BACKGROUND

The Bench is the latest in an ongoing series of work (Autoteatro) shifting participants between performer and audience perspectives.

Glen Neath and Ant Hampton created 'Romcom' together in 2003. Ahead of its time in many ways, it broke ground for Rotozaza by being the first in a series of 'automatic' shows which function without any human intervention. It came at the start of an 8 year series of performance work involving unrehearsed guest performers, which in turn gave rise to the current Autoteatro series.

"With Etiquette and now GuruGuru (other Autoteatro works), I’m still thinking about what happens 'around' the shows - before and after. I like hearing about couples / friends suddenly seeing each other in a different light, but I’m particularly drawn to stories of strangers who somehow end up together. How people describe the awkward disentanglement from fiction afterwards: 'We had to unlearn ourselves' was how one put it after GuruGuru. Glen and I have been thinking - in what strange way would it have changed the world if each of the several thousand enactments so far were actually two new people meeting each other. To keep track of the meetings, visualise them somehow... These thoughts have ended up forming the groundwork for The Bench." - Ant Hampton

This ‘expanded’ notion of performance simply frames one of the oldest and most positive gestures humans have so far managed; that of introducing two acquaintances who don't know each other, 'but should'. Deliberately bringing two people together can be thought of as a creative act; like an artist the 'Connector' keeps an eye on her work, following its progress as it leaves her hands and slips into the world, hopeful for it to cause further ripples.