Uninvited Guests - Schlock

if you think you’re not afraid of the dark…

if you say you have a strong stomach…

if you believe nothing can shock you…

Uninvited Guests return to the Nuffield Theatre at Lancaster University on Wednesday 2 February to present their latest show Schlock.

Not for the faint hearted, Schlock collides the real with the really fake. Personal experiences of bodily trauma and fears about accidents or violent attacks encounter the erotica of TV hospital dramas and horror flicks. The result is a darkly comic and disconcerting mix of poignant confession and B-movie melodrama, real acts of violence and pints of fake blood. Schlock asks if we can we sit at the bedside of a loved-one in hospital, or hear the beeps of a heart monitor, without thinking of endless scenes from film or TV? What is it in horror that holds us, makes us want to look at accidents as we drive-by? Uninvited Guests explore our desire to look and to look away.

Digital artist Duncan Speakman has worked with Uninvited Guests to explore the performers as acoustic instruments, using contact mics to live-sample noises from their bodies and soundtrack the show. The Company also consulted a TV make-up artist in order for them to recreate wounds across their bodies during the performance. Through the tender making-up of bloody cuts, that signify some past violent event, in Schlock, tenderness becomes cruel and the appearance of cruelty slides seamlessly into intimacy.

“one of Britain’s foremost experimental performance companies” Bristol Evening Post

A Leeds Met Studio Theatre and Hull Time Based Arts co-commission. Funded by Arts Council England, South West. Supported by Dartington College of Arts.

Tickets: £8 / £5 concessions

Fax: 01524 39021 Box Office tel: 01524 594151 (24 hour answerphone)

Box office text: 07810 082832 Email: boxoffice@nuffieldtheatre.com