Audio Tourist is an instructions based audio experience that last about 7 minutes. It was written and developed following a series of interview to staff members of St Thomas' Hospital Emergency Department. I asked each person two simple questions: What do you do in your break. If you could go anywhere in your breaks where would that be. The piece invites people to imagine a place where time stands still for a moment, where they can really step outside of their environment and breathe. Commissioned by Clod Ensemble for Performing Medicine, Communicating through Covid program. The piece should be experienced sitting in a Hospital corridor not too far from an en exit. Have your phone fully charged and a good set of headphones.
Audience Role
Listener — follows the audio prompts through headphones, ideally while seated in a hospital corridor near an exit.
Ages: All ages
Content Advisories
Interaction Advisories
Mobility Advisories
6
Events
6
Years on EI
About Silvia Mercuriali
Silvia Mercuriali has been working in theatre since 1998, creating events, site-specific installation, experimental theatre shows and immersive performances. Since 2007 she has been focusing on developing the strategy of Autoteatro which she pioneered with Ant Hampton for the show Etiquette. This strategy explores a new kind of performance whereby audience members perform the piece themselves, usually for each other. Participants are given instruction via audio, visual cues or text for what to do or say. By simply following these instructions an event begins to unfold. Audience members relinquish the responsibility for their action abandoning themselves to pre-recorded instructions. The roles which identify the experience of going to the theatre are subverted. The actor doesn't know more then the audience anymore; the distinction between audience and performer is totally obliterated and the fourth wall disappears as the world of the fictional experience and the real experience coexist in the same space. Silvia has experimented with this new strategy applying it, stretching it and moulding it to different technologies and in different contexts constantly inviting audiences to question what is real and what is not. In September 2020 with Giusi Di Gesaro and Michele Panegrossi Silvia Mercuriali launched the app Mercurious NET - National Ear Theatre: a sound-based interactive theatre App turning the everyday world into a stage. Directly from your own phone wherever you are, you have access to Silvia Mercuriali unique Autoteatro shows. Whether set in a public space or from the comfort of your own home, your surroundings become the backdrop of a fantastical parallel reality transforming the everyday into a new poetic world.