A Forest (2005), studio self portraits
A FOREST
(2005)
Group performance • Storytelling • Objects • MoneyOver my shoulder and back, back, back…
A Forest is a place where skin is turned into wallets and straw gets spun into gold; where being an ass means looking an ass; where storming off alone can mean the difference between life or death.
Made for limited capacity audiences A Forest is an intimate event fusing cutting edge sound work with upfront live performance. A stab wound in the heart of an easy life, this is desperately uneasy theatre.
“I’ve been trying to spin straw into gold. It doesn’t seem to be working yet. I’ve been watching seven ravens flying around and around and around. I’ve been splitting hairs and spitting feathers and fear I’m becoming obsessed. I wore a tail on the bus the other day. No-one knew. I got thinking how in fairy tales when we speak of magic we could also be describing the qualities of money: It’s rare; it changes things; it has the power to transgress. And these stories – known by most of us – are often ugly little fuckers. Outsiders always come a cropper, whilst fair young maiden’s get rescued into the big strong arms of a woodcutter; who then finds out he’s a prince; and then rich beyond all dreams. And that, quite simply, pisses me off. See I like trolls, I’ve loved more than a couple in my time. Plus I believe in witches. Not happy modern pagans, but vengeful old crones with hairy warts and visible lice and an unhealthy interest in baking. And A Forest is a seance of sorts, in that it invokes all foul creatures might join us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a tale of the woods. I’m stealing the words of a very good pop song: this one goes deep.”
…something, something, something, happily ever after.
REALTIME MAGAZINE
Review: A Forest, Barbican, London
Excerpt from ‘Culture Crash: Things As They Are’
RealTime Magazine (Australia) review of SPILL, Issue #9
Theron Schmidt, April 2009
Here’s a story. Not a bedtime story, but a story to wake you up. The story of a fleet of jet-black ravens who dive-bomb down to earth. Knocking out the power plant outside of town, they keep coming, crashing through the basements, the living rooms, the politicians’ corridors, and all the trappings of bourgeois life.
This is one of the dark fairy tales told in Pacitti Company’s A Forest, an intimate performance for a small audience gathered around a gleaming mound of coins. Three performers cohabit the space: Robert Pacitti telling stories from the circle’s periphery; Sheila Ghelani serving as hostess, an intermediary between audience and event; and Richard Eton as the stooge, the fall guy, his body a canvas for Ghelani’s manipulations. She circles the space coyly, offering first her breasts and later a pair of pig’s feet. Eton burrows into the coins, dances to exhaustion and finally becomes a landscape of small trees, affixed with hot wax to the contours of his supine body. Pacitti tells story after story in a carefully modulated tone that is both demure and gleeful, taunting us to join in an indulgence of depravity and refusal. It feels as if the work itself wants to be like that hole in culture, the one blown open by the ravens; it wants to transform the pile of money we are staring at into an empty void, capitalism’s hollow heart. This is a deliberately audacious piece of theatre, and its success depends on each individual audience member choosing to go along with it. But then this is spelled out at the very beginning. Pacitti says, “You have two choices: believe everything is okay, or drown in shit.”
THE GUARDIAN
A Forest, Barbican, London
Lyn Gardner, 10 April 2009
‘The floor of the Pit theatre looks as if it has been visited by a Golden Goose. But instead of laying golden eggs, it has laid a vast pile of two pence pieces. Could this be the Barbican's contribution to quantitative easing? Money and magic are certainly equated in the Pacitti Company's A Forest, a beautiful but elusive show that takes the audience on a journey into the darkest part of the woods, where the stories are as gnarled as ancient trees, the ravens flap their wings, and the trolls and witches of the human psyche lurk in the bushes.
Part seance and part religious ceremony, A Forest places the audience in a magic circle, where stories can be heard, wishes can be made and rituals observed. There is even a collection box. The word FOOL is written in bread as if Hansel and Gretel recently passed this way. A woman offers us her breasts and some pig's trotters; a man lies naked on the bed of coins, has hot wax dripped on his skin and a little forest of trees sprout from his flesh. Another tells us twisted little fairytales: of the wayward and selfish Gut who meets Fe Fi Fo Fum in the forest; the lonely man who makes a pincushion of his heart just to remind himself that he can feel something.
There is almost an overload of images. The woman binds the man with blood-red and golden threads and writes MINE on his arm; she ties antlers to his back. There is incense and fire, the sound of ravens rising and insects buzzing. It is like being in the grip of an enchantment. "What is it you really want?" we are asked. The money gleams in the darkness. Fool's gold.’
PERFORMED SIGN LANGUAGE
A Forest was originally performed inside a large circular curtain made from thin strips of material. Careful lighting made it deliberately difficult to see through, while allowing video to be projected from outside into the space. This meant that spoken stories could also appear in sign language. Rather than direct translations, these were performances crafted in British Sign Language, shaped by its own structure, culture and way of communicating.
GLASGOW HERALD
A Forest, Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan, 28 October 2005
‘Before you enter A Forest, you have to sign a contract. There's a to-do / not-to-do checklist as well and a cautionary note against breaking the contract - all insidiously unsettling in ways you'd feel slightly silly to admit to because, after all, you’re an adult and what can happen in Tramway 4 to spook or harm you?
Even so, you pass through the portal in a warier-than-usual state.
You find yourself paying attention to details you might otherwise skip over - and that's the essence of the contract Robert Pacitti wants you to enter into during A Forest.
He wants a degree of engagement across all of the senses - not just eyes and ears but smell, touch and taste are catered for here - and he wants your imagination to teeter on the brink of childhood again. To hark back to when the fabric of fairytales helped create a template tor happiness and "make a wish" magic conjured up a lifestyle of never-ending plenty - in time, we learn to call the magic "money".
As we sit, some 30 of us in a circle, the focal point for the Pacitti Company's mordant collage of stories and enactments is a great, glistening pool of coins. Together with Sheila Ghelani and Richard Eton, Pacitti weaves pungently poetic words and potent visual images to create a sense of modem malaise where escalating acquisitiveness blinds people to the value of what they already have. The closing section, Eton's body felled on the coins and transforming into a landscape-graveyard of wasted lives and secret wishes, is hauntingly elegiac despite the goodbye kiss of a tot of sherry.
Limited capacity - booking advised.’
Robert in A Forest (2005), Tramway , Glasgow
Sheila Ghelani and Richard Eton in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Sheila and Richard in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Sheila and Richard in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Jeni Draper in A Forest (2005), sign language film
Jeni Draper in A Forest (2005), sign language projection, CPT, London
Jodee Mundy in A Forest (2005), sign language film
Jodee Mundy in A Forest (2005), sign language projection, CPT, London
Sheila and Richard in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Richard in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Richard in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
Sheila, Richard and Robert in A Forest (2005), The Barbican, London
DOCUMENTS
Full project description - Funding narrative
Barbican programme - London performances 2009
Tramway programme - Glasgow performances 2005
CREDITS
Premiere: 8th – 23rd September 2005
Duration: 60 minutes
Place: Camden People’s Theatre, London
Concept and direction: Robert Pacitti
Co-devised, written and performed: Richard Eton, Sheila Ghelani, Robert Pacitti
British sign language performers, on video: Jeni Draper, Jodee Mundy
Front of house: Gillian Lees, Laura Bradshaw, Silvana Maimone, Valerie Renay
Original music commission: Sebastian Castagna, in 8.1 surround sound
Lighting design: Mark Webber
Production manager: Marty Langthorne
Commissioner: Tramway, Glasgow
Funding: Arts Council England, London Arts Board
Development residency: Camden People's Theatre
Performances included: Camden People’s Theatre, London (2005); Tramway, Glasgow (2005); InBetween Time Festival, Bristol (2006); Barbican, London (2009).