Plug-In: Caged Time: Strip & Echo of Nothing

Silent Gutter are back after a year-long hiatus following their prolific run of shows following the end of lockdown in 2021 with a double bill, Caged Time: Strip &; Echo of Nothing, at Shakespeare North Playhouse Studio on 15 th and 16 th March.

The company has built a reputation for surreal and challenging drama which often wrong-foot audiences but leave them awakened and entertained In this double bill of tense one-act plays, a prisoner is interrogated by an indomitable force of oppression, leaving the detainee questioning reality and battling for their last shred of humanity. Caged Time is an existential boxing match, a metaphysical game of chess, a duel with language.

Writer, Oliver Back, says;

‘Strip is perhaps the more Orwellian of the two plays. It follows an interaction between a guard and a prisoner in a facility. The guard subjects the prisoner to a strange and ritualistic routine that is incomprehensible to the detainee. I won’t reveal here what it is, but it’s something that will be uncomfortable to watch and will hopefully have the audience wondering what kind of world we are in where this kind of procedure is forced upon a person. This ritual came from a mantra I found at the beginning of a chapter in Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I used this as a prompt to start a play and these two characters leapt on to the page’.

Emma Turner director of Strip says:

‘It’s a piece that looks at two contrasting individuals who may have suffered similarly in the past. It navigates their private desires and their masculinity. We explore the lives of these two men in a punchy half-hour; one who has completely lost himself and is unsure what makes him truly happy, another who knows exactly what makes him happy but knows it can result in pain and isolation’.

Echo of Nothing is the second play, and Oliver Back explained:

‘It follows an interrogation and interaction between two characters in a liminal space. It was inspired by the film Ex Machina by Alex Garland and by the philosophy and music of John Cage. Garland’s film focuses on an AI humanoid undergoing a Turing Test to determine whether the machine can exhibit intelligent behaviour and Cage’s beliefs involve incorporating chance, randomness, and silence into music. I wanted to write something in which human consciousness and ideas around perception and the nature of reality were explored in a dynamic and unsettling way’.

Harry Machray, the director of Echo of Nothing, told us:

‘I was attracted by the puzzle box nature of the script. There are many different interpretations of what is happening in the play, and it is very much in the hands of the director, and the actors especially, to try and work out between us what that is. It’s been a real challenge, and a real gift, to tear that apart and to work out what it means to us. Piecing together our narrative for the play has been thrilling, and the rehearsal room has been an open and interesting place to explore the ideas that the writing suggests’.

Both plays are two-handers and share obvious formal and structural similarities and themes. Like other Silent Gutter productions these play are intense, dialogue-driven and operate in worlds that are otherworldly and surreal. Certainly audiences can expect the unexpected and things are unlikely to be as they seem.

But we leave the last word to Oliver Back who confides:

‘ I think these plays are more experimental than previous works and represent a shift in tone and

style. I think these are potentially the most brutal plays we have put on’.

Covered by, Bob Towers