Writer and Director:Persis Jadé Maravala
Within Touching Distance is a strangely wonderful experimental piece devised by ZU-UK, an established multi-award-winning theatre and digital arts company. It’s presented at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery at Greenwich University as part of their Sound & Image Festival and is itself part of a six-week season of ZU-UK works running from November to December.
You’re told it’ll be a live performance, combining touch, spatial audio and VR synchronisation. Oh, and it’ll be one-on-one. Intriguing or daunting? The publicity material may not make for a good elevator pitch, but the reality is Within Touching Distance is both moving and imaginative.
Writer and director Persis Jadé Maravala takes inspiration from the words of Margaret Atwood: ‘Touch comes before sight, before speech, it is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth’. The pandemic robbed so many of vital human contact. ‘There is,’ Maravala says, ‘something extraordinary in the act of resting one’s hands on the skin of another.’
This understanding is translated into something each participant can experience vividly. To say too much would be to give away the pleasure of being taken on a journey: you’re met by a kindly amah, fitted with a VR headset and given a few simple instructions. The mood remains gentle throughout. The performance aims to take you back on a semi-personal dream, putting you back into childhood and leading you by the hand through a whole life.
You might think that a half-hour performance on the universals of living life would be too bland or too culturally specific to speak to you. But somehow Within Touching Distance tenderly negotiates these issues through simple rituals and imaginative set-setting. You’ll emerge calm, rested and perhaps with a sense of wonder, feeling you might have glimpsed something profound.
Runs until 17 November 2023
