ZINK, GIPCA Live Art Festival, 2014. Shakespeare's Chair

ZINK, GIPCA Live Art Festival, 2014. Shakespeare's Chair
(photographs Ashley Walters except where noted)

Is it possible for Everyman/woman to speak, to confess,
to attest, to narrate? What if a Foley Man were to rebel
against the humble parameters of the craft – the art of creating the everyday background sounds in film and theatre – and insist on the right to be heard?

In Shakepeare’s Chair, the aged Foley Man as a washed-up relic from the age of analogue, a fool magician driven by unfulfilled aspirations of childhood, by the traces of indoctrination and his naive imagination, attempts to create through action and sound (or noise) some small moment to counter the mythical – and biblical – injunction, “Don’t Look Back”.

“Shakepeare’s Chair emerged during several conversations with collaborators including Ivor Powell and the late Tjaart Potgieter. Initially the work was a response to a long remembered dream, an exploration of an old and abandoned house where an elaborate yet decayed chair stood alone in the centre of an empty room. This was believed to be Shakepeare’s chair, held in readiness for his second coming. But was it really his, an archival relic or a symbol, the prop of a delusional cult? And what would happen if anyone was brave, vain or foolish enough to claim the seat?”

John Nankin attempts to play himself as a performer playing the old Foley Man. The actions and sounds of the performance are reactions and responses to a vocal track played from a tape recorder by the Chameleon Man played in creature costume by Chas Unwin. The other performers, Glen Mellvil and Marco Filby, appear as themselves, representing sound and lighting technicians.

Marco Filby - who constructed many of the noise making devices with Llewellyn Alberts - composed the ambient sound track: https://soundcloud.com/marco_filby/last-port-of-call-shakespeares-chair