| Watch Me Fall is for the daredevils. We tell our audience that we’re going over in a barrel, hitting the ramp at 90mph and clearing 10 double-decker buses, and we’re not stopping until every last sonofabitch in the place is cheering us on.
Drawing on footage of Evel Knievel jumps, interviews with Niagara Falls daredevils, the speeches of American presidents and transcripts from Chuck Yeager’s supersonic flights, Watch Me Fall questions our obsession with those who attempt the impossible, the futility of their attempts and their inevitable fall from grace.
The language of the performance is taken from Mexican wrestling matches, drag races, 100,000 seater stadiums, human cannonballs and daredevil stunts. It is an intimate yet epic piece that explores the relationship between audience and event, the nature of risk and the complicity of the audience in increasingly violent and questionable acts in the name of entertainment.
Watch Me fall is an Arnolfini We Live Here commission, and was supported in development by Residence, Shunt, Forest Fringe and University of Chichester. Its development and UK tour was funded by Arts Council England. |
