Just Like Real Life
by Emma Attwood & Nick Finegan

Just Like Real Life is a vivid and violent new work from theatre-makers Emma Attwood and Nick Finegan. Fusing live performance and virtual reality, and featuring sound art by Rhodri Karim, it is a haunting exploration of humankind’s ever more intimate relationship with the digital realm.

In a strange and desolate desert, an opportunistic cowboy sets up shop as a virtual reality salesmen – offering your deepest desires on a 30 day free trial. Just Like Real Life follows the story of a lonely city dweller who signs up to make her dreams a reality. She discovers a world where anything is possible… as long as she can keep up with the subscription fees.

This new multidisciplinary performance takes on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s 19th century tale The Sandman as a grain of inspiration for a story about loneliness and longing in the post-internet age. Each audience member will be given their own VR headset before the show begins. These will function as their own personal portal into a virtual landscape where fantasy and desire feel all too real.

Supported with funding from Arts Council England.



Information
Date: Saturday 10 March 2018
Time: 9pm
Address: Camden People’s Theatre
58-60 Hampstead Rd, London NW1 2PY
Price: £12/10 (as part of ‘Sprint 2018’)

Social
Web event: https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/production/just-like-real-life/
FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/421690328252911/
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/justlikereallife/



Just Like Real Life is the second collaboration between Emma Attwood and Nick Finegan. Nick and Emma have performed and exhibited work in the UK and internationally, including Southwark Playhouse, Glasgow School of Art, Bristol Old Vic, Battersea Arts Centre, Ovalhouse, Warwick Arts Centre, as well as Dixon Place (New York) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Their first collaboration was ECHO_NARCISSUS, selected from 250+ applications for The Yard Theatre's NOW '16 festival.

#JustLikeRealLife #Sprint18

Emma Attwood is a director, performer, and writer. She makes cross-disciplinary work that explores the intersections between live and video performance. Emma is artistic director of Recursion Co and also co-curates cross-arts exhibitions in London, New York, and Berlin with Yates Norton. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and an associate artist with the theatre collective fanSHEN. http://emmaattwood.com | https://recursiontheatrecompany.wordpress.com

Nick Finegan is a theatre and filmmaker from London. His work explores the intersections between performance, video & text, and through this ever-evolving practice he attempts to carve out a radical space to think out loud about issues concerning queer experience, urban loneliness, alternative community and social alienation. In 2016 his first short film The Swimming Club screened at BFI Southbank and was subsequently released on DAZED. After studying at Bristol University, Nick was appointed as associate director to Andrew Hilton at The Tobacco Factory Bristol, and has since worked with artists such as Chris Goode, Melly Still, Simon Callow, Chris Brett-Bailey, Amanda Lepore, Karen Christopher, Ken McMullen, Alex Baczynski-Kenkins, Florian Hetz, and Travis Alabanza. His latest theatre work DEEP IN THE GARDEN OF LIGHT had a sold-out debut at The Yard Theatre in December 2017 as part of the First Drafts season. https://twitter.com/nickfinegan

Rhodri Karim is an undisciplined multi-disciplinary artist and activist working to undermine consensus reality with sensuality, self-defeating behaviour and shamanic practice. His work covers the domains of sound, film, organising, performance, software and agriculture. As a practising animist, composer and sound designer, he works in a trance-like state to facilitate improvisational dialogue with instruments, recordings and their spectral inhabitants. https://soundcloud.com/rhodri