How Long Is A Piece Of String

Attending this play is an opportunity to engage in an expressive, innovative meditation on life. It is an episodic collection of theatre games and character explorations held together with string and a guitar.

The playful mood is set with the four actors engaging in childhood games using string. This segues into a lecture on String Theory and diverges from there. Space, time and distance and their relationships are foregrounded.

There is a strong movement element which adds perspective to the mime and word-based episodes.

The audience is gently invited to accept a string bracelet, sing, provide questions which can be answered by “how long is a piece of string?” and move through the various explorations of connection and distance with the actors. The finale, where the audience is woven into a web of strings, gathers and completes the themes of the performance.

During the performance the audience was surprised, laughing and still, but above all engaged.

An excellent guitarist, Max Garcia Underwood, using looped sounds and responsive improvisation worked in partnership with the actors.  This was enhanced by well-designed soundscapes. The lighting design unobtrusively supported the actors.

There were occasions when an episode lasted too long and lost impetus or the vocals were not clear and loud enough, but the variety of expressions and movement meant the performance overall did not lag.

This fusion of movement, mime, stories and song is a well woven performance.

Ruth Richter