All Ears
Delicious mixture
Kate McIntosh’s work is a delicious mixture of all sorts of genres: theatre, cabaret, stand-up comedy, sometimes a pinch of science or a dash of philosophy – she presents it all with a disarming flair and presence – see performances such as DARK MATTER and Untried Untested which we were pleased to present in recent seasons.
For All Ears Kate McIntosh sets up the stage as a laboratory cum recording studio. Chairs are dragged, paper is torn, glasses are toppled. Sounds are gathered, recorded and played back. The performance produces its own soundtrack. McIntosh talks about human and animal behaviour, crowd control and linguistics, systems, societies and social interaction, she jokes about politics and group dynamics, performs dances about bees and traffic jams. In the silence between the sounds recorded she moves to the heart of the piece and to the centre of the listening crowd and asks questions, about who we are when we are alone and how we are together, about what it might take to change a culture and what we could be missing in the push for individual self-sufficiency.
All Ears is driven by McIntosh’s ongoing fascination with destruction and creation, sense and nonsense, the whole and the fractured, by her playfulness with the audience, and her love of theatrical images. A witty and lucid performance that balances on the thin line between experiment and entertainment.
concept and performance Kate McIntosh | artistic advice Pascale Petralia, Tim Etchells & Gary Stevens | sound design John Avery | production co-ordination Ingrid Vranken | production SPIN (Brussels) | co-production Pact Zollverein (D), Kaaitheater (B), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (D), Les Spectacles Vivants - Centre Pompidou (F) | support Vlaamse Overheid, Pianofabriek kunstenwerkplaats (B), Hebbel Am Ufer (HAU) (D) | SPIN is structurally supported by BUDA Kunstencentrum for the period 2013 – 2016
A House on Fire co-production; with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
