Review: Thanks for Being Here at Zoo Southside - Ed Fringe

Review by Kate Gaul

Belgian theatre-performance-group Ontroerend Goed are a staple for the theatre go-er in Edinburgh every year the company present work. Always intelligent. Always provocative. Always moving. A sure sign is that punters don’t wait for these shows to “warm up”.  Heavily booked for the first performance I was super excited to be at Zoo Southside for this privilege.  

As artists we are often/always asked about the audience experience.  What will the audience experience be with this work?  It’s a good focus.  How many times have we sat through artist pitches where the audience is barely mentioned. "Thanks for Being Here" is (almost) entirely about the audience experience and it is a unique, interactive (eek!) theatrical event. It fully embraces the idea that the audience's presence is crucial to the performance and goes on to blur the lines between performer and spectator. 

So, what is it?  Once seated in the theatre we are confronted with a huge screen on which we see candid video of the exterior of the theatre. Bringing the outside in is a sort of frame and it is quite beautiful to observe the composition of “real” world from inside the theatre. Eventually the camera is turned on the seated audience.

I won’t describe everything that happens because not every show will be the same. This is because audiences are invited to leave suggestions that will shape future. This means that "Thanks for Being Here" can never be the same twice. For example, early in the performance I saw a company member came onto the stage wearing a floor-length hooped skirt without explanation. Much later – when we hear the recorded suggestions of previous audiences – we learn that one audience member wanted to see actors in period costumes. And this is part of the productions power.  Having asked an audience to tell the company what they want to see onstage – and then see it rendered – points to a relationship that is both respectful and reflects an audience’s agency in shaping our theatrical events.  Without judgement we heard from a gentleman who explained the importance of the 16th Century theatre; someone’s need for emotional music; a suggestion that someone from the street is bought into the theatre for us to meet; and a theatre manager’s assurances that this is “his thing” and much more.

Some in the audience left early.  It’s possible to feel uncomfortable with the non-consensual nature of the intrusion into our territory on the other side of the footlights, so to speak.  It could be an ethical nightmare if one was to think too deeply about all that.  But "Thanks for Being Here" honours its audience, our shared experience and its good humour is ultimately infectious. 

Theatre is forever dying in our age of over saturated stimulation – apparently – so this show is a wee thanks for turning up in person to re kindle the communal experience that remembers and reimagines who we are.

Image Supplied