In some sense, Entitled was a performance that never happened. It was like watching the technical rehearsal for a show that didn’t exist. It took the form of a get-in and a get-out: the usually hidden choreography of transforming a theatre from an empty space into a stage for a show – and back again.
Greg Akehurst, Chris Whitwood and Lisa Mattocks were theatre technicians. Usually they were invisible. Usually that was fine.
John Kilroy gave up dancing when he was 29. Then he concentrated on playing guitar. Joanne Fong had been dancing since she was a child. She and John met at the Rambert School when they were teenagers. Since the late 1980’s, Fiona Wright danced mostly alone, but more and more she wanted to work with others…. Sonia Hughes is an artist and writer – she’s worked with Quarantine on Grace, Susan & Darren, Old People, children & animals and Make-believe. For Entitled, Sonia Hughes was also a dancer.
Entitled was about the people who were in it. Each of them had their own story to tell.
Three theatre technicians took centre stage and led us into their world of making a show. We watched them do and talk about their job. As microphones were checked and the starclothraised, the performers stepped outside their rehearsal and told us what was really going on…
Entitled was fragile and funny and intimately moving. Like all of Quarantine’s work, it changed every night – real life doesn’t stop when the performance starts. We haven’t made anything that’s elicited such polarised reactions from critics and audiences. People had arguments. The reviewer for Total Theatre magazine said it was “like marmite”. She hated it. The former director of Spring Festival in Utrecht describes it as one of his favourite shows of all time.
This was Quarantine’s second collaboration with philosopher Dr Michael Brady. Entitled explored hope, privilege and disappointment – and the things we do to try to make our life complete. It ends before it even gets started.
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