Celebration, Florida

Two weeks ago I performed in a show at the Albany Theatre that has stayed with me. Celebration, Florida was created by live artist Greg Wohead, about the idea around surrogates - those close to us who hold a kind of meaning to us, people throughout our lives to whom we attach feelings, ideas, experience.

One of my own solo shows, Big in Japan or Three Steves and a Bob, considered the idea that people make us who we are - that we are a collection of memories and interactions, in part defined by the friendships, companions, associations we’ve kept over time. In the show I talked about the idea that changing relationships reflect how we ourselves change, and asked if we are we still affected by people we have known in the past. Are they still current within us? In what ways? I also talked about people I know called Steve. In the show I narrated the story of one Steve, embodied another Steve speaking from his point of view, and told the story of a mutual friend of a third Steve, while he represented himself in a voice recording commenting on the whole thing.

Greg took Celebration, Florida further, tho. He actually used surrogates on stage to represent him performing the show. Two people per show, with words projected on a screen as yet a third self-representation. I was one of those surrogates in the 2nd of March. I was 1/3 Greg Wohead. In the show the performers wear headphones and follow instructions that feed into our ears on stage. Sometimes I was told to pick up a mic and hand it to the other performer, then walk to a particular spot and point in a particular direction to illustrate what he was saying. Sometimes I was the performer speaking - repeating the words that Greg was speaking into my ears via the headphones

“Hi, I’m Greg. I’m a 34 year old man from Texas. I’m imagining you all as I write this in a hotel room in America,” etc.

The experience was strangely freeing as a performer - exhilarating and freeing. There was no time to think about what I had to say, no time to process it and think about how I might express it or behave as I was talking to the audience - I could just barely keep on top of the dialogue in my ear. Greg had asked us (me and the other performer, Leo Kay, a wonderfully natural and open artist) to follow his inflections and tone as closely as possible, so there was no ‘acting’ going on at all, really.

I didn’t have to worry about hitting my mark, either: my mark was given to me exactly when it was needed.

“Walk to the white box centre stage. Stop and look at the audience.”

I didn’t have to remember anything at all - I was just there, in the moment. I didn’t even have to work out what anything in the show meant. Very quickly I realised this was impossible: there was no chance to hear anything the other performer was saying. I was listening to instructions when he was speaking - and no chance to read any words on the screen - I was moving somewhere all the time.

This was a gift: being ‘in the moment’, for an entire hour on stage. I had no choice but to be there, that moment. At the end of the show the other performer and I were told to stand and face the audience for the duration of a song - Stand By Me. The entire song, just standing there on stage, with the audience looking back at us. And they were right there with us the entire time. Only afterwards did I learn that words on screen instructed them to consider the two of us as surrogates for someone in their own lives. Someone who they care about. Someone who was not there with them, today. Let the two of us be there for them instead. It was a joy.

Celebration, Florida is on tour until June 9, with two different performers each night. See it if you can.