Reviews

One-on-One Festival

The One-On-One Festival is an adventurous and innovative event, reflecting the increasingly popular area of theatrical performance involving one artist and one audience member at a time. The resulting experience is intimate, sometimes unsettling, always thought-provoking, and provides a unique evening for each participant. Audience members are offered a choice of ten “menus” each consisting of three shows which take them on a journey around the building and through themes of reflection and intimacy. The shows themselves last from five to twenty minutes. In between the shows, there are challenges such as “Find a stranger, buy them a dish of tapas and talk to them about the sea”, the chance to be a sumo wrestler or to be “kidnapped” by sitting in a special chair. It’s part performance, part treasure hunt, part adult fun-day.

Battersea Arts Centre is the perfect venue for this fluid work, its slightly crumbling interior, myriad rooms and impressive staircase lending just the right air of mystery and an informality that encourages the interaction of strangers. The Festival makes full use of all the space, creating a buzz in the lobby as participants go to and from their encounters, play board games or visit the bar.

It’s not all light-hearted fun though. Il Pixel Rosso’s And The Birds Fell From The Sky plays with sensory manipulation through the use of video goggles and headphones, creating an atmosphere of claustrophobia and disorientation that lingers long after the participant has left the room. There’s also less scary fare, such as Frida’s Room by Melanie Wilson, where audience members produce a self-portrait which is added to a gallery as part of a reconstruction of Frida Kahlo’s bedroom, and Patrick Killoran‘s Observation Deck, affording participants a unique street view from high up in the BAC. Kazuko Hohki’s You Only Live Twice (But Die Once) invites the audience to explore the realms of life, death and sleep in an outwardly relaxing Japanese bedroom space, but which is ultimately unsettling, particularly so in light of the recent disasters in that country.

A fascinating evening giving participants a truly unique experience.

– Carole Gordon