I'd read the description on Gob Squad's website. I still didn't have a clue what the performance would be about. I was expecting social media, glittering facades, emptiness, and an element of 'post-ironic cynicism' (aka 'something trying to be modern and edgy that I really don't understand'). The performance contained all of these things (except for the last one, not that I'd be able to tell...), but it contained some completely normal things too. Sometimes it was funny, and sometimes it was sad, and at times it was almost boring, mundane. The actors played out a long scene, asking 'what are we doing here?' throughout. The question echoed around the room. For the first half of the performance, I felt as if I was being scrutinised, as if there was a camera following me and my reactions would be projected onto the back wall at any minute. If I laughed, I stopped and asked myself why I was laughing.
We were shown a YouTube video, on an iPhone, zoomed in through a camera, on a screen that was wheeled in front of us, dripping with foil tassels. This was a video of a family gathering, somewhere in America, a video evidently not meant to be seen all over the world. But we were watching it, not only on the phone screen, but reenacted by the Gob Squad. A few musings about the intricacies of phone technology, radiation, and sugar consumption later, Sharon Smith was throwing toy animals into the audience from a designer shopping bag. The seven lucky audience members were given headphones (obviously gold) and directed as they too participated in the reenactment.
Seeing ordinary people fit themselves into the mould of both the family in the video and the performance itself was fascinating. Those previously sitting among us were now distanced from us, being puppets without strings but with headphones on stage. But they were also distanced from Gob Squad, who created images of miscommunication and loneliness around the audience-participators' repeated, directed actions. Amongst all the glitter and the technological filters - music, screens, TV-gameshow or magazine-quiz questioning, vulnerability and freedom of speech still managed to leak through.
Apart from the barriers and miscommunication, the performance also demonstrated the rapidity with which communication can be established. Between sections of acting, the audience-participators sat around a table drinking beer and champagne and eating Ferrero Rochers with the actors, chatting. Sarah Thom removed her blonde wig and heels and replaced them with a pair of glasses and a pair of socks. The show ended with a slow-motion playback of the reenactment created on the stage, with the actors and audience-participators watching from the sidelines. California Dreamin' echoed around the room. Here I was, on a Saturday night, with a group of people I didn't know, gathered around a screen. But I didn't feel like a spectator; neither did I feel like a stranger. I don't think there's anything too post-ironic about that.
