambivalence by shrouding an audience in theatrical fog. It attempts to actualise the feeling of having two or more thoughts at the same time.
The performance will make visible the invisible and the invisible visible, providing a bizarre conduit between nature, a theatre and a nightclub. Guided by two personified smoke machines, the performance will take audiences through a series of clouded images from the poetic to the absurd, the real to the surreal, the spectacular to the banal. The minimal scenographic element of fog will pushed to maximal effect paying homage to clowning, camp and to finding joy within the ordinary.
"An absurdist ode to the smoke machine"
Springback Magazine
Ummm Yeah Okay And? is a 60 minute contemporary theatre performance presented with traverse staging.
The performance is mainly physical, sitting somewhere between theatre and dance. The performance is presented in English although text is used sparingly in voice over and in one humorous dialogue scene.
The main focus of the work fog. Theatrical smoke is used heavily throughout produced by 3 smoke machines, shrouding the audience completely within theatrical smoke by the end of the performance. The work deals with ambivalence, meaning the tone of the piece is woven with curiosity, and questions. The piece ends with a mesmeric movement sequence complete with DJ and a room filling with smoke.
The piece can be presented in unconventional spaces. Nightclubs are a topic within the work and interesting venues for the work to be situated. As the performance uses individual chairs large rooms, factory floors, warehouses, basements, caves or traditional black box theatres with seating bank removed can be suitable spaces. The company are particularly interested in working in unconventional spaces. Due to the theatrical fog the performance needs to be staged indoors.
The performance is conceived by Ryan O’Shea and devised and performed with Antti Uimonen and Mar Esteban Martin, who are also working together under the collective name YAK. The three makers are therefore also able to offer an accompanying workshop about strategies of devising physical theatre work through the lens of ambivalence. The performance is accompanied by a book (Ummm Yeah Okay And Book) which can be sold at after the performances and gives a poetic, in-depth insight into the research and making process of the performance.