Before Your Very Eyes

GOB SQUAD (UK / DE)

7/03/14 – THE OLD MARKET, BRIGHTON
PRESENTED AS SUITABLE FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED

Gob Squad and CAMPO proudly present a live show with real children! A rare and magnificent opportunity to witness seven lives lived in fast forward… Before Your Very Eyes!

For the first time in their 17 year history, Gob Squad do not appear onstage themselves, instead directing a group of 8 14 year olds. As the audience observe them in a “safe-room” made of one-way mirrors like insects in a jam jar, the children onstage peer into the future at themselves as adults, and nostalgically back at their recent past. And as we try to stop the process of aging and preserve youth as long as we can, they prepare to leave childhood behind forever.

Through the complex interaction of live performance and recorded material, Gob Squad turn ideas about the wisdom of age and the innocence of youth on their head. Gob Squad’s Before Your Very Eyes is the last part of the CAMPO trilogy of theatre works with children, made for an adult audience. The first part was Josse De Pauw’s üBUNG, followed by Tim Etchells’ That Night Follows Day.

The performance was followed by a post-show discussion with Professor Jonathan Green, Gob Squad and the performers of Before Your Very Eyes. Jonathan Green is Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the University of Manchester and Honorary Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist at Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s Hospitals University NHS Trust and Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.

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