BLOCK

Description of BLOCK in Performance

Blogger Leonie Higgins attended several BLOCK rehearsals and watched the performances on film.
After the BLOCK project performance at Cambridge Junction on 16 November 2015 she wrote this review, which she posted on 28 November 2015:

Now the audience sit on mattresses on four sides of the performance space at Cambridge Junction, waiting for the performance to start. They are squeezed together, and they look uncomfortable. Some have opted for the cross-legged position; others have pressed their knees together, clinging onto them in a bid to take up less space. My lower back twinges in sympathy. In the stage in the middle are three more mattresses, made up like proper beds.

The lights dim. A clock ticks loudly, interrupted periodically by an industrial-sounding crunch. The dancers move into the space in a tangle of arms and legs like one being, or like a machine. They keep nearly being separated but finding each other again, clinging on until, finally they are torn apart. Each of them is all alone.

They are whirled about the space. The violence of the movement looks like a shipwreck, like they’re lost underwater and at the mercy of the waves. Jordan, Josh and Christina are washed up onto the mattresses, while Lisa is still tumbling in the shallows.

For some reason The Tempest springs into my mind as I think of the shipwreck and the exile. Perhaps it is something about how small and vulnerable their humanity looks, each alone on their tiny island. The audience are small as well, crouching hopefully on their mattress rafts. The people on stage are performing exile and isolation, while the audience sit in a dark, unfamiliar room, squashed up with strangers, waiting to see what will happen next.

Throughout the performance the characters played by Jordan, Josh and Christina try to express their loneliness. They use language to bridge the gap between their lost selves and the onlookers, attempting to be reasonable, rational, even funny, but their anger and fear spills hopelessly over. Sometimes it spills over in words, like when Jordan is trying to talk about peaceful protest, setting a good example and writing letters to his MP, but then quietly (almost cheerfully) reveals that he would ‘top himself’ if it wasn’t for his kids.