All Ears

About

For All Ears, Kate McIntosh sets up the stage as an improvised ad-hoc laboratory for a series of unusual recordings and acoustic experiments, using everyday objects and materials. Chairs are dragged, paper is torn, glasses are toppled. Sounds are gathered, recorded and played back – the acts occurring in one part of the performance providing soundtrack, background or atmosphere for the other part. Along the way, McIntosh – as a combination of a curious scientist, mischievous questioner, and eclectic storyteller – leads us on a distinctive journey through a diverse landscape of ideas. There are parables of human and animal behaviour, fragments on crowd control and linguistics, jokes about politics and group dynamics, maps of birds and traffic jams, stories about systems, societies and social interactions. At the heart of the piece – in the silence between the sounds recorded, at the centre of the listening crowd – are questions about who we are alone and how we are together, about what it might take to change a culture and what we could be missing in the push for individual self-sufficiency. All Ears is driven by McIntosh’s ongoing fascination with destruction and creation, sense and nonsense, the whole and the fractured – by her playfulness with the audience, and her love of theatrical images. With an off-beat humour and moments of lucid thought, the performance balances on the thin line between experiment and entertainment. Approximate running time: 90 minutes, no intermission In English with Czech surtitles. Special thanks to the ‚Now‘ score, courtesy of Tim Etchells. Coproduction: Pact Zollverein (D), Kaaitheater (B), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (D), Les Spectacles Vivants – Centre Pompidou (F) with support of Vlaamse Overheid, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Pianofabriek kunstenwerkplaats (B), Hebbel Am Ufer (HAU) (D). SPIN is structurally supported by BUDA Kunstencentrum for the period 2017–2021. Thanks for artistic advice to: Gary Stevens, Simon Bayly, Palli Banine, Caroline Daish, David Helbich, Anna Rispoli // and for practical help to: Anette De Wilde, Chloë De Vos, Sandra Oklobdzija, Pierre Willems, Bennert Vancottem, Ignaas Vancottem, Dries Bellinkx, PACT production team. A House On Fire Project, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.