Finding Interaction in Pub Going

New Lounge
Live Performance
Shunt
London
13 May – 30 June 2010




“The New Lounge, not unlike the old Shunt Lounge, is both a platform project for artists and the most unusual late night member’s bar in town.” (Shunt, 2010)

As a platform project, Shunt created an exciting programme of art works that includes film, live music, circus, visual arts, performance, theatre, installation and the odd pole-vaulter within the damp brickwork space. The underground corridor itself is very unusual for spectators, also Shunt depends on this dark, long, high, rough underground space of London Bridge indeed. As mentioned before, immersive performance relies on the space for taking place, due to aesthetics is one of the most important characters of immersion.

However, I would like to define The New Lounge as pub going rather than site specific performance. There is a bar there, in fact, with a quality selection of drinks, and lots of tables, chairs, and sofas in various styles, with entertainment establishments, like table tennis, which provided more options and a more relaxed environment for audiences. Everything just looked like a bar as usual, which opened art to a wider range of audiences in a social environment.

As a mixture of site-specific project and late night pub going, The New Lounge gained an exciting outcome of a cross-fertilisation between artists and audiences as following methods:

Firstly, audiences are allowed to go through the performance space. Since there was no stage frame to separate stage area and audience seats, the whole tube became a social public space shared with every person equally.

Apart from that, audiences got the authority of selection of what they watch and when they go. All of the artworks of the multiple choices New Lounge took place in diverse time and locations, opening to limited quantity of watchers as small group performances, which forced viewers to make their own schedule of attendance.

Last but not least, audiences were invited to take a part of creators. The products of the fish workshop (one piece of The New Lounge), were used in dance performance, as setting and dancer’s costume, which put participators’ fish making into two times of interaction experience.



Reference:

Shunt Theatre Company, http://www.shunt.co.uk/newlounge.htm [last accessed 25 June 2010]