WHAT would you do with a complete stranger, a bunch of small figurines and a little eyedropper bottle of fluid that looks suspiciously like blood?
Well you wouldn’t need to worry about what to do, because the headphones you’d be wearing at the Matterhorn in Downstage’s new play there, would tell you.
Basically two people – strangers or not – sit at a table that’s laid out with some of those peculiar items, and they both listen to a digital track that tells them what to do.
It’s an odd concept. But one that already has Matterhorn’s general manager Dylan Marychurch hooked after a photo shoot, where he wore the headphones and listened to some of the track.
“I hope my name gets pulled out of the hat [to do it] on party night,” he said, after he took them off. “I have absolutely no idea what it’s about, and a minute in I still don’t know. I try and figure out what are those figures for? What’s the blood for? What’s that sound? And why am I thinking about these things in a restaurant?”
Not knowing is apparently the idea. You listen. You become the audience, and the actors. And you do exactly what you’re told to do. The play, Etiquette, premiered in London in 2007 and is written by Silvia Mercuriali and Anthony Hampton from UK theatre company Rotozaza. It’s been transferred into 13 languages and has since gone worldwide.
Downstage’s Angela Green “stumbled” across the play after seeing a New York Times video on its premiere over there, and says she “completely fell in love with it” because of its intimacy, it’s use of technology such as iPhones and headphones, and its “element of randomness”; like “those ‘Pick a Path’ books where you spin a dice and you go in all sorts of directions”.
The makers must be onto something: Green says shows sell out, especially once people who’ve seen it tell their friends.
“It’s a totally different experience that you don’t get anywhere else. Not having to worry about the right thing to say is quite liberating.” She reckons that the play will fit in well with the “hub of culture” at Mattherhorn, or with kids; in fact with anyone who’s not afraid to try new things and “step out of the box a bit”.
But it might be a strain for those who don’t like being told what to do.
Etiquette, Matterhorn, January 25-February 20.