The Drill at HOME
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
Breach are one of the country’s brightest young theatre makers and we’re thrilled to see them back at HOME Manchester with their new performance, The Drill.
Breach are multimedia theatre-makers, mashing up documentary film with devised theatre in the company’s signature fragmented style. In the past they have explored re-enactments – the 1985 class between riot police and New Age travellers in The Beanfield and the 1960’s experiment to teach dolphins to speak English in Tank. Now, in this dynamic new performance, the company investigates rehearsing for the future and our preparation for different emergency situations.
We’ve all been on the mandatory training course in our workplaces or seen large-scale ‘scenarios’ with actors, fake wounds and explosives on the news. Breach ask us to interrogate the futures that we are being encouraged to prepare for and question the impact of these procedures. How do these ‘drills’ influence our real lives, and does playing out these attacks boost rather than reduce their effectiveness?
As part of the devising process for The Drill, the company enrolled on training courses with private security companies and first aid training providers so that they were able to explore notions around emergency preparedness, security and terrorism, and our associated political anxieties. The Drill exposes the way that 21st-century anxieties, surrounding security and terrorism, have become ingrained in our daily lives and asks if it is possible to imagine and practice something entirely different.
In Breach’s inimitable style, The Drill stitches together strands of live performance, physical sequences and video documentary. Don’t leave it too late to get your tickets to this invigorating and timely performance.
