US Premiere
Wed, Sep 28, Fri, Sep 30, and Sat, Oct 1
at 7:30pm
FIAF Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street, NYC
https://crossingthelinefestival.org/events/forced-entertainment/
From the review by Lyn Gardner @ https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/oct/24/tomorrows-parties-theatre-review
Like much of this company's best work, it is built around lists and statements, and is based on the very simplest of ideas. Two performers stand side by side on a stage that is bare – bar a skein of multicoloured fairground lights – and take it in turns to speculate on what the future could bring.
Every proposition is responded to by another statement that offers a different possible version of the future. So a world ruled over by a single government is pitted against one operating on a primitive feudal system. Eating meat will be barbaric – or alternatively everyone will have become cannibals.
This is a challenging piece, and you have to allow yourself to be seduced by its quiet rhythms and wry asides. It operates as a kind of talisman, as if by imagining the very worst we can stop it from happening. But there is a touch, too, of JG Ballard's call to the power of the imagination "to remake the world" and "hold back the night".
Tomorrow's Parties is both unbearably sad and absurdly optimistic, as it projects further and further into an unknown future and points out the fragile insignificance of our lives.
