imitating the dog is a company that’s been running now for nearly twenty years,
although I’ve only been involved in it since 2004.
We, at the moment, specialise in multi-media narrative work
so we are very much storytellers but the work has a very modern look
it uses a lot of digital technology.
The show that’s coming to Edinburgh is called ‘Nocturnes’
and it’s in one sense a really simple premise:
there’s three people on stage but primarily two people that are the main protagonists
that seem to be reading out the text for a film that’s playing behind them
and they never seem to be able to see the film.
Superficially, it's a sort of spy thriller. A 1950s set, John le Carré-type, very British,
secret agents in Berlin, staking out a house, who don’t really know what they’re doing,
they don’t really know why they’re there.
The film runs and the two people on stage speak the lines of that film
but actually, as the piece develops, and I don’t want to give too many spoilers,
you begin to realise or ask questions as a member of the audience
as to ‘who is controlling who?’
Anything happening?
No, somebody left the building but it wasn’t them.
Are you sure they’re there?
Oh they’re there alright.
How do you know?
Because the light’s never gone off and the curtains never twitched.
So what?
Not natural.
How do you know?
Just do. They’re there, don’t worry about that.
Can’t help it, I do worry.
One of the other things that’s interesting about the film
is that the film is spoken in a number of languages
so there's German, there’s Polish, obviously English, there’s spatterings of French.
So you can subtitle the whole show within the film so that any audience
from any part of the world should be able to understand,
like they would watch a foreign film, the content of the actual show.
Ich muss Maria zu sprechen.
Es ist sehr spat.
Ja, es tut mir leid. Es hat einen Unfall gegeben.
Dies ist höchst ungewöhnlich. Ich werde setzen Sie durch.
I’m being put through.
It’s very metaphoric but it’s very much about the sense that I think
a lot of people feel at the moment: that they just don’t know what’s going on,
that we go through the motions, we vote, we do this, we do that,
but actually things don’t change or they change in ways that we’re not expecting,
and so the piece is really about that sense of disconnection.
So what do I do with the file?
Take the photo and leave the rest.
I'll deal with it.
One of the things that we use on the stage is a pitch shifter to modulate the voice
so that a female voice can sound like a man or a man’s voice can sound like a woman
to create the kind of broad landscape of characters that people the film.
Come in, come in. It’s so cold out there. Miette, our guests have arrived.
Can you shut Willie up, for God’s sake?
Sorry it’s like a madhouse here.
Should I leave my coat?
No, no, let me take it. Oh my God your hands are so cold. Miette, we need coffee, and schnapps.
The show has been designed to work across all sorts of sizes of spaces,
so it can move from large-scale spaces to small-scale spaces.
You can get the sense of distance and scale
but also one of the great qualities of the show I think is that it has a sense of intimacy,
that you’re really peering into this close, tight little world that these people are trapped into.