(Let the Water Run its Course) to the Sea that Made the Promise

Created 1986

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“Part two was also their heartache for the city outside. They named it & renamed it every day despite the bitter cold. They called it remarkable city, alphabet city, alphabetti city, New Milan and the Capital City of Britain. They sat up some nites & renamed it & their love grew as they named it: the city of spires, the Kentucky Fried City, the City of Elvis King, the exploding city, the city of joy. And while they talked it rained like Ronald MacDonald outside.”

(Let the Water Run its Course) to the Sea that Made the Promise is somewhere between a game, a ritual and an exorcism in which two men and two women enact fragments that might come from their lives, their loves and possible deaths. The space for the performance is a wooden construction resembling a dilapidated factory. A voiceover text frames the piece in a broken poetical slang, describing the life and death of a man and a woman in an ever-changing and dangerous urban space. The live performers use a gibberish language of cries, mumbles and whispers — the shapes and passions of language without the details.

In (Let the Water…, the sparse choreography of earlier Forced Entertainment pieces gives way to a physical style altogether more ragged and visceral. The structure is led by an interest in the dynamics of play and competition whereby key images and fragments are enacted repeatedly by the protagonists.

The voiceover text for (Let the Water Run its Course) to the Sea that Made the Promise is published in Certain Fragments.

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Images

credits

Conceived and devised by the company.

Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Cathy Naden, Susie Williams
Voiceover Tim Etchells, Sarah Singleton
Direction Huw Chadbourn, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Terry O’Connor
Text Tim Etchells
Design Huw Chadbourn, Richard Lowdon
Soundtrack John Avery

(Let the Water Run its Course) to the Sea that Made the Promise is a Forced Entertainment production.