THE KILLERS
THE KILLERS: SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE [Show/Exhibition] Mayfest 2018 The Killers is a live binaural sound work performed in The Regent seaside diner in Weston-super-Mare. Sat in the diner, the audience wear headphones and watch as the audio is constructed; eavesdropping on conversations; tracking the flight of a wayward fly; hearing in real time the countdown to an assassination. The work draws on adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers (1927) which tells the story of two assassins as they arrive at a diner, thirty minutes before a killing. The men order two fish suppers and discuss methods of execution: a radio plays Cyndi Lauper over and over again in the kitchen; inexplicable deliveries of novelty objects are made to the tables; a diner band tunes up in the corner; the half hour counts down. The Killers is a quiet speculation on how the vinyl booths, coffee counters and cherry pie of British diners carry approximations of
American culture, and what happens when you get off the train at the seaside and reach the end of the line. Produced in association with MAYK for Mayfest 2018.
PUBLIC IMPACT National Review (Exeunt): http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/thekillers/ National Review (Bristol 24/7): https://www.bristol247.com/culture/theat re/review-mayfest-the-killers/ Feature in the ‘Most Memorable Theatre of 2018’ end of year review (Exeunt) http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/exe unts-memorable-uk-wide-theatre-2018/ MAYK Thought Residency: https://www.mayk.org.uk/thoughtresiden cies/ Making the Killers: Invited speaker to talk series on ‘Headphone Theatre’ as part of the Ambient Literature Research Group (UWE). Pervasive Media Studio. Bristol. 2018.
"As much as the joy of thinking it is also the joy of not knowing things, of being at the edge of something strange, complex and mysterious – it’s the same feeling I get when watching Twin Peaks or reading bizarre conspiracy theories. It is the sense that there isn’t necessarily anything at the centre, no grand truth that it is our task to figure out, meaning we feel more free to follow the threads of meaning wherever they take us." Exeunt Magazine, 2018.
PUBLIC IMPACT
Mayfest is Bristol’s unique international festival of contemporary theatre, dedicated to presenting a broad range of unusual, playful and ambitious work from leading theatre makers from Bristol, the UK and beyond. Mayfest is produced by MAYK, in partnership with arts organisations across Bristol. From pubs and clubs to community centres and libraries, from theatres and galleries to streets and woods; the city is a playground.Through Mayfest we have built collaborative relationships with nearly every arts organisation in the city, from Bristol Old Vic to Tobacco Factory Theatres, from Arnolfini to the Cube, from Trinity to Circomedia. Each festival we invite the most extraordinary theatre artists we can find into the city for an explosion of culture.
Our programme emerges from conversations with artists and producers, from months travelling the world to find the best new theatre and performance, from collaborations with organisations locally and nationally. Mayfest is MAYK’s gift to the people of Bristol – a feast of performance for a diverse, multi-cultural city – things we know you’ll love, things we hope you’ll love, things we know you’ll be challenged by, things we think you’ll never forget.
. “A mix of work so tasty it makes you want to up sticks and move to Bristol permanently.”
. The Guardian
RESEARCH CONTEXT
Theatrical Latency: Walking Katrina Palmer’s The Loss Adjusters. Theatre and Performance Design, 2 (3-4). pp. 266-278. London: Routledge. In this article, I introduce the term ‘theatrical latency’ as a pleasurable effect experienced when listening to sound in relation to visual perception. Latency refers to both the phenomena of audio delay (in feedback from analogue to digital conversion and the momentary lapses experienced when playing live with recorded music) and a theatrical sensation that comes from the reanimation of visual environments through aural framing. In this configuration, the notion of latency takes on a double meaning as both a recorded phenomenon and the retrieval of something dormant within physical objects, sites or materials. These ideas will be introduced through my experience of walking Katrina Palmer’s site-specific audio work The Loss Adjusters (2015) on the island of Portland (UK). The audio tracks create an extended meditation on Portland, interweaving specific locations and histories with fictional characters and ghosts of the island.
SET UP | HEADPHONE H OUT | INVITATION PREL OPEN EARS /EXIT DINE THE PHANTOM FLY| AR OF THE CAR | CARRIER PHANTOM MONSTER M ACT 1: THE KILLERS SO THE ACTS OF DESPERA MEN (TEXT) | THE CAR SCENE | INTRO TO THE
Welcome to The Regent. The performance will start around 8pm after food. Headphones will be brought to your table. You will find a volume control on the side of the headphones. If they stop working during the performance, put up your hand and a new pair will be brought to you.
PERFORMANCE TEXT
THE KILLERS SONG TH ACTS OF DESPERATE M (TEXT) | THE CAR SCEN INTRO TO THE DINER LAUPER - TIME AFTER ACT 1: INTRO TO THE D THE DINER BAND ACT KILLERS ARRIVEACT 2: SAMPLES (PLACED) AC DELIVERY IS MADE AC
PRACTICE & PROCESS
How can you write for objects? When a performance is predominantly object-oriented, how can this be written into the score and text of production? How much relies on instructions for performers or is it possible to create space within a performance text for objects to act? These artist pages will explore approaches to writing for objects from inside the making process of The Killers, a site-based binaural sound work set in a Little Chef roadside diner. The Killers audio is composed of the sounds of objects, field recordings, a film noir score and spoken narration, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's short story (1927). The audio is being recorded in a single live take around a binaural microphone that acts as the ears of the listener, sat at a table in a restaurant, eavesdropping on conversations and actions, hearing in real time the countdown to an assassination as two contract killers arrive at the diner. The Killers is currently in production with MAYK (Bristol, UK) and will be available to download and experience via headphones, inviting the spectator to take time out from a journey to sit in a real motorway diner and encounter the work, the captured time of the recorded audio mapped onto the real time of the restaurant of the spectator.
THE KILLERS Written, Performed and Directed by Richard Allen The Killers Song written by Tom Knight and performed by The Greyhounds. Produced in association with MAYK. brokenapparatus.com