Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken WanPutting the audience centre stage, Untitled Projects bring their exquisitely constructed re-imagining of a 19th century salon to the Citizens Theatre. In doing so, the company creates a beautiful and thought provoking night of fashion and conversation. Read more …
Your evening begins with a transformation into full period costume by a coterie of dressers and make-up artists, before you emerge into a mirrored impression of a Parisian salon. As you mingle with guests, pioneers in their fields will provoke discussion, speaking on subjects at the vanguard of 21st-century thought on science, politics, technology and the arts.
The Salon Project recreates the exclusive meetings at the heart of what was salon society’s golden age – an era of change, excess and inquiry. Relive its splendour, contrast it with the present and imagine what the future will hold.
Laing and co juxtapose past, present and future in what is essentially an extended parlour game in which cleverness is encouraged.
The artistic and intellectual fare on offer stimulates fascinating conversation.
The effect of this experience is astonishingly complex and rich.
The Salon Project is an undeniable success. It’s great fun, of course, but also – in the ease with which it achieves intellectual discourse and general civility – a powerful counterweight to the more bovine aspects of our popular culture.
It's impossible to compartmentalise Stewart Laing's three-hour evening of immersive theatre – if you can call it theatre. Easier to say it is extraordinary, intellectually provocative and tremendously good fun.
The Salon Project is a fascinating idea, rendered with meticolous detail, but, like the modern world, it’s also hot, uncomfortable, and full of people that annoy you.
Director Stewart Laing on The Salon Project
Looking the part: The theatre show with a difference
Salon Project turns back clock to 19th century Paris
Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre is transformed into a Proustian fin de siecle Paris salon
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Monday October 10, 2011, until Saturday October 22, 2011. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow from Friday March 15, 2013, until Saturday March 23, 2013. More info: www.citz.co.uk
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