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Attempts On Her Life – Martin Crimp

'Attempts on Her Life' by Martin Crimp explores the fluidity and unreliability of identity. The play deals with seventeen different re-appropriations of one woman's identity in seventeen different scenes, including: a mother, child, terrorist, freedom fighter, advertising opportunity and intellectual property. This project involves raising issues of identity in a modern society that are created in the play. What/who decides our identity? Do we have any control over it? Does our identity change and evolve or is it fixed? In each of the seventeen scenes in the play Ann can be separated as an isolated entity which also allows different styles of theatre to be explored.

The project's main aim is to incorporate elements of performance art into a theatrical setting and context. Theatre styles, such as Pinter-esque absurdism, contact improvisation and silent-movie influenced story telling will be explored alongside performance artists, such as Marina Abramović, Spartacus Chetwynd and 'Action Hero'.

This new interpretation of the play, presented in conjunction with IATL, questions the fluidity of identity in our collective consciousness. Who is Annie? Is she Anne, who travels to Paris, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, admiring the architecture and ideological complexities of space and culture? The young Annushka who sips Earl Grey tea with her parents? The ‘New Anny’, with rust-protected paintwork and a five year warranty? And crucially, who decides the answer to these questions?

Final performances were held in the CAPITAL studio, Millburn House, at 7pm on Saturday & Sunday the 13/14th June 2015.

 

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