Pinchbeck’s The End says Farewell to greenroom

Award-winning writer and performance maker, Michael Pinchbeck, presents his new and final work The End at greenroom, Manchester on Friday 20 May at 8pm as part of a spring tour.
 
In an ironic twist of fate Pinchbeck was booked to perform The End at greenroom before the venue revealed its plans to close following funding ‘cuts’ announced in March. The End will be Pinchbeck’s last performance and the penultimate performance at what has always been one of Manchester’s cutting edge venues.
 
Inspired by the stage direction in The Winter’s Tale, ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’, The End explores endings and exits, the onstage and the offstage, and the re-enactment of real life events to investigate absence and loss. A bear waits to make his entrance and a blindfolded man waits to face the firing squad. The End asks why we perform and how we will know how to stop and is both a love letter and a resignation letter to the theatre.

Devised in collaboration with Ollie Smith and Mole Wetherell (Reckless Sleepers), with visual artist Hetain Patel as a dramaturg and an original live soundtrack by Chris Cousin (Bathysphere), The End is performed by Pinchbeck and Smith.
 
Michael is 35 and full of existential disillusionment. His shows have never received the critical acclaim he craves. Ollie is 25 and full of hopes and dreams. He has it all to learn. They are trying to make a show. They are trying to work out where they stand. Not because of the marks on the floor, but because their relationship is falling apart. They have never worked together before. Now they’ll never work together again. Michael has decided to call it a day, to make this show his swansong, and Ollie is left to pick up the pieces.
 
Michael says: ‘This will be the last time I perform. This will be the last stage I stand on. This will be the last spotlight I stand in. This will be the last text I speak. This will be the last soundtrack I speak over. This will be the last microphone I speak into. This will be the last microphone stand I spike.’