Getting to Know You

Bluecoat, Liverpool, 3 May 2008
Colchester Arts Centre, Essex, 5 May 2008
Mulberry School, London, 19 May 2008

Getting to Know You is a show about the audience that can take place in difference contexts and for different groups.

Members of the public participate in a series of quiz type rounds, with the twist that all the questions are about themselves. The whole audience is narrowed down to find a single audience member who will form the focus of the second half of the show. Backed by a team of researchers and the expertise of the audience themselves, the performance is about trying to find solutions to problems or unfulfilled desires about family, friends and career.

Getting to Know You is about real people and real stories and about the potential to effect change in somebody’s life in the matter of just a few minutes.

When we sit in the theatre and watch a story unfold on the stage we do so in relation to our own experiences but Getting to Know You starts with the premise that the audience often have just as interesting stories to tell as the characters on stage.

“It is a cliché to say that theatre changes people’s lives but here we are trying to do just that; to make small but positive and unexpected changes in one person’s life, live on stage.”

Host: Joshua Sofaer

Performers: Rhiannon Armstrong, Alexander Parsonage, Tom Pullen

All musical arrangements by Jonathan Cooper, after the original composition ‘Getting to Know You’ from the musical The King and I by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Getting to Know You was devised by the company from a concept by Joshua Sofaer, with contributions from Stacy Makishi, Lucy Panesar, Tom Whitehead and Rehana Zaman.

Getting to Know You was developed with a Live Art UK Touring Commission.