'UTOPIA'
The Roundhouse, Camden
Tuesday 11th August 2015, 3:30pm
Utopia is as nebulous or as clear as you want it to be".
Whilst taking myself through the promenade immersive piece that is Penny Woolcock's 'Utopia', I struggled to find a way to describe it, until I came across this perfect statement from one of the speakers involved.
The nature of the piece is explorative, and allows an audience a free reign to walk around the main space of The Roundhouse, Camden, presented with an array of different audio and visual components all based around the themes of life and life stories.
As you enter the space you are faced with an immense tower of boxes which look as if they are for sale, each labelled with things such as 'wealth' 'happiness' and 'popularity'. Through blue flickering backlights, the tower of boxes are made to look desirable, gleaming for a second and then hazed, the words often difficult to make out. As a young artist, I tend to want to put meaning to everything in theatre, and on my entrance into the space, after comprehending this for a moment, I soon decided that this was Woolcock's way to comment on the unattainability of these fancies in life, through the scale of the sculpture and haziness of the words. Satisfied with this interpretation, I moved into the main body of the piece, which was comprised of the verbatim recordings of many real life speakers. The first I came across was inside a Land Rover placed to the right of the box sculpture which invited audiences to sit inside and listen to the story of a young working class man speak of his childhood and abusive father. Placed just outside of this, there was a huge rubbish bin from which a recording of another young man played. He spoke of his experiences with education and his general failures at school with grades, and the impacts of this. Like everything in Utopia this was left to the interpretation of the spectator, and at this point in my journey, I still applied meaning to the props, deciding that the fact this recording came from a rubbish bin meant that the speaker felt discarded due to his lack of education.
At each end of the space there were openings for audiences to travel through, the first of my journey leading to a messy bookshop, where from different shelves came even more recordings, most of which dealt with the stories of young men talking about their experiences at school. These recordings formed the very core of Woolcock's piece, as they told incredibly interesting and in some cases very touching stories. One recording spoke of an incident where the head teacher at his school had hung himself in the sports hall. When I entered the Bookshop I begun looking at the books on the shelves, trying to find the meaning of why some were on the floor and others not. I even looked at the books around where the recordings emulated from, yet found no correlations. Once I begun to actually relax and take time to listen to these recordings, I began to realise that there were no clever intricate placing of props, and that generally, the recordings took centre stage, the actual stories of people. The props became of less significance, yet more to compliment the words of the speakers, as I'm sure if there were just speakers placed about the space, the piece would have lacked the journey and sections that the props provided. This was when I began to relax into Utopia, taking my time to listen to every word of the amazing stories told.
At this point in my journey, I was beginning to think that utopia dealt only with the rather troubling stories of working class teenagers, and decided that the piece was a comment on the way we all desire those all important components of the box sculpture, yet were in total ignorance of the poverty happening around us. Once again I was wrong, because coming to the end of the bookshop and into a walkway surrounded by piles of bricks and rubble and beer cans, we begun to hear some different natured stories. For example the story of a wealthy woman who spoke of always spending £50 on each meal, and only picking up products labelled 'finest'. There were not only stories on different ends of the spectrum, but in-between, like the story of the a young working class teenager who came from a less wealthy household, yet started making hundreds of pounds a week from burning cd's and selling them on. One of the most intriguing stories was of a young homeless woman. Where at first glance you assume that this was the sad story of a woman who had graduated with a degree and fallen into poverty, the woman spoke poised and confidently of the ways she would act as if she were not homeless, always having at least a pound to have a coffee in a café late at night to keep herself safe. Reaching the end of this walkway some of the props begun to echo the opening image, as some of the boxes labelled 'wealth' 'happiness' etc. were now discarded on the floor. I came to realise that these things were no longer relevant, and that when you take away the material desires in life, you are still faced with the amazing, interesting stories of these very normal people. Woolcock made me question why there is so much desire in life when she was able to put together a very basic series of recordings of just normal, real life people, and create something so enlightening.
Entering back into the main space, I continued down the alternative walkway which was much the same. Here there were even more interesting recordings, for example the recording of just an old woman singing a muffled tune. These recordings were laid out on what looked like office desks, accompanied with even more irrelevant props like stapes and lip-glosses and pens etc. With the gist in my head that these were no longer relevant I barely even took them in, focussing all my attention to the words of the speakers. It made me think that even when surrounded by material objects, the stories of the people prevailed. One which stood out was the story of a mother talking of her daughter who underwent a sex change. By this point there were no props, just a little cubby hole where you could stand and hear the words of a very supportive mother.
Both of the walkways in the piece lead to the same space: a big screen of various people, who we recognised as some of the speakers, reading extracts from 'Utopia' by Thomas More. To me this consolidated the idea that all of the stories we had heard were our version of reality, and that really if we all decided to have a society like 'Utopia' we could have. This was echoed in a set of comments on the piece from Penny Woolcock, and some of the speakers which was on a wall at the very back of the space. Here Woolcock explained how she was inspired by Darwin's theory of the cave: the idea that people assume that the life we live is reality, and that just because this is way the world is, it doesn't mean there isn't a whole different life outside of the cave in which we are chained to assuming that this is the only reality. The world could be like 'Utopia' if only we got out of the cave
.
Obviously everything I took from 'Utopia' was COMPLETELY interpretational. Others could have walked around the space and taken something completely different. Likewise the nature of the piece meant that you could have either walked through the space in ten minutes, hearing just brief snippets of the recordings and taking in the amazing visuals of the piece; or like me you could have taken your sweet time, listening to every word of every recording, and spending an hour and a half. Either way it would have been an amazing experience. Woolcock taught me quite what theatre can be, as I've never been to see a piece where the people 'performing' are not actually present in the piece. I've never been to something where an audience are completely in control and can be as passive or as active as you like. It taught me so much about the boundaries of theatre as an art piece and formed for me an incredibly cathartic experience.
http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/2015/penny-woolcock-utopia/
Entering back into the main space, I continued down the alternative walkway which was much the same. Here there were even more interesting recordings, for example the recording of just an old woman singing a muffled tune. These recordings were laid out on what looked like office desks, accompanied with even more irrelevant props like stapes and lip-glosses and pens etc. With the gist in my head that these were no longer relevant I barely even took them in, focussing all my attention to the words of the speakers. It made me think that even when surrounded by material objects, the stories of the people prevailed. One which stood out was the story of a mother talking of her daughter who underwent a sex change. By this point there were no props, just a little cubby hole where you could stand and hear the words of a very supportive mother.
Both of the walkways in the piece lead to the same space: a big screen of various people, who we recognised as some of the speakers, reading extracts from 'Utopia' by Thomas More. To me this consolidated the idea that all of the stories we had heard were our version of reality, and that really if we all decided to have a society like 'Utopia' we could have. This was echoed in a set of comments on the piece from Penny Woolcock, and some of the speakers which was on a wall at the very back of the space. Here Woolcock explained how she was inspired by Darwin's theory of the cave: the idea that people assume that the life we live is reality, and that just because this is way the world is, it doesn't mean there isn't a whole different life outside of the cave in which we are chained to assuming that this is the only reality. The world could be like 'Utopia' if only we got out of the cave
.
Obviously everything I took from 'Utopia' was COMPLETELY interpretational. Others could have walked around the space and taken something completely different. Likewise the nature of the piece meant that you could have either walked through the space in ten minutes, hearing just brief snippets of the recordings and taking in the amazing visuals of the piece; or like me you could have taken your sweet time, listening to every word of every recording, and spending an hour and a half. Either way it would have been an amazing experience. Woolcock taught me quite what theatre can be, as I've never been to see a piece where the people 'performing' are not actually present in the piece. I've never been to something where an audience are completely in control and can be as passive or as active as you like. It taught me so much about the boundaries of theatre as an art piece and formed for me an incredibly cathartic experience.
http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/2015/penny-woolcock-utopia/
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