Imagine Me To Be There is an inventive, participatory and humorous performance that playfully challenges the conventions of theatre, watching and our imagination. The performance plays with stereotypical fragments of narration we all are familiar with (red high heels, a knife, flickering lights) and with our desire to build up stories.

The audience enters a bare space. A performer, Sylvia Rimat, sits on the floor with a laptop. There’s also a drum kit and a sharp knife. The performance happens in the mind of the performer whilst being typed live on the laptop and projected on a large screen for the audience to read. Audience members gradually become embroiled into the fabric of a fragmented story that oscillates between the performer in blue jeans and a  woman in a brown fluffy full body bear costume and bright red high heels. Something evil is about to happen. Audience members are asked to step in and carry out simple actions to help bringing the typed story alive and soon the real interferes with the imagined.

AVAILABLE FOR TOURING

 


 

The skill of Rimat's performance lies in the way she marries the magic of the theatre with the fantasies of the virtual.
a_n review by Mary Paterson (Jan 11)
Really interesting in terms of being a participative piece. We were all sitting in the auditorium watching performance art but we were all very actively engaged in this. And it did feel like the choices we were making as an audience were actually affecting the outcome of the performance.
Deborah Dignam, British Council (Dec 10)
Imagine Me To Be There brought up some interesting ideas about the exchanges in power between the author and the audience in performative experiences. The author had the power to create the universe and set the rules, the audience the ultimate power to reject them if they wished. Quiet, powerful, interesting.
Inbetween Time Live (Dec 10)

Resources

For full-length video documentation please get in touch.
Watch a trailer
Read the a-n review
Touring Brochure
View photos of the performance
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