PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Fledgling Bristol company Sedated by a Brick unveil their first full-length piece, which nods to David Lynch and sows a minefield of mysteries. Steve Wright hears more.

Many people have found it unsettling: some have found it very funny. When we performed the first part of the show at Prototype, we were really surprised that a lot of the audience found it very funny indeed! We really weren’t expecting that, and it has taken a while for it to sink in…” Neil Puttick – one third of Sedated by a Brick, one of Bristol’s youngest companies and arguably its strangest – is trying to give Venue a feel for the company’s weird, hard-to-classify and (to judge from previous audience responses) insidiously powerful new show.

‘If Destroyed Still True’ begins with a silent figure, who manipulates two lifeless bodies in an attempt to reinstate their lifelike status. He forces breath into their lungs; he dresses and undresses them; he presses cups of tea to their unresponsive lips. As these seemingly dead bodies are resuscitated, several possible versions of the truth are presented, all referring to some unnamed but bloody incident. A collection of live images then unravel – or, indeed, fall apart: audiences, at this point, will begin to come to their own conclusions.

So, um… what’s it all about, Neil? “The piece is very open to interpretation, but there is certainly a power play or exchange between the three people on stage. Different viewers so far have had different interpretations – some people think that we’re a family, others think that we’re all the same person. Others still have thought that some or all of the characters might be dead or even not ‘real’ – maybe in the mind of one of them. We definitely want this to be up to the individual watching.” Filmmaker David Lynch is a key influence, it seems. Fellow Bristol performer Ed Rapley has attributed to SBAB’s work “an alien, David Lynch-like quality” – and, indeed, the company first ‘scratched’ the show at a Lynch festival at London’s Battersea Arts Centre.

Are these three characters recognisable from everyday life, or products of a Gothic imagination? “We are exposing the psyche of the characters. We often say that we are in a brain, in this piece. But then there are some very domestic aspects to the work too. I guess that, like Lynch, we’re really interested in the domestic and everyday, but also in what lies beneath – the skeletons in cupboards. In this show, though, we are mainly focusing on the brain – there are hints of this man’s domestic life, but it’s not Alan Bennett!”

There are, Neil adds, key motifs running through the whole piece, alongside dramatic shifts in feel. “We repeat images, and these look and feel different each time. We’ve found that the audience starts to layer images they have seen together. A number of times, viewers have even claimed to have seen things that weren’t there!” Another estranging aspect is the play’s total lack of dialogue. “There are no voices, only noise… but there is logic without words. And there is a lot of light, illuminating the man and his world. We find that this silence heightens the senses, and becomes a rich territory for the audience’s imagination.”

The power relations between objects and people on stage also fluctuates constantly. “Sometimes it’s a physical power, sometimes it’s a line of mental power and sometimes it’s even transmitted through objects that have the power. It’s more of a power exchange in a way- the power is transferred between everything on the stage. There’s a sort of Wi-Fi between us – one person drinks water and the other spits it out. The water almost looks like it’s been transported. We see our bodies as channelling between them”

The piece took off before, during and after a work-in-progress performance at Prototype, the Tobacco Factory’s new work night. “Ali [Robertson, Tobacco Factory Artistic Director] offered us this slot at The Brewery after seeing fifteen minutes of work at Prototype (“The fifteen minutes they showed us was extraordinary: hysterically funny, absolutely crazy and unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” Ali recalls). And he hasn’t tried to steer it in any way at all. That’s amazingly supportive and really shows that he believes in us.”

SBAB are all ex-members of Bristol’s walkabout performance troupe The Wonder Club (they formed at the after-party for TWC’s Trinity promenade spectacular ‘At ‘Tether’s End’). “We’d situate ourselves in the muddy, murky grounds between a lot of forms, particularly experimental theatre and live art, but also covering visual arts, literature and movement,” Neil explains. “We find that the work we create does not fit neatly into a category, and we like it that way.

“Our process is a mystery. We begin by investigating the images and processes that come to light through our work on the performance. We are led by those images, seeking out their meanings or internal logic. This process is replicated in our performance, in which we pose a set of images and leave the audience to unravel the mystery.”

IF DESTROYED STILL TRUE WAS AT THE BREWERY, BRISTOL FROM TUE 1-SAT 12 MARCH. FOR REVIEW CLICK HERE
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2011

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