MANUAL
Performance
~40 Minutes
MANUAL is a performance that takes place in a public library and experienced by one person at a time. Staged covertly during public hours, viewers arrive on site with instructions to meet a performer at a particular time and location. From there they are led silently through a series of tiny actions together, following written notes and immersive audio in headphones. They walk through the space and listen together. They look at books and read to each other. Using found materials in the library, the performer stages a surprisingly immersive and intimate sensory experience. And as the piece progresses the materials they encounter come to form a manual for slowing down.
Intermingling with the daily life of the library, MANUAL proposes a performance that develops through the act of listening and reading with another person. Through a carefully guided participatory experience, the piece invites viewers to engage with the library as a site of deep sensory awareness, and to reflect on the social and technological conditions of shared attention.
How it tours
Each presentation of the work is staged with a mixture of touring artists and guest performers gathered from the local region. Following a score, and with facilitation of the artists, performers create their own interpretation of work using with materials (books, printed materials and sounds) found in the local library. The result is that each performer makes a version of the show that is unique to them, and activated through the emerging conditions that performing in a public space provides.
Credits
Co-created by Christopher Willes and Adam Kinner
Dramaturgy: Hanna Sybille Müller
Performance contributions: Adam Kinner, Hanna Sybille Müller, Christopher Willes, Alexa Mardon, Denise Kenney, Chao-Ying Rao (Betty), and Rosa Postlethwaite. Audio contributions: Michael Davidson, Colin Fisher, Thomas Gill, Terri Hron, Philippe Lauzier, Germaine Liu, Philippe Melanson, Karen Ng, and Felicity Williams. Production assistance: Camille Lacelle-Wilsey, Mulu Tesfu, Jessica Han, Seán Talbot.
Developed with the support of: Conseil des arts du Canada, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Ontario Arts Council, and Festival TransAmériques. Creation residencies: Take Me Somewhere (Glasgow), and LA SERRE – arts vivants (Montreal). Special thank you to John Latour and Michael Nardone for assisting with the premiere. Photographs by David Wong. Videography by Albédo.
Presentation History
Upcoming:
- suddenlyLISTEN, Halifax, Canada, Nov 29-Dec 1 2024
- Bangkok, Thailand, March 2025
- Norway, June 2025
- Finland 2025
- Japan, 2025/26
Past:
- Fierce Festival, England, October 15-19 2024
- Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, England, May 2-4 2024
- YPAM, Japan, December 13/14 2023
- Take Me Somewhere, Scotland, October 26-28 2023
- PuSh Festival, Canada, January 28-Feb 1 2023
- Living Things Festival, Canada, January 17-21 2023
- OFFTA, Canada, June 3-5 2022
Selected Press
“It was a profound experience, felt within the body yet ephemeral all at once.”
-Frieze Magazine, Sam Moore, November 2024
“When I reopened my eyes at the start of the performance, it already felt like something had shifted, that I’d transitioned into a different way of being…”
- A sensory experience with public space, Elspeth Wilson, Diverse Critics, 2023.
"Transcending individual experience, MANUAL is about the intimacy shared between performer and spectator in the reading encounter. The book becomes a vector of interaction, instilling a level of presence that is essential to listening to others. Willes and Kinner have designed a manual for slowing down and relearning how to spend time together after two years of social distancing."
– Learning to read, again an article by Emmanuelle Jetté for the Festival TransAmériques, 2022.
MANUAL received a Commitment Award, awarded by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, for it’s premiere at OFFTA (Montréal) in 2022.