"Make Shift" di Helen Varley Jamieson e Paula Crutchlow

Helen and Paula arranged the magical elements of telematic performance in a montage of stuff, poetry, sound, images, dialogue, polemic and actions. The evening was constructed so that participants engaged with lots of different parts of themselves: spectator, performer, builder; (inner)-child, learner, team-player. It was utterly engrossing and left us all with a thrilling sense of the unexplored potential of theatre and performance in the networked age. Make-shift is a house party, a chat room, a slide show and a performance process – a live event for the 21st century that re-imagines the private actions of our domestic lives as multiple, interconnected and with global consequences. Make-shift happens simultaneously between two ordinary houses and a bespoke online performance space accessible to anyone, anywhere with a broadband connection. Two performers (one in each house) work with household objects, recycling rubbish and cyberformance tools to broker interaction and discussion between local and remote audiences in a type of performative salon. We talk about the responsibilities of nesting and feeding, the relationships between mobility and becoming unstuck. About how contrary to our feeling of political disempowerment, our small daily actions accumulate and irrevocably transform the world we live in. We talk about stuff and how it breaks down – and that how ever hard you try to make it go away – nothing is ever really gone – just re-arranged.