The Smile Off Your Face

The Smile Off Your Face Ontroerend Goed (Belgium) Nine Actors from Ghent have traveled half way around the world to blindfold you, bind your hands and push you around in a wheelchair. A completely different viewing experience, The Smile off your Face challenges your comfort zones. How prepared are you as an audience member to participate in your own performance? How intimate are you prepared to get with someone you’ve never seen? As you are ushered through a deserted pie factory up to the steamy levels on a 38 degree day under a tin roof, the cheery general manager puts you at ease in the waiting room. One by one, the audience is taken to a wheelchair, blindfolded, wrists bound, and pushed through the tantalizing plush velvet curtain into the unknown. Those left behind let their imaginations run wild and wait for their own turn and their friends’ return. A range of subtle and well planned experiences, sounds, smells tastes and more play with your senses. As a disempowered, blind and unknowing participant, you must both trust and be knowingly exploited. The removal of the ability to see heightens the other senses and allows for varying interpretations of what was happening for each audience member. Your own level of engagement or withdrawal will significantly affect your experience. The smell of candles recently snuffed, dancing with strangers, being led and touching and exploring a stranger’s face - bizarre and confusing sounds, tastes and touches, with tantalizing glimpses of the unexpected, the overall effect – as the comment book loudly attests to – is amazing! The final confronting part of the production illustrates the scope of the project. The use of audience members as experimental subjects, and the pathos of people’s ability, or lack of it, to really connect, share and be intimate with others. Eyeball to eyeball the actor seeks answers, impressions, reactions, and as you are parted cries – for what? The lack of human connection in the world? His inability to make you smile? At where the smile goes when taken from your face? This show is the definition of Fringe. A real treat for festival goers – I would love to tell you more but I don’t want to ruin the experience – its something challenging and unique and I invite you to explore it for yourself. The performance experience is intimate, confronting, unique and amazing – don’t miss the opportunity to explore what happens to your smile. Adelaide Fringe till March 16th, Fringe Factory Theatre Read the full article here --> http://tinyurl.com/23wjvx