Signal to Noise
Created 2024
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An upbeat spectacle which is slowly breaking apart, Signal to Noise summons a delirious late-night churn of fragments – dances, rehearsals, altercations, scenery changes and unexpected weather reports. AI voices are enlisted to perform the text – their unreal chatter and patter mixing interior monologues, unfinished jokes and off-topic interviews. It all sounds right, more or less human, more or less real. What could go wrong?
The six performers lip-sync all the voices, sometimes carefully, sometimes with unhelpful abandon, bringing life to these disembodied, never-bodied speakers. In the process they summon a strange and compelling world where the question of what’s human and what’s not, what’s real life and what’s just pretending is never far away.
Etchells’ musical score mixes everything from filmic atmospheres to noise, xylophones to slowed classical strings, beats, trumpets, grunge guitars, and birdsong, but as ever with the company, the performers are the heart of the work – animating it with the energy and inventiveness that Forced Entertainment have made their calling card.
Created as the group celebrate their 40th Birthday, the show is a powerful mix of performance magic and off-hand deconstruction, a simple idea unfolded to open a unique space for the thoughts, laughter and reflections of spectators.
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Conceived and devised by the company
Director Tim Etchells
Devised and Performed by Robin Arthur, Seke Chimutengwende, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor
Dramaturgy Tyrone Huggins
Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
Music & Sound Design Tim Etchells
Design Richard Lowdon
Production Management Jim Harrison
Touring Technical Manager Alex Fernandes
Co-produced by Athens Epidaurus Festival, GR; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Festival d’Automne à Paris; HAU, Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; Kunstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt; PACT Zollverein, Essen and Theatre Garonne, Toulouse.
UPCOMING SHOWS
16 Jun 2024
- 18 Jun 2024
Holland Festival Amsterdam, Netherlands
26 Jun 2024
- 27 Jun 2024
Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Athens, Greece
10 Oct 2024
- 11 Oct 2024
Southbank Centre, London, UK
16 Oct 2024
- 17 Oct 2024
Cambridge Junction, Cambridge, UK
23 Oct 2024
- 24 Oct 2024
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Brighton UK
Signal to Noise - PREVIOUS SHOWS
HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany
24 Apr 2024 - 26 Apr 2024
Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany
19 Apr 2024 - 21 Apr 2024
PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany
21 Mar 2024 - 23 Mar 2024