It is not time now to find common ground, or to focus on the future
we seek and dream of, or to respect the dignity of all human beings. We
cannot raise our peoples /
We cannot raise the standard of living and bring happiness and glory to our people.
We, we cannot /
I believe that we cannot solve the problems of our time
I believe deeply that we cannot solve / that we cannot find/
we have different stories, and we lack common hopes; our values and our
interests do not coincide, we do not look the same and we have not come
from the same place/
The road ahead will be too long and our climb will be too steep and our
destination will be too far away. We probably will not get there in one
year or in a decade or even in a century, and in fact to be frank I have
never been more certain than I am tonight that we will not reach our
destination at all.
A work in the form of a speech for the performance maker Kate McIntosh, titled Although We Fell Short.
Made from the ruins and fragments of many other speeches the piece sees
material from a range of contemporary and historical political
campaigns, party congresses, debates, resignations and revolutionary
tracts in unexpected dialogues and collisions. Mixing more or less
unrecognisable fragments from speakers including Kruschev, Obama,
McCain, Thatcher, Blair, Pol Phot and many many others the work strains
and stretches sense, constantly cohering, dissolving and then
momentarily re-cohering.
Premiere performance 26th November at Kaaistudios, Brussels as part of the season Spoken World.
In Spoken World, the Kaaitheater and Siemens Stiftung will be
devoting theatrical research to the formal and substantive forces behind
the speech. Forces that can lead a community to war or peace, to ‘good’
or to ‘evil’. Whether it is written beforehand or improvised on the
spot, a speech is always given in a specific context, in a ‘here and
now’ – just as in the theatre. Someone gives shape to an argument while
an audience listens – just as in the theatre.
Theatre-makers from several continents will be creating a performance for Spoken World
in which they examine their relationship with the speech given and make
a space for it in their own political and cultural context.
Written and directed by Tim Etchells.
Performed by Kate McIntosh.
Lighting design: Nigel Edwards.
Produced by Forced Entertainment.
Commissioned by Kaaitheater & Siemens Stiftung.
