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The show, The Candidate, examined and subverted the concept of ‘the family’. This concept was derived from the Langham Club, which for many years has functioned as a communal, intergenerational living room, with all the love and fall-outs, gossip and giggles, fond memories and baggage you’d find in any tight-knit community with a lot of history. The show involved about 25 performers, aged 21–84, five live musicians and several designers. A couple of the club’s long-standing members performed in the show too, including the bingo lady, who starred as herself. The club was open to members during show nights, so the audience were never quite sure who was a performer and who was a punter, or what was spontaneous and what was rehearsed.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
The Candidate was a site-specific, immersive theatre piece that was devised and staged by Persona Collective in 2019 at The Langham Club; a traditional working mens club on Green Lanes, near where we all live in Haringey, north London. The club has existed for over 100 years but its numbers are really declining. We became members and spent several months hanging out there, getting to know the regulars and attending bingo nights before developing the show.
The Candidate is the first and last piece of a perpetual cycle. It is a surreal exploration of the family concept, where characters act as family members to fabricate a false reality.
The story is a metaphor for a failed socio-political and financial system in which the role of the family is to prepare themselves to form part of an absurd and competitive system, with no way out. Here, the strange pathologies of human behaviour are dissected and the characters find themselves falling down a symbolic rabbit hole, slowly losing control of events and culminating in an intoxicated awakening that is a celebration of human affairs and rituals.
> the halfway house / behind the scenes
> the halfway house / behind the scenes
The Village was a multi-location immersive theatre piece devised and staged by Persona Collective inside Soho & Chinatown. The live shows took place from 30th March until 19th April 2023.
When getting the ticket, the audience had to choose which route they wanted to follow, three of the routes/narratives took place simultaneously - we sent a personal email to each audience member, giving them instructions about their route and the meeting point where their journey will start...
Photography by Edmund Fraser
