In 1998 Lone Twin walked in a straight line through Colchester’s town centre from one building to another carrying a fallen telegraph pole. This performance, Totem, was in response to a tornado that had recently happened in East Anglia, and seemed to represent reparations to the town by “returning things back into place” (Govan et al, 2007, 123). Lone Twin was commissioned to make this piece by Colchester Arts Centre and Firstsite Gallery who gave them the specific detail to make the performance about Colchester. They walked through shops and homes carrying this heavy log interacting with members of the public as they went, collecting their stories and images and then carving the contributors initials to the pole and thereby immortalising the audience’s effort in the performance. Lone Twin often involve the audience in their productions by sparking interest through unusual (and sometimes unrelated to the performance) costumes, usually some kind of travel attire “to communicate ‘otherness’” (ibid, 125) purposely pointing out their place as strangers within that space. The artistic directors of the company, Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan, say, “as politely as we can, we invite people to give us their attention. At times, they are invited to do something with us” (Lavery And Williams, 2011, 9) and in Totem the audience’s involvement helps to connect them more to their city through the stories they give. In this performance “[the audience] are cast as participants, ‘co-creators’ of the work. The demands upon them to contribute material are substantial” (Pearson, 2010, 177-178), otherwise the performance would simply be two men carrying a pole. This, however, does not mean the audience are forced to contribute – an invitation is given for a reason and “part of the potency of an invitation is in simply offering it. What happens next becomes something else, a second act” (Lavery and Williams, 2011, 10) which suggests that every contribution unconsciously takes the performance in a different direction – every audience member’s contribution is important.
Works Cited
Govan, E., Nicholson, H. and Normington, K. (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. Oxon: Routledge.
Lavery, C. and Williams, D. (2011) Practising Participation A conversation with Lone Twin. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 16 (4) 7-14.
Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.