Just a little bit exceptional
“Apparently this Sammy Metcalfe can predict the future?” you wonder.
Well, at least he is trying to do so for 365 days as part of the new, crazy Imploding Fictions concept The Predictions. A one off performance where Mr. Metcalfe will perform all of the predictions he has dedicated himself to writing every day for a year of his life.
An insane idea, for sure. And no, we don’t claim or pretend that Sammy can actually predict the future. In fact, we don’t believe that anyone can actually predict the future. And that’s exactly why predictions excite us: We are all equally crap at it. And yet we all want to try.
Every day we imagine what the future will hold. In order to put these everyday hopes and dreams into some sort of perspective, we came up with this concept. And for such a concept, we needed someone truly special. Both to make sure that the predictions predicted would be just a little bit exceptional, and to know that we had someone on board who would actually commit a year of their life into making a show which can only be performed once. A mammoth task. To create the tiniest of moments filled with what we hope will inspire something which might resemble insight.
I say the tiniest of moments. In fact, the show might go on for a very long time. We have absolutely no idea how long the show will be. Because Sammy is not allowed to read his predictions again before he goes on stage, we can’t rehearse it. All we know is that it will be durational. We do after all have 365 predictions to get through. Currently, our estimation is close to 4 hours. But we could be way off.
The only one
We only know one person who would take on board such a task. Only one man who would set aside time every day for 365 days to write a piece of text for a show he has no idea how will end up. Only one man who is enough of a performance art fascist to embrace these strict rules, brave enough to throw himself into the unknown. Only one man who would risk pissing off his girlfriend every day for a year with a continuous, unending task which always comes in the way of something else.
This man is Sammy Metcalfe.
And Sammy Metcalfe is a truly special creature.
The only extraterrestrial we know
The first time we worked with Sammy Metcalfe he floated around on a door with mind boggling body control creating a perfect illusion of defying gravity for a short film we were making.
The second time we worked with Sammy we asked him to drive a penny farthing into a lake. He suggested instead he’d drive the penny farthing into a tree, fall off in flamboyant slap stick manner and then run and throw himself into the lake. We accepted. Sammy jumped in the freezing lake twice. Falling off the bike was hilarious. Afterwards, in the car on the way home, Sammy sitting next to me, freezing cold and soaking wet, I thought: Why, mate, why do you put yourself through an ordeal like that? I didn’t ask though, because I already knew the answer. We were making a film. Everything for art.
The second time we worked together we also spent a night in Stansted airport together. Sleeping in an airport lounge is horrible at the best of times, and Stansted with it’s complete lack of comfortable benches and it’s solid concrete floor is one of the worst. We tried our best to find positions to lie in which weren’t too painful. Most of us fell asleep from tiredness, despite the cold and hard floor. But not Sammy, apparently. Because when I woke up in the middle of the night, what I saw was Sammy upside down in some insane yoga position. “If I just do this for half an hour, I get all the rest I need for 24 hours. It’s really comfortable”. Indeed.
Fags and cheese strings
My theory is that Sammy isn’t actually human. There’s just something which isn’t quite right. How he manages to survive on only fags and cheese strings. How his physique never changes, whatever he eats or how old he gets. How the laws of physics just don’t seem to affect him.
How he sees the world: With the keen interest of an outsider and the ability to draw comparisons where no one else would.
So as you can see, there could be no other predictor (is that a word?). His vantage point – from whatever planet it derives, his courage and his relentlessness made him the perfect subject for our task.
If you want to see the result, if you want a chance to peer into Sammy’s twisted and clear thinking mind, if you want to know exactly what the future is like on the 13th april 2013 – there’s only one thing to do.
Welcome to the show.
- Øystein
The Predictions by Imploding Fictions
When: April 13th 2013 at 18.00 (GMT+1)
Where: Cafeteatret / Nordic Black Theatre, Hollendergata 8, Oslo, Norway
Tickets: Billettportalen or at the door
Written and performed by Sammy Metcalfe
Directors and dramaturges: Philip Thorne & Øystein U. Brager
Concept: Imploding Fictions
Produced in collaboration with Nordic Black Theater with support from FFUK
To watch the show online click on this link and choose The Predictions:
http://www.youtube.com/improfilm
Read about Sammy’s company Sleepwalk Collective here.
Photo: Sammy Metcalfe and iara Solana, Sleepwalk Collective
