Outdoors: Aberystwyth

Outdoors: Aberystwyth
**

Outdoors, a journey through the narrow moonlit streets of Aberystwyth, created by National Theatre Wales and the alternative German theatre company Rimini Protokoll, sends its tiny audience of twelve tramping the cobbles and paving stones of the town with no more than an IPod screen and a pair of earphones.

The experience -it cannot in all honesty be called a “performance”- asks its audience to follow the paths of various members of Aberystwyth’s Heartsong Choir around the town. This should allow us to engage with the choir members: their personalities, lives and stories. However, due to the fact that each audience member is sent on a solo journey with no more than the technological wizardry for company, it is an isolating, lonely experience. The audience only fleetingly interact with each other, and the choir members are seen in the flesh only at the very end of Outdoors.
T
his production could have been an opportunity to guide a visitor through the nooks and crannies of Aberystwyth and reveal those hidden stories that are ignored in the tourist information brochures. However, far from succeeding in opening our eyes to a different Aberystwyth to that seen on postcards and pamphlets, Outdoors merely repeats the tired old clichés of the prom, the pier and the pubs. In fact, the experience could have been a journey around any medium-sized seaside town in Britain.

The audience was given very little insight into the real Aberystwyth: its history, its residents and its everyday goings-on. In fact the journey was no more than an aimless walk along the same handful of streets, looking at the same buildings over and over again. The on-screen instructions of various choir members took the audience to the promenade on the town’s magnificent seafront, but made very ineffective use of this commanding location. At times I was left staring out over the dark, rough, menacing sea, for minutes on end. These pointless pit-stops in the journey were not merely to be had at the prom, but throughout the production. Outside the majestic old college I was left staring blankly at a close up screen-shot of a red sign for what felt like an eternity and lost interest outside the Tourist Information Centre as I was forced to stare at yet another blank red screen.

Outdoors failed to bring the choir members to life even though the audience were following their every move around the town. This was due not only to the barrier created by the use of the iPod which seemed artificial and unnatural, but also to the way in which they chose to present themselves and their lives in Aberystwyth. The choir members discussed their employment, education, the techniques used by the choir to learn new material and their position within the choir, but very few were willing to give a deeper insight into their lives. The audience learnt nothing of their hopes, ambitions, fears and disappointments- those things that make us who we are.

The traipse finally came to an end at the choir’s rehearsal. This could, at last, have allowed for some meaningful interaction between the audience and the choir members, but this failed to materialise as the audience was instructed to sit silently listening to the choir finishing its last few songs. This felt as if we were uninvited guests disrupting the choir’s rehearsal, rather than giving the audience an opportunity to engage with the members.

The great failure of Outdoors was its lack of depth and its willingness to sweep superficially along the surface of both Aberystwyth and the lives of the choir members. For this reason, at the end of the journey the feeling was one of deflation and disappointment.