Systematically Trained to Remember

I Guess if the Stage Exploded... aims to explore and interlink ideas on memory, presence and the mechanics of performance, whilst trying to understand our urge to be special and remembered. Performance maker Sylvia Rimat follows the aspirational and possibly impossible goal to create a show never to be forgotten by its audience members – not a single one. By introducing memory tasks and techniques and applying them to the stage situation, the audience is systematically trained to remember – hopefully forever.

The show draws on memory techniques taken from popular science books and on models of remembering, borrowed from several disciplines. In the development process, Sylvia met up with a scientist from Bristol Neuroscience to find out about brain processes involved in the creation of memories, with a lecturer from the Experimental Psychology Department at University of Bristol to investigate characteristics of collective memories, with a hypnotherapist to find out whether anything will ever be forgotten and with a researcher from the Centre for Death and Society at University of Bath to understand our urge to be remembered. Excerpts from these conversations accompany the performance.

To support the overall aim of making the performance unforgettable, live feeds are set up to co-performers who wait at remote places, countries and continents (such as an old derelict airport field in Berlin/ Germany and a kitchen in Sydney/ Australia) and do their best to fire on the show.