Event

Wrecking Ball by Action Hero

A male photographer is taking a photograph of a female celebrity. She wants to be reinvented. She wants to be For Real.

Wrecking Ball is about consent, power, authorship and putting words in other peoples mouths. Its about the seductive power of make-believe. Thats not a real pineapple shes holding, thats not his real cooler full of beers, those arent her real thighs, those arent his real feelings. But does the real really matter?

In an age where the consumption of artifice is its own industry, we are being asked to dream, and we are being asked to buy the sunglasses the woman is wearing in the dream. The woman that looks like every woman in every picture youve ever seen: like the woman lying on the beach, like the woman swinging on the wrecking ball , like the woman painted on the side of a bomb.

In this funny, surreal and unsettling new play for 2 performers and an audience, maverick company (The Guardian) Action Hero ask whos really in control and how subtle abuses of power shape our relationships with art, with language and with each other.

Commissioned by the Spring Festivals Commission 2015: Sprint, Watch Out, Mayfest, Pulse and Latitude Festival. Seeded by greenhouse, A Farnham Maltings initiative, and developed with the support of the National Theatre Studio, The Point, Eastleigh and The West End Centre. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Written and performed by Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse
Dramaturgy by Deborah Pearson
Lighting design by Jo Palmer
Produced by Mel Scaffold