ATTENTION to Open at Bush Theatre Studio
Co-created by Georgia Bruce and Jules Head, the play lets performers decide whether their characters stay together at each performance.
ATTENTION, a queer love story that is paused, rewound, restarted and reformed for a different outcome each night, co-created by Georgia Bruce & Jules Head, will come to the Bush Theatre, Studio, 19 Nov – 23 Dec.
When a queer couple start a conversation to see if their relationship is worth fighting for or if they've reached the end of the road, they bring with them years of scenes that may or may not be part of the decision – or the play. Each night, the two actors on stage have agency to break the format of a pre-written play and step out of the central playing space to bring a new scene to the table: which arguments they rewind, which memories of joy they replay, which moments they pause and pick over. At the end of the night, the two actors both have to decide whether or not they want to stay together. ATTENTION is a play about how and why we choose to pay attention, the effort needed to build a life with someone, and the decisions we make, again and again and again, to commit to love. It comes to The Bush Theatre after a sold-out run in Ireland where it was nominated for seven Dublin Fringe Festival Awards including Best Production.
ATTENTION is the first collaboration between Georgia Bruce, Jules Head, and Tilly Taylor, three theatre makers with decades of experience between them who are now coming together to produce work across Ireland and the UK. It will be Bruntwood Prize-shortlisted writer Georgia Bruce's first professionally produced play in the UK, having previously been produced at The Berliner Ensemble and Dublin Fringe Festival, and they're joined by director Jules Head (Resident Director at The Berliner Ensemble, Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic), and creative producer Tilly Taylor (producer for Dead Centre, one of Ireland's foremost contemporary theatre companies.)
Georgia Bruce said, “Our interest is in making challenging, formally ambitious work that keeps love and old-fashioned drama at its heart. We're also a largely queer team, and passionate about telling queer stories. ATTENTION feels like an encapsulation of all of that, and a statement of what's to come from all of us as artists company.”
Jules Head said, “I grew up playing sport, not watching theatre, partly because my body is bad at sitting still and my brain moves very fast. Because of that, I've always been obsessed by the liveness and speed of sport, and curious about whether we can make theatre feel that way too. ATTENTION began as an enquiry into whether we could create a new type of theatre, one that bursts open the rigidity of scripted work and gives actors agency. The result is a show in which no-one, not even the team running it, knows what will happen each night. It feels like a bit of magic.”
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