I believe one performance is a blip within a show’s journey. An important blip, but not reduced to it. Energy shifts, timing, and circumstances on and offstage turn each evening into something unique. In Response Theatre Co’s new show I Made You a Mixtape, the goal is for the performers to focus on the immediate environment: music, scene partner, audience, mishaps, anything and everything that makes the moment a NOW. At its heart, this show is about the blips. It’s a homage to the unique intensity of a moment.
I first saw I Made You a Mixtape on my own. It was early spring, start of the week, and I’ve never felt more exhilarated on a Monday night. The show throws you into a 90s college dorm where nine women gather for one last hangout. With no spoken dialogue, it unravels in a non-stop party atmosphere wrapped in nineties nostalgia and delivered through dancing within the jazz styles umbrella. A hit playlist with live musicians playing on top of it muffles the gang’s conversations and laughs. One minute, they’re playing beer pong. The next, they hit us with explosive dance moves.
This is a dance show with a special sauce. The set is not a set, but an atmosphere. Sound is not a tech device, but a time-travelling vessel that takes us to the past with a bangers playlist, and grounds us in the present with the beat of live instruments.
Nostalgia chords were struck. I’m a nineties kid who danced in front of the mirror and lip-synced the new millennium anthems at the least provocation. It all came rushing back: chokers, lyrics, besties’ energy. But it was the dancing that I absorbed the most. Fierce, unapologetic, and above all, fun. My body reverberated with what was happening onstage.
The aftertaste was thick, and I couldn’t wait to treat my friends to that flavour. When the show returned for a pre-Edinburgh Fringe run, I made sure to bring my dancing pal. I had been keen to see it again and watch the Response Theatre ethos in action.
Response Theatre Co works with a method that blends movement theatre and Meisner-acting, focusing on instinctive responsiveness to the immediate environment (rather than on the actor’s inner self). Yes, there is a choreography, but what interests them is not scripted responses but impulsive reactions.
Both runs took place at The Cockpit Theatre, whose thrust stage allows the party energy to spill out into the audience. My friend later apologised for singing along to Alanis Morissette too loudly. I hadn’t noticed; the music envelops the audience just enough to muffle everyone’s nostalgia trip. But I noticed her head-nodding and body leaning in. Mine was too. The show connects you to your own urge to move.
What I’m circling around here is how the show invites you to let go. It asks the spectator to feel rather than categorise. From the first time, I found myself letting go of the impulse to look for familiar markers of theatre, a narrative arc or a character’s transformation, and instead, I gave in to the feel-good energy and the intensity of that blip night.
After experiencing the show again, I was struck (again) by how alive the piece feels. Not because each performance produces radically different outcomes, but because it insists on presence. What I found is that being responsive is not about conjuring different reactions to each new stimulus; it’s about staying present in the moment. And that presentness translates into a stage that feels constantly throbbing.
With no spoken dialogue, audiences get fragments of context from each character through handmade banners: a broken heart, an addiction problem, a dream fulfilled, and so on. These cues did not always match what I got from the dance, but it barely mattered. What stood out was the individuality of each dancer as they rotated the spotlight, the heartfelt energy, and their chemistry throughout.
What I love about the company is the urgency of keeping dancing alive by responding to the environment each night. In I Made You a Mixtape they don’t see performance as a fixed product, but as a living art form, which, surprisingly, is something theatre-makers and goers tend to forget. It’s a show that’s not afraid of colouring outside the lines, and it insists that you’re there for every moment of it.
The show ran at The Cockpit Theatre from 12-14 June, then tours as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.