‘Life Streaming’: technology, intimacy and intensity

When is theatre not theatre? When you sit at a computer, when the “performance” is mostly a typed conversation, when the “actor” is on the other side of the world?

Director Dries Verhoeven’s work is termed “experiential theatre” in his native Netherlands, and is often closer to art installation or an interactive experiment than traditional stagecraft. As part of the London International Festival of Theatre, his latest piece, Life Streaming, is on at Square 2 outside the National Theatre, in a mobile computer café.

It’s certainly an intriguing 50 minutes. We each sit at a computer, and an intimate conversation develops between you and a young Sri Lankan, sitting in a computer café on the beach thousands of miles away. So what? you might be forgiven for thinking. After all, we can all Skype and Facebook with people on the other side of world these days.

But Verhoeven’s impetus for the work was a desire to go behind the one-dimensional “disaster victim” images we all saw on the news after the 2004 boxing day tsunami. The performers here all have their tales of grief; but the conversation – or mine at least – is never mawkish,  although we talk of love, loss and the dangers of the sea. Eventually, Ridma, who I share this experience with and who skilfully shapes the encounter, reveals that his brother was killed by the ocean.

It is, at times, an uncomfortable experience. I’m made to discuss someone I know who has died; asked if I would help Ridma if the sea attacked again; if I would share a bed with him in order to listen to the ocean. The one-on-one nature of the encounter – and the fact that they are rehearsed and in control while you are not – makes me feel a little exposed. But this isn’t just techno trickery; you can’t really avoid having an emotional response to the piece and Verhoeven is successful in taking us into a reality behind the far-away tragedy. The sounds and smells of Sri Lanka also intrude, as hatches come down to screen off the river view.

I know not everyone likes immersive or interactive or experiential theatre (I’ve rather annoyed friends by taking them to plays where they get prodded or herded before), and I’d recommend Life Streaming with caution: while you remain physically untouched, it could push some pretty painful emotional buttons. But I found it subtle and sensitive. It finds its own, inventive way to engender understanding of someone from a very different world, to take you on their journey: which is one thing, surely, that theatre should try to do.

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