The Manikins – a work in progress [with spoilers]

“Just be yourself” was the instruction at the ‘start’ of (or maybe it was five minutes into) this intensely personal fever dream of an experience. I can’t imagine a more difficult instruction.

The Manikins has really made me think and question in the ways that great art can. A nerve bundle of contradictions, this show was simultaneously exactly the kind of theatricality I gravitate towards and the polar opposite of my comfort zone.

It evoked so many contradictory emotional (and rational) responses that I am struggling to articulate them. But I really want to. I really want to remember these feelings when I read it back in years to come.

This isn’t really a review, it’s an aide-memoire (if you’ll excuse that pretension), written for a future me [hello Michael, hope life has been kind and your dreams have been peaceful].

As such, it is full of spoilers.

So, if you are going to book for The Manikins, and you really should, please don’t read on.

It isn’t a spoiler to say that this isn’t really a work in progress. But maybe I am.

OK, Michael and anyone else who’s still with us, let’s have a crack at it.

For context I think it’s worth me remembering that I consider myself an anxious rule-lover, someone who actively enjoys colouring within the lines because I understand how important the lines are if we are all to get along. People-pleasing is not a negative trait in my world, it’s essential.

But I am also instinctively sceptical; I question everything, everywhere, all the time, and I absolutely hate people telling me what to do without a clear rationale for doing so. And that has led to many confrontations with authority figures throughout my life.

I think that internal tension really played into why I enjoyed this experience so much.

Via email I’d been told to arrive at Kingswood Arts by 7pm.

I live a long way away so I set off very early and spent the entire journey worrying about whether I would be late rather than fretting too much about the show.

Of course I arrived half an hour early, I always do.

Kingswood Arts is a very weird building. Once the home to the inventor of Bovril, it feels like a cinematic set – as if the Saltburn Estate were to appear in the heart of a council estate in South London.

As I wandered about, killing time, the dusk turned to night and the atmosphere turned chilly.

At the entrance were groups of hooded youths hanging around a really loud speaker playing really bland Dancehall. It felt like a set-up. I knew it couldn’t be but maybe it was, but it couldn’t be, could it?

I walked the perimeter and checked the email again: ’please WAIT OUTSIDE the main, East entrance to the building’.

Which way is East? I checked my phone, and checked the email again, and checked Google maps, and walked the perimeter again, and I checked them all again and returned to exactly where I had first assumed, and I waited…

The ‘Bovril castle’ now home to Kingswood Arts.

Charismatic theatre maker, Jack Aldisert emerged around a corner, his hand out to shake mine.

Immediately putting me at ease, asking questions, seemingly intensely interested in my answers in ways that some people can convey so effortlessly.

What did I know about the show; how had I heard about it; had I been to immersive work in the past; did I know what to expect; what other theatre do I enjoy?

It felt like a heightened version of any exchange with a stranger. I was trying so hard to be truthful and open and believe he was interested in my answers but I was also constantly assessing, contextualising, editing, self-censoring, self-doubting, picking my words, playing the game of platitudes but not being trite, trying to find the answers I thought he wanted to hear, assembled from the myriad of potential versions of the ‘truth’.

And that was before we even stepped into the building.

Upstairs into the performance space we sat opposite each other on stackable chairs.

Jack introduced the set-up, I’m paraphrasing because I cannot recall detail; most of my ‘self’ had switched to pure fight of flight mode by then, leaving a shell of me to continue playing the game…

“This is a performance where you are the audience. You don’t need to act, just be yourself. I will be playing a character but there will be a part of the show where I step out of character and talk to you as myself”.

“At any moment you can stop the show by saying ‘I want to stop the show’. Can you repeat that back to me so I know you understand…?”

[is this a test, if I say it, does the show end now?…no, that can’t be right, it’s just a genuine way to reinforce the phrase, OK…] “I want to stop the show”.

“Good. In a moment I will step through this curtain and when the music stops, and only when the music stops, I want you to follow me.”

“Do you have any questions? “

[Oh God, yes, so many questions]

“No, that all sounds good” I said – as instinctively as if he were a waiter asking about the quality of my meal.’

Under the curtain a manila envelope was slipped towards me. I guessed I should open it. An A4 sheet laid out like a script but it was all blurry and indistinct in the low light. I’d been pre-warned that there would be reading so I fumbled for my other glasses.

Focused on the page, actually nearly all the ‘words’ were just squiggly lines, with minor moments picked out as actual text. I had no idea what that meant. I could piece together fragments of the story of someone checking in to a clinic.

The music stopped and I was through the curtain. Well, at first I couldn’t find the join between the two curtains so that provided another shot of adrenalin.

Then, through the curtain, another two chairs facing each other.

Beatrix, a nurse or assistant [or is that a sexist assumption? No, I’m sure that was her role] asked me questions for my ‘admission’ form as they checked me into a clinic.

“I have here that your name is Olivia Steele is that right?”

[Should I play along? Jack said I should be myself; was that a test, should I be myself? I am evidently the protagonist in a play, should I try to be Olivia Steele or someone else? Oh, I don’t know what to do].

“No, that’s not right, I’m Michael”.

“Oh, OK, Michael, sometimes these things get confused”.

I’ve later looked up that the name of the actor playing Beatrix is Olivia Steele, or maybe that is a stage name. Or maybe that’s a false persona invented on the internet for people who look up who the actor is who played Beatrix. Or maybe I’m overthinking this.

Beatrix asked me questions and looked intensely into my eyes as she explained that I was being admitted for treatment with Doctor Ligetti.

“And it says here that you are a manikin dresser, is that right?”

“No, I run a design agency”

“Oh do you, how interesting”

“Can you tell me what time that clock says on the wall”

[should I make something up?] “I can’t see a clock”

“But can you hear it ticking?”

“Yes”

As part of my treatment, she asked me to think of an earworm, a song I couldn’t get out of my head. [Ah, this will be a thing that they can play later as part of the show… think of a good one…]

The shell of me asked my brain for an answer.

I did have a song in my mind, I had visuals and fragments and the feeling that it evoked in me, but the numbskull in charge of retrieving specific information was absent. So I ran to near where I thought that song should be and grabbed the first one I found. It was the wrong one. And I immediately knew that they wouldn’t know it and wouldn’t find it and I’d messed up their show, my show, at least a little bit.

She asked me about a dream, at least I think she did… maybe that happened later… I can’t quite remember, and if I couldn’t remember a song I definitely couldn’t recall a dream. I tried to piece one together but to not be too clichéd. I invented a setting to a ‘feeling’ I often have in dreams, of feeling unable to fight back against aggressors. Is that too exposing to say to a fake therapist’s assistant? Is it too revealing to include in a kind of review? Is it true or have I made it up for you, even if you are me, reading this now which is actually in the future?

Beatrix leaned in, imploring me to be careful of Doctor Ligetti. I was concentrating so hard on not breaking eye contact that I didn’t hear her exact warning or the specific thing she told me not to do.

[Argh, now I’m proper panicking. Am I doing it all wrong? Am I missing the cues they are giving me because I don’t understand the rules of the game we were playing. Should I blame myself for that or be indignant that they hadn’t explained it all properly. Or am I imagining it all?]

[Get a grip.]

Dr Ligetti was Jack, but dressed in a lab coat and glasses.

[Are they new or had Jack worn glasses? Why can’t I remember that? Have I completely lost my memory?]

He flung back the tail of his coat and we conversed about why I was there. That I thought I had travelled here to take part in a theatrical performance where I was the only audience member, and I had met the writer / director who looked just like the doctor, and he had told me to be myself and not act.

“Interesting”.

I’ve already forgotten the sequence of events. But I can vividly recall the feeling of it all.

I think that, next….

The Doctor gave me an eye mask and headphones and I sat listening to deep breathing exercises and a countdown to sleep / hypnosis.

I heard Jack’s voice again, outside of my sensory deprivation. Equipment off, I was back in the room, eyes open. Minus the glasses and lab coat, Jack explained that this was the interlude the break in the performance.

But I was suspicious.

He asked me when I’d felt truly part of the story and when I felt taken out of it.

I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. Was he genuinely interested? Why? What was he really asking. I uhmmed and ahhhed and said that I’d struggled to remember a dream.

He seemed satisfied (or sated, perhaps).

Jack went back through the curtains.

The music restarted and stopped. And I followed through.

Another manila envelope with more garbled script fragments.

I think I then saw Beatrix again, repeating the questions from my admission and then remembering the repetition and asking me why I’d ignored her warnings and done what she’d requested I didn’t do.

Interestingly (to me) I slipped in to character, as Michael the protagonist. I explained that I was listening to him because he was the ‘authority’ and had the status. I was too embarrassed to say that I hadn’t heard or understood her instructions and didn’t know which character to believe or whether i should be playing along of questioning everything.

More music and back through the curtain to the doctor.

And more manila envelopes with fragments of recognisable scripts.

Maybe more mask and headphones, or maybe that was later.

There was a story of a dream where the protagonist has their back to a red curtain, staring into an auditorium of manikins, open mouthed, blinded by the light of a spotlight obscuring visions, and they can’t turn around to avoid that spotlight when… a hand grabs their shoulder.

And the back to the room and some kind of reality… to the Doctor, maybe.

And back through again with more script in an envelope, now recognisably part of the repeated sequences of our exchanges.

Then plunged to darkness, grounded in my stackable chair.

The two actors, Olivia and Jack, some distance away, each holding a fake kerosene lamp, playing out that suspicious interval scene where I had spoken with Jack, repeating my uhmms and ahhhs and saying that I’d struggled to remember a dream.

And maybe this happened then or maybe I have mixed it up but Jack, playing the Doctor character, recounts a speech that sounds profound but also doesn’t quite make sense about the end of the world and the futility of life and the moment when all of the people we know and all of the memories of our actions are forgotten.

That, or some other, profound moment is broken when Olivia or the actor she is playing, playing Michael, breaks character.

Walking towards me, learning down, uplit, now in my face, they are questioning me about my writing – “who is Michael, what is his motivation in this scene?”

[this is great. It’s like a Hammer Horror but one that’s directed by Charlie Kaufman]

I explain that I am Michael, it’s not a character.

“Yeh, right, of course, I get you, you inhabit the role; but what do you think this Michael, who you say you are, is thinking in this moment in the script?”

And back through the curtain maybe, I just can’t remember anything any more.

And Beatrix or Olivia or Michael, or the character who Olivia is playing, playing Michael, is asking me how to end the nightmare. What do we need to do to end this?

[I don’t know. What does she want me to say? I can only remember that the nightmare only ends in a spotlight…I’m grasping]

“Maybe we need to stop the ticking clock?” I say in the upwards intonation of someone who is desperate for someone to help them out of their torment.

“How do we do that, Michael?”

“I guess the technician controls that; could you ask them?”

[oh no, have I just said they are the technician when actually they are the stage manager or producer or something? How could I be expected to know; it’s their fault for not introducing themselves when I came in; maybe they did and I’ve just forgotten; oh, I’m sure they won’t mind this must be a very small company; will they?]

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Do you know how to stop the show; can you stop the ticking clock?”

“No… why, do you want to stop the show?”

[oh, thank god, thank you – technician / stage manager / producer – I get it now]

“I want to stop the show”.

[phew]

Jack emerges and thanks me and we all break character and he asks if I think that’s the end of the show.

It is and it isn’t.

He says that we can end the show there or carry on. “Do you want to continue?”

[Of course I do]

“Of course I do”.

I am placed with my back to a red curtain and told to do what I want and react how I want but not to turn around.

Olivia and Jack are back as Michael and the Doctor (I think, or maybe I’ve misremembered as my brain was spinning by now) arguing about how to end the show, and Michael doesn’t know, and the conversation goes into loops and ever more frustration until I (myself, the real Michael) say “I want to stop the show”.

A hand grabs my shoulder and I’m handed a manila envelope.

In it a one-page script. It’s clear I need to read it.

Yep, this really is the stuff of nightmares.

I fumble for my glasses, aware that I don’t want to break the spell of the grip on my shoulder or the character I have become.

I read the speech about the end of time, when all we love is gone and all our actions forgotten. I give it as much gravitas as I can, without truly understanding a word (and being full to overflowing with fear and adrenalin).

The spotlight shines in my face.

The technician/stage manager/producer (I am so sorry for not asking your name) gives us a whoo and an emphatic round of applause.

Olivia, Jack and I take the applause. Jack holds my hand and tries to help me in a bow. I can’t even get it together to time that properly. It’s a cringeworthingly awful moment for us both.

And then it’s over.

We slip back into our roles and exchange pleasantries.

“How was that? Do you feel like it’s over now?”

I garble some nonsense platitude when all I really want is to thank them all, over and over again.

Theatre maker, Jack Aldisert

Jack sees me back down the stairs and generously agrees to my request for a photo (to top this article).

He sees me out into the dark, cold reality.

As I step away from the door he calls me back and hands me one last manila envelope before closing the door behind me.

[Has it not ended?]

I struggle with my glasses, open the envelope and read the page of script –

‘How was that? Do you feel like it’s over now?’

As they pass through:

____ : Michael .

The _____ hands over a manila envelope and shuts the door.