The Future Show

Deborah Pearson

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783192960
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático británico

The Future Show is a piece that tells the story of Deborah's future, starting from the end of the performance and going until the end of her life, that is consistently re-written to be both site and time specific. It is a Sisyphean task of a show, examining the mundane, the uncertain, and the fragility of our futures. The Future Show toured internationally for two years, with a new script written for every iteration. It has been performed in the USA, Canada, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Ireland and throughout the UK. With an Introduction by Tim Etchells, Founder of Forced Entertainment The Future Show was developed with a grant from Arts Council England and with support-in-kind from BAC, Amhurst Republic and MAKE in Ireland.

The Future Show – Lisbon

The second of three performances Performed at the Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal Performed as a double bill with Tim Crouch and Andy Smith’s what happens to the hope at the end of the evening September 28^th, 2014

(My twenty-first rewrite of the script.)

I will say “the length of a breath”, breathe in, breathe out, and then stop speaking. I will move this chair backwards, walk in front of this table, and stand in front of you. After I do that you will clap. Even those of you were a bit bored will clap because it’s a comfortable way to signal an ending. You will clap as though you are also breathing out, this hour is gone, and now you can move on with the rest of your lives. I will make eye contact with one of you whose face I know and sort of bow, nod, and smile all in one action, like this. I will motion towards the tech booth and the people who are operating this show right now with my hand like this, and you will clap for them too^x. Then I will get up to walk out through that door. You will notice that I have a slight limp as I walk because one of my legs will fall asleep during this performance^xi. The door will shut, and you will continue clapping but you will remember that I didn’t say I would come back for a second bow, and so you will have the odd feeling of clapping for a performer who isn’t there anymore, and you will stop mid air. You will put your hands down to the side and breathe out like this. One of you will think “So that’s it.” One of you will wonder whether or not to take your programme, one of you will look around for the hat you thought you put under the seat, one of you will squeeze your partner’s hand, and one of you will get up quickly to go to the bathroom between this show and Tim and Andy’s show. One of you will look at the stage and think it looks different. One of you will wonder where I’ve gone and one of you will have nearly forgotten about me completely. I will be the tiny wormhole that flashes when you turn off a television set.

I will be in a small but compact dressing room somewhere behind that curtain, looking in a mirror and contemplating this wrinkle. I will remember when my friend’s mother told me I would get a wrinkle there if I didn’t stop furrowing my brow, and I will remember that I was seven years old then. I will think about how in past versions of this show I had described myself needing to look for this wrinkle, angling my head in different ways in order to catch its contour in the light, but how in this most recent version of the Future Show, it doesn’t make sense to describe myself looking for the wrinkle any more – it is now clearly visible. I will remember my friend joking that in the next version of the show I can say that people in the very back row of the audience will have already noticed this wrinkle. I will spread the wrinkle with my two fingers like this, and then furrow my brow ten times, like the woman I saw on YouTube did, who said you could reduce frown lines through “facial yoga.”. I will remember that I read that the calculating parts of the brain are located behind the eyebrows, so I will think that in one sense, I could see this wrinkle as a mark of complex thought rather than worry. I will think that these are both likely a result of my PhD. I will contemplate this new and now permanent part of my face. I will put my finger on it like this and decide to feel safe^xii.

My phone will vibrate on the dressing room counter top. My husband will have just arrived at the airport from London and I will text him directions to the venue. I will write, “it looks like if Julius Caesar, Stalin and Rupert Murdoch became one person in the 1980s and wanted to construct a minimalist palace to intimidate everyone with.” I will press send and hope that my directions will translate comfortably to a cab driver who may or may not speak any English.

I will walk through the gold door that leads out of my dressing room, into a very large very dark space that the curtain behind me is hiding. Tim Crouch and Andy Smith will be knelt on either side of a fairly low table which is a prop in their show that Francisco told me they sourced from the National Theatre. They will be having an arm wrestle. Andy will be concentrating and Tim will be laughing very hard. I will look over at them – “This is our new warm up” Tim will say. “We thought we’d try it out tonight.” I will not be sure if Tim is joking or not. Andy will win. They will both start laughing and I will make a mental note that arm wrestles are fun and I should challenge someone to one as soon as possible. I will look over at the covered piano backstage next to the table laden with fruits and tea, and I will wonder if anyone I know of has played that piano. I will look up at the digital clock above the piano. It will say 10:40.

You will be out there – stood in a large grey lobby with curves instead of angles between the wall and the floor, curves that look like they were originally designed to be skateboarding jumps which were too dangerous to use and so were shipped into an arts centre instead. You will be wondering who designed these grey curves and when they were put in. You heard it was a visual artist but you will not be able to remember their name. Just then you will look over at the door and see me. I will have changed out of this outfit that you hadn’t realised was a costume into a shirt and jeans. We will make eye contact and it will be a little awkward. My eye makeup will look slightly odd, as though it was hurriedly removed a few minutes ago. I will look away and begin looking around the lobby for a face that I know, a face I can hold onto like a rope in dark waters.

I will spot Beckie, my producer, and she will come up to me and smile sweetly. She will say, “So is it all going as you said it would?” And I will say, “So far yes. It is all going exactly as I’d said it would.” She will say that she’s going to get a drink if I would like one, and I will say that would be lovely. I will walk towards the television, over to the canteen with her, and I will notice the place where the grey floor ends and reveals coral and beige coloured tiles. The tiles will remind me of a doctor’s office I used to go to as a child. Beckie will go up to the bar and one of you will come up to me and smile and say you saw the show. This show will be fresh in my mind and my body, overly sensitive electricity, and our conversation will be the mixture of relief and anxiety that usually comes the first time someone points out a new haircut. We will have a short conversation about the show where you will be complimentary, but then casually point out a structural flaw that is so fundamental that I will feel annoyed that I hadn’t noticed it earlier. You will not seem that bothered by it, but my mind will begin recalibrating quickly and furiously.

Beckie will bring me a beer and then I will excuse myself to step out for some fresh air. I will walk through the silver doors that look like they belong in a kitchen or a submarine, remembering that in Portuguese Push means Pull. As soon as I walk outside I will remember the very large picture of me above the doors, on the poster for “Setembro 2014,” the same poster I described in the show yesterday, with the words “The Future” written beneath me in chalk. I will have seen it three days in a row now, so the novelty of how big it is will have somewhat worn off, but I will suddenly wonder when that chalk on the street washed away – was it a week after we took the picture? A day after we took the picture?^xiii I will feel pleased with myself for thinking conceptually about this picture in a casual and non-plussed way, instead of just being really excited to see a large picture of myself – which was the overwhelming reaction that I had had yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

I will see a woman wearing a stripey top who will look very cool and beautiful as she smokes, and I will consider asking her for a cigarette, but I will reason that I don’t really like smoking anyway, and it is poor form to use a cigarette as a fashion accessory. Someone will open the door to go back inside and I will overhear an announcement – “ooo ushpectaculoo vai commecar dento de tresh meenootoosh.”^xiv I will move to go back inside, when I will feel a tap on my shoulder. I will turn around and see a woman with a long beige coat and a short black bob. I will not have noticed her before and I will not recognise her from this audience. She will say, “So you think you know about the future.” I will see that the smokers are butting out their cigarettes, rushing inside to get into Tim and Andy’s show in time. I will suddenly remember a dream I had last night about a man with dog’s teeth where I was walking through a crowd in slow motion and I couldn’t run because my back foot felt like pulling a rope on weights. The woman with the short black bob will motion to open her coat. I will see that she is getting something from her coat. I will remember the time I met a man with a gun in his breast pocket on the London tube. The woman with the black bob and trenchcoat will have something in her inner pocket. I will peer and see that what she has is dark, but it will be moving, and then I will see a small grey ferret sleeping in her left breast pocket. “This is Ricky” she will say. “I bet you didn’t predict Ricky” she will say. After she says that the doors will be about to close for Tim and Andy and we will both remember the part of the show where I did predict Ricky. That remembering will twitch and shiver like the grey fur of the sleeping ferret. She will close her coat and walk in the direction of the Casa Pastelario, where I wrote Friday’s script. I will turn to go back inside when I will see one last smoker butting out his cigarette. As we go inside he will say, “You know in Portugal it’s illegal to keep ferrets as pets.”

I will get in the door of this auditorium just as the doors are closing, and my husband, running up with a suitcase from the airport, will join me. We will sit in the middle – right there. Andy and Tim will walk out onto the stage, confident and calm. I will have seen the show three times before, so I will feel caught between memory of the show which will turn into anticipation of moments I know well, and finish with what’s happening in front of me. It will feel like watching a live performance of a song I know well – lines popping up in the refrain that I know, waiting and looking forward to my favourite parts. The audience will be seeing everything with new eyes, for the first time, in that moment, and when they laugh, I will laugh. The show will end. I will put my shoes back on. The audience will applaud. Then Francisco will make an announcement – there is a short Q and A after the show with Tim, Andy and myself in five minutes, if the audience wants to stay on for that. It will feel very strange to be in and among the audience while people make the decision of whether or not to stay to the Q and A or to go home. I will try not to look at any of you or eavesdrop on you discussing this, but the discussions will primarily be in Portuguese anyway, so it will be difficult to properly eavesdrop. Some of you will stay and some of you will go. My husband will go to the hotel.

One of you will decide to go to a night at Lounge on Rua da Moeda that one of your friends is Dj-ing at. The friend you are here with tonight will want to stay for the Q and A and will not fancy going out dancing, so you will leave alone. You will get on at Areeido, and then take the line Verde to Cais do Sodré. After getting out from the metro station you will look at the sea for a moment, as you always do when you are near enough to the ocean to see it, turn right on Avenue 24 de Juhlo, and then right onto Placa dom Luis I, until it turns into Rua da Modea. You will look at the disco ball through the window and you will wonder if the person you really came here to see has arrived and is already inside.

On this stage, four chairs will be arranged. Francisco will walk out and say a few words in Portuguese. Andy, Tim and I will shuffle on stage, and we will seem different than before – Tim will not be wearing glasses. Francisco will sit there, Andy will sit there, Tim will sit there, and I will sit here. Francisco will begin by saying that he saw our performances at Forest Fringe in Edinburgh in 2013, and even then they seemed to share a certain sensibility. I will nod, though I will also be intrigued about what he means by this. He will say that both of these pieces, it seems to him, are pieces that at their core are about theatre and representation. Tim will say, “That’s interesting. I think a lot of my work is about representation. It’s sort of an artistic obsession of mine. Though with this piece it is in one sense about representation, but in another sense it’s about friendship, about the ways that friends grow apart and move on, but that moving on is not just about doing new activities or spending time with new people, it can exercise itself as an entirely different way of being in the world. The two friends in what happens to the hope have actually grown apart and developed different and somewhat incompatable ways of being in the world, being on stage, living.”

Francisco will pause and nod and then say, “Now of course if I don’t ask this someone in the audience will, but is there any truth in the story being played out on stage?”

Andy will field this question, “Obviously in my case yes – I do live in the home where I describe myself living, my wife is really Norwegian and my daughter is really named Maia. When we wrote the text she was nearly four, and my wife was pregnant with our second child.”

Tim will interrupt, “But in my case I’m doing some acting.”

And then Andy will say, “But the acting is also a metaphor, and even though Tim’s character is fictional, that metaphor is real.”

Francisco will turn to me now. He will say, “Deborah, you predicted this entire Q and A in your performance tonight.”

And I will say, “Yes, yes I did.”

He will say, “Were you worried about giving the audience too much information about Tim and Andy’s show before they saw it?”

I will pause, look at Tim and Andy who will be watching me very carefully for an answer, and then I will say, “Not really. I think the show speaks for itself. It’s not like watching the movie the Sixth Sense or something – there’s no twist – I think it’s too sophisticated a piece of work to require a spoiler alert.”

Then Tim will say, “But didn’t you feel as though you were imposing your own critical lens on the audience before they even had a chance to see our show?”

I will say, “Well, possibly, but I feel like the responses you guys have given here at this talk are fairly abstract – and I also think that by now most of the audience probably forgot what I predicted you would say in my show anyway.” One person in the audience will chuckle.

Andy will say, “Well that guy remembers.”

You will walk outside after a night dancing and drinking at Lounge bar, and you will suddenly feel the slap of cold air, it will feel like it’s gluing a fine layer of dried sweat onto your skin, a feeling that will be both disgusting and wonderful. You will be walking with three people, two of whom are friends, but the third will be the person you came w...