Fever Dream Theatre Presents
Basecamp
The Gardens C South
The Tents / 1st-27th (ex14th)
2 Tents, 2 Stories, 1 Show.
Fever Dream Theatre returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a new site specific production about a legendary rivalry, one mountain and two climbers seeking to be the best. The audiences are divided between two tents experiencing only one climber’s story of their long-standing rivalry. We join them at basecamp as they prepare for the challenges of the ascent.
how would define the political content of your work?
A huge motivation for writing the show is the current world of fake news and divisive politics that we live in. We split our audience into two groups and we only allow them to experience one half of the story. The show delves into questions of identity and conflict, how two individuals or groups can draw such different narratives from the same series of events. Our audiences hear only one side, one clumbers story and are left to decide whether they accept it, or try and hear the other side of the story.
This show, for us, is all about truth and lies and the subjective nature of the narratives that we engage with in the world of viral new stories and social media. How falsehoods and polarising stories can be easily spread and told.
are there ways in which your work can engage the audience beyond the immediate emotional rush of the content, and move forward towards further action?
We made a really active choice to divide our audience into these two groups, each only sitting in one tent listening to only one climber. At the end of the show they are thus left with a choice, accept the story that they were told or try and engage with the other tent and try and find out their story. All our work at the Festival this year has this shared question of how you interact and engage with unreliable narrators, which seems so prescient in way that we currently receive and process news in our current age.
It’s a challenge working out how to move people towards further action, leaving them with the motivation and the information left to move forward and challenge or questioning their beliefs.
How do you balance the political and theatrical elements of your work?
I think it’s really important to never lose site of the narrative and the story, however political your work it is still a theatrical work you are showing. I struggle to engage with political work that preaches to you rather than working with you to make you think and question.
With Basecamp we hope we have these nicely balanced, the setting in separate tents I hope will create a fun inclusive atmosphere. We’re purposefully only letting people see one side of the story, one half of this rivalry in the hope that it highlights how polarised and divisive the narratives we are offered can be and to see how easily unreliable or subjective stories can be taken as truth.
I think these questions are more important than in the politically divisive country that we find ourselves in right now.
Fever Dream Theatre’s new production examines how two individuals can draw such drastically different narratives from the same course of events. At the heart of your experience is the questions and doubts arising from the unheard narrative in the other tent. The show will explore truth, the subjectivity of experience and how such radically conflicting stories can come from the same course of events.
Taking from Fever Dream Theatre passion for creating work unfettered by stage, sets or lighting, creating unique experiences set in cars, rooftops and tents, Basecamp plays with how audiences experience theatre with the express purpose of rural touring, it is a show designed to go anywhere at any time.
Writer Jonathon Carr stated “in many ways the show is an analogy for conflict, and the way in which divisive viewpoints not only stem from a shared course of events but become entrenched. In a political age of fake news and the polarisation of politics, these questions seem more relevant than ever.”
Basecamp is new production from Award-winning Fever Dream Theatre, who return after their 2016 sell-out hit Wrecked, and is part of their new season of work on the subjectivity of experience. This show forms part of a trilogy of works at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018 including Impact and the returning hit show Wrecked.
Title: Basecamp
Performance Dates: Wednesday 1st – Monday 27th August (not 14th), 13:45, 15:00, 16:45
Running time: 1 Hour
Location: C venues – C south (Venue 58) Garden
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