- Continue Shopping
- Your Basket is Empty
One hour, full length, seven camera mix of one performance of The Conversationalist filmed at the Steffi Graf Tennis Stadium, Berlin, June 2012.
The Conversationalist was inspired by David Fosters Wallace's cult novel Infinite Jest. Twelve artists were asked to contribute to a tour which took its audiences on a 24 hour journey through some of Berlin's forgotten buildings and sights.
The once glamorous 5000 seater Steffi Graf tennis stadium in the wealthy Berlin suburb of Grunewald was the setting for a different kind of tennis game in which Gob Squad play 'professional conversationalists'. Locked into a co-dependent relationship with themselves, the game itself is a physical interplay of gestures, together with an unwritten etiquette of what is considered to be 'a good conversation'. Players serve topics, trying to stay within the confines of what is considered to be non-offensive and polite, opponents retaliate by attempting to develop the conversation to their advantage, whilst remaining non confrontational. It appears to be a game of social interaction in which players must stay 'light on their feet', establish and stand their ground, attack and defend their shifting positions.
This project sees the company return to the territory of site based work, this time inspired by a chapter of Infinite Jest in which a father takes on an elaborate disguise in order to trick his son into having a conversation with him. Gob Squad feel close to this attempt to communicate by creating a huge set up that attempts to create intimacy through technological means of alienation.
Gob Squad, 2012, DVD-PAL, 58 minutes.
Other Unbound Items
Thinking Through Theatre and Performance
Eds. Maaike Bleeker, Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher and Heike Roms£24.95
Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions...
Theatre and Cancer
Brian Lobel£6.99
This incisive and thoughtful new title in the Theatre And series confronts the difficult relationship between theatre and cancer. It explores representations of cancer in fictional worlds and autobiographical performances...
Sex, Suffrage & the Stage
Leslie Hill£22.99
Marking the 100-year anniversary of women’s suffrage, Leslie Hill provides a fascinating survey of the history of first wave feminism in British theatre, from the London premiere of Ibsen’s A Doll’s...
© 2019 Unbound/Live Art Development Agency. POS and Ecommerce by Shopify
