Snakes and Ladders
A specially commissioned performance which took place on and around The Fire Station to celebrate Acme Studios' 25th Anniversary and the redevelopment of the building into work/live studios. Snakes and Ladders traced the external signs of an invisible dialogue between mind and matter. On the terraces and balconies of The Fire Station, six performers were accompanied by their virtual/video doubles, which did as they did and mimicked their every action. Soon differences occurred and the doppelgangers began to separate from their fleshy counterparts - they were able to transport themselves from one part of the building to another and even to walk unsupported out into open space, immune from physical danger. Obliged to follow their ghosts, the performers were pushed into increasingly precarious scenarios and situations where vertigo, gravity and accident posed a constant threat. Gradually the building was populated by cloned images and relationships between the two sides became comically confused as the actual mixed with the virtual.
with Emma Benson, Lucy Benson, Amanda Hadingue, Susannah Hart, Michael Sherrin, Gary Stevens
Directed by Julian Maynard Smith
“Since 1981 they have been one of the country’s most unclassifiable talents, forging arresting - and often weirdly compelling – performances from unlikely arrangements of objects and performers: ‘A sculpture with performers, lights, video images and ladders’. And snakes? ‘Yes, that’s when the performers fall off the building’”.
Kate Stratton, Time Out
“Anticipation is one word. Fear might be nearer the mark for anyone within touching distance of the concept of vertigo! …. A diverting and powerfully performed spectacle.”
Keith Watson. Ham and High
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Commissioned by Acme Studios for the opening of The Fire Station, Bow for live/work spaces
An ArtsAdmin production, 1998
