Signal to Noise

Created 2024

Back to projects

There seems to be a problem, a problem with the connection…

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.

Images

REACTIONS

In the end one wants to toast another 40 years of FE….. who have always known that simply making good theatre is also self-evidently political.

Sylvia Staude
Frankfurter Rundschau

Difficult, funny, cheeky, melancholy……absurd, charming and witty.

Sarah Heppekausen
Nachtkritik

credits

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
Producer Eileen Evans
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.