Cabaret Futura
The Paradise, Kensal Green, London
21st June 2010
Invited to perform at Richard Strange’s resurrection of his 1980’s Cabaret Futura, Lijn performed Poem Game. Inviting two audacious members of the audience to join her on stage, she used her especially designed word-cards to write a poem. To do this, each person takes their turn to choose from their hand of 10 cards (20 words, as each card has one word to a side) one word and lay it down face up on a table placed in front of them. This must be done very quickly, almost without thought, to create a spontaneous collaborative poem.
The main problem is, that, no matter what you may see in your hand of cards as an interesting combination of words, you will not have the chance to see your mental arrangement through. It will be immediately interrupted by the next person’s contribution. The poem is with three people a trilog, using the barest given expressive means. Once the poem was set out on the table, Lijn asked her two invited players to join her in a vocal recitation of what they had written.
