PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Various venues, Bristol (Sun 1-Sun 15 May, 2011)

It started so well. Mayfest’s two-week ‘tentpole’ event – a “performance experience” confidently promising to demonstrate how “a small change in perspective creates a massive change in outlook” – begins with an elegantly handwritten, hand-delivered letter sent to each participant, each of whom have paid £15 to take part. The letter, wistfully ruminating about the hazy nature of midnight and the speed of modern communication, promises a further fourteen days of pervasive multimedia interaction (much of it triggered by a mysterious felt badge enclosed with the letter), a chance to reappraise the world on our doorsteps and consider what it means to be ‘here’ now.

In reality, this means undertaking a series of disparate tasks across the city – answering a question about treehouses on a phone in a hotel lobby; sending an email to your future self in the sanctum of a city centre church; writing a postcard to a neglected loved one; considering why you live where you do in Bristol’s records office – much of it alone, most of it at short notice and a lot of it during office hours. None of it is obligatory, in fact doing all of it is nigh-on impossible, but herein lies the rub – the less you do do, the more isolated and/or confused you become.

Alongside all this, text messages and emails arrive daily, a website documents what’s happened so far and a shared Twitter account allows anonymous musings on who’s been doing what and where.

A lot is asked of the participants by ever-hidden organisers Proto-type Theater – there’s at least a task a day as well as a string of gnomic emails and some bafflingly obscure weblinks to decode which doesn’t seem entirely fair somehow – and it’s only when our shadowy hosts allow a bit of two-way communication (in replying to texts and emails, never in person) that things get really interesting and – vitally – personal.

The scale, ambition and almost faultless logistical management is hugely impressive though: the ground covered (literally and philosophically) is vast, many of the communiqués are beautifully composed (a midnight poem about the lurid underbelly of Saturday night is positively Tom Waitsian) and there are some well-conceived theatrics at work throughout.

Tasks that throw the Fortnighters together create the loudest squeals of excitement, which, you suspect, is at the heart of Fortnight’s real draw – making a friend, self-affirmation, connection (a glance at that party line Twitter account reveals as much) – and during Fortnight’s swansong, a faintly surreal office party on the deserted 17th floor of Bristol’s colossal architectural eyesore Castlemead, the project’s dichotomy is laid bare: strangers (re-)meet, swap stories and chat over a plastic beaker of wine and marvel at the spectacular view. All well and good, but hardly worldview-shattering. And for a project that promised, arrogantly at times, to deliver so much more, this feels like a reasonably satisfying experience crushed by the possibility that it could’ve been a great one. (Joe Spurgeon)

Copyright Joe Spurgeon 2011