A woman in a sound booth is talking. She is talking to herself. She is talking to you. She is talking to everyone. She is gifted, professional, mercurial; it seems as if she can summon almost any kind of voice and create any kind of world.
She is selling you something
She is telling you a story
She sounds like a cereal ad
She sounds like a cartoon
She sounds like a meditation tape
She sounds like a shapeshifter
She sounds like the ocean
You would listen to her say anything. Her voice is all around. Her voice is all there is. Her voice is all that’s left. She conjures her own ghost in real time.
The Talent is a new show by Action Hero and Deborah Pearson about the legacy of the human voice in a non-human future.
About Action Hero
Action Hero return to HOME following their double-bill of productions ‘Slap Talk’ and ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ in 2018. Action Hero is the collaboration between artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse. Together they create artworks that expand across multiple creative practices: performance, installation, sound, digital practice and work for public space. Their ongoing interests lie in the iconography of popular culture and its use; both as a weapon and as a shared cultural memory and the languages/texts that are used to talk about these shared spaces. They’ve toured productions to over 40 countries across 5 continents.
The Talent challenges us reflect on the sounds and voices we are leaving behindTime Out Lisbon
A woman full of worlds within herself, populated by the most varied characters, but who seems to carry out only a sophisticated act of ventriloquismPùblico, Portugal
Credits
Commissioned by Teatro Barrio Alto (PT) Cambridge Junction (UK) & South Street Arts/ University of Reading (UK). With support from PACT Zollverein (DE) and Bristol Old Vic Ferment (UK). Thanks to Queen Mary University, University of Bristol and The Yard. Action Hero are a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.
Text and Direction: Deborah Pearson, Gemma Paintin & James Stenhouse
Performer: Gemma Paintin
Sound Design: Yaseen Clarke
Lighting Design: Alex Fernandes
Set Design: Camilla Clarke
Outside Dye: Tania El Khoury
Producer for Action Hero: Sarah Warden
Theatre
YESYESNONO presentswe were promised honey!
A hopeful, hopeless prophecy for earth and humankind. A story of us, our future, of paradise and how we get there in the end.