Reading The Room

The ‘room’ is autonomous and erratic. Only the ones who are willing to step across the threshold and lean closer towards it will hear its message.”

Reading the Room is an improvisational and performative practice that invites the audience to witness a journey that investigates precarious routines of increasing the sensitivity of attention. It tries to braid multiple strands of information and possibilities, and weave them into one singularity.

The performer is a host who is familiar with spending time in the ‘room’. For the first glance the ‘room’ looks empty, normal, nothing spectacular. But the ‘room’ is a concrete yet an abstract place as well where one can shift its perspective from the mundane to the magical and metaphysical. Where new narratives and insights can emerge from „stalking” the room while sinking into our own bodies and selves as spectators as well as the performer. The emptiness of the room turns into a theatrical situation while the performer „fills” it with objects, light and sound.

The term ‘reading the room’ refers to an ability to pick up subtle, non-verbal cues of group of people, understanding the mood and the atmosphere of a social situation. In addition to this the performance explores how the locality (physical parameters, the genius loci and the context) shapes the piece.

Therefore, the performance operates with three aspects of ‘reading’:
On a personal level the performer explores a practice of figuring out the way how to position oneself in relation to the given conditions, how to trace positions, relations and connections.
The performance aims at offering a practice of getting in touch with the physical space (spatial dimension) and getting in dialogue with the historical place (temporal dimension).
Furthermore, the performance tackles an important socio-cultural level: in Hungary we find ourselves in a claustrophobic state of mind caused by the oppression by the authoritarian regimes in our countries – the ‘room’ is conceived as a closed and claustrophobic space where people breathe the air away from each other, but at the same time they also rely on each other.

As the performance is always adapted to the local conditions and the venue, therefore the performer shape the final piece together with local participants, thorough practice-sharing workshops which are conceived as a platform for mutual exchange of knowledge and experiences.

Credits

Concept, performance: Imre Vass
Lights: Júlia Mohácsi
Music: Mike Nylons
Photo: Barnabás Neogrády-Kiss
Video: András Szombathy