Lone Twin are a theatre company that “try to look at the world and smile, so the performance, theatre and events we make look for signs of hope” (Lone Twin, N.D).
After looking into Lone Twin’s lecture Walk With Me, Walk With Me, Will Someone Please Walk With Me (2009) along with their website, we were encouraged to do some work within the community to see how people would respond. To begin with, we came up with the idea of holding a ‘free hug’ day, however after contemplating this idea and speaking to a few people, it was suggested to us to go out into the public instead and see if anybody would happily sit with us. The idea behind this experiment is to see whether people will talk to strangers and also what their responses would be if we were to ask them questions, progressively getting more and more personal and bizarre.
Whilst enacting this experiment, I wrote this:
“Well, I am currently sat on the bottom floor of the Waterside shopping centre in Lincoln and after 20 minutes, no one has yet sat next to me. I have a sign saying, ‘Sit With Me?’, but it seems to be scaring more people off. I decided to get out my laptop and make it look like I was doing work, which I now am, and see whether this encouraged people to come and sit down. Despite no one choosing to sit next to me, Alex is sat on the bench next to me and a young lady has just sat down next to her. Therefore it is arguable that it is the sign that is putting people off.”
That was all I got written before the group then reconvened to talk about Alex’s experience with the young lady who had sat next to her. After discussing this, we decided to walk around the shopping centre just asking people questions about their day. This got mixed results as most of the people smiled politely and then walked away.
To continue with the idea we tried of making peoples days better, we also went around at a later date asking people to say something nice into a recording device. We also got mixed results from this, however most people agreed to do it. We noticed that a large amount of the people we spoke to struggled to come up with something nice to say.
(ADD THE RECORDING OF THIS HERE)
Does this say something about our society? Especially how we can take a simple thing like pleasantries for granted. I agree with Lone Twin’s philosophy on their work, and I believe it would be a fantastic idea to create a performance that looked for signs of hope within the community. Or even offer the community something they will not have experienced before that may help them in some way or another.
Lone Twin (N.D.) Lone Twin: What We Do, Online: http://www.lonetwin.com/ (Accessed on 7rd February)