“A fever dream of innovative experimental theatre that suffers from its monotony”
Signal to Noise is the latest show from Sheffield-based ensemble ‘Forced Entertainment’, a company with a long history of devising experimental theatre to provoke audiences worldwide. Premiering on the year of the groups 40th anniversary, Signal to Noise continues their trend of challenging all that audiences expect when they leave their houses at 7pm for an evening of theatre.
Six performers enter the sparsely decorated stage. Along the entire length of the left and right sides run clothes racks, populated with a huge number of varied eccentric jackets and colourful dresses. Tucked away beside these are an array of seemingly anodyne household items: buckets, broomsticks, house plants, desks, etc. I sunk into my seat as the light dimmed, anxious to see what narrative could be constructed through the endless permutations of these items. How naïve I was to the absurd world of Forced Entertainment…
Signal to Noise is a barrage of ideas; a hurricane scattering shards that the viewer will have to pick up and arrange themselves. Throughout the piece, fragments of actions, movement and speech are presented and combined in seemingly random ways. A frenzy of actors slipping in and out of outfits, between identities and acting out frivolous tasks (e.g. moving a houseplant two metres to the left, only for it to be immediately moved back). AI voices are used to introduce minute snippets of speech which are lip-synced by the actors, the content of the lines seeming plucked from random conversation/thought, removed from any context. Sometimes one actor is the source of these words, often multiple are, creating a bizarre fluidity to the notion of identity within the group, with voices often being shared and slipping between cast members.
The discordant nature of identity was compounded by the frequent, often imperceptible costume changes – a clever distraction of the audience’s attention at the right moment and new “characters” seem to appear out of nowhere – creating a transience that quickly becomes disorientating.
The use of dialogue often followed a unique pattern: a fragment of speech is introduced, repeated and modified slightly in its delivery/content before being joined by a separate fragment in a different voice, with multiple seemingly disconnected ideas clashing and mingling with each other, like some sort of absurdist fugue. This counterpoint plays out on a sound bed featuring raucous studio laughter, birdsong, dissonant piano chords, and ticking clocks to name a few, all contributing to the complex interplay of motifs.
The interpretations of this piece are infinite, which is central to its ingenuity. Presenting the audience with a jumbled mix of audio and visual stimuli essentially creates – put neatly by the writer and leader of Forced Entertainment – a theatrical “Rorschach test”, with the viewer projecting the contents of their own mind onto the raw material before them. The effectiveness of this approach was immediately confirmed by the conversations that bubbled up around me as the lights came up: “I think it was about technology”, “No it was obviously about climate change”, “are you kidding? it was about capitalism and the inevitability of death!”. Of course, Signal to Noise was about all of these things, and much more.
Clearly, Signal to Noise is more concept driven than anything else, foregoing narrative completely. Granted, a very interesting concept it is, but the lack of any overarching arc or thematic development throughout the ninety minute duration can result in a viewing experience that quickly becomes rather one note in its chaos – oxymoronically, predictably random – leading the audience to wonder if the same effect couldn’t have been achieved in half an hour.
Overall, Signal to Noise is due credit for and furthering ‘Forced Entertainment’s impressive longstanding contribution to experimental theatre. However, some may find the experience is ultimately more rewarding to think about after the fact than it is to sit through.