Mrs Tremblay

Our performance:

The 4 selected audience members start outside. Once the remaining audience members (who were only there to watch not participate), were lead in and told to spread out (avoiding a path that ran down the middle). Sophie and Zoe then went outside to the 4 audience members dressed normally. They take Charlie who is wearing a bloodied top and is holding on to the front of the pole. They were unresponsive whilst they blindfolded, ‘blessed’ and asked to hold on to a pole. , they are pushed/ dragged into the centre of the drama studio, which is lit red. They are then left there with Charlie. During this we are creating a ritualistic soundscape. It is composed of the repetitive thud of me kicking, Rose hitting the wall, the both of us talking as if we were next (crying, begging to be let alone etc.), and Zoe and Sophie humming and stamping the Equus sound. We all go silent once they reach the middle and Abigail starts singing the ‘horsey, horsey don’t you stop’ nursery rhyme. As she does, Tom stamps his way over to her and ‘kills’ her. To create this in our sound scape, Tom threw down a stool and I screamed. We then continued to be silent as Abigail dragged a box, creating the sound of the body being moved. To scrapped a (butter) knife against the back of a char, creating the sound of it being sharpened. We then resumed our soundscape, Rose moving around the room this time and me more hysterical. This time I was cut of mid-word as we again repeated the sequence of Abigail dragging the box and Tom sharpening the knife. I then started humming the nursery rhyme and Rose, Zoe, Sophie and me began brushing past the audience members. However, the next time someone ‘died’, Charlie tugged on the pole as if he was struggling, then let go, letting the first audience member know they were now at the front and had been left alone. We then all started to create the Equus sound and selected an audience member. One after the other we pulled them off the pole and pushed them forwards, so they were facing Charlie, who was now lying still in a pool of blood. We stood uncomfortably close behind them, the others continuing the Equus sound and me humming the nursery rhyme. Once the song was finished we all shrieked, pulling down their blindfolds. We then all resumed the Equus sound, getting louder and louder, pushing our audience member closer and closer to Tom and Charlie. Once we could push them no further, we made the Equus sound as loud as we could, then went silent and spread to the sides of the room, leaving them standing in front of Tom and Charlie.

After the performance, we were given feedback from both the watching and participating audience. They were able to identify it was some kind of ritual, and even if they weren’t blindfolded, accepted the sound effects as the sounds of people being sacrificed. They also found the sudden changes in volume very effective. Those who were blindfolded found the experience very surreal and scary. The constructive criticism we received was to plan a way for watching audience members to be more involved and able to see better.