Remember Me

Remember Me was an intense start to the closing night of the BE Festival 2013. Plunged into darkness, we are met with the figure of a young singer, coming offstage into what appears to be a hall of mirrors, opening up the small space of the AE Harris into a room which was barren, lonely and sad in its emptiness – and created a silence so intense it would not have been out of place in a horror film.

What the audience then experiences is the turmoil through which this singer goes, the desperation to change from the feminine ideal to the masculine, and the disappointment which they experience when it doesn’t work every time. The performance is entitled Remember Me as a eulogy to this old self, and the introduction of the new. This is a rebirth into a similar space, a similar mind, but a different persona. It explores the way that gender can be fluid, and why the choices and feelings we make and have are important to explore in order to retain the honesty in oneself and one’s happiness. The audio track which complemented the visual performance was interesting, playing off echoes of Christina Rosetti’s poem, which expresses the same form of eulogised goodbye as the performance. We are met with a deeper and deeper subversion of the words as the transformation of the performer becomes more complete.

Oh, the transformation! This was a beautiful sequence of movement and light, looking like projected special effects but harkening back to the Victorian era in its simplicity, making use of dull, flickering light to alternate between the male and the female, in an almost Frankenstein’s monster effect. It displayed the darker side of the personality, of the choices made in order to become who the character wants to be – and a reflection of who the audience could be if they made the choice.

Remember Me is most effective because it makes use of these effects – the disorienting soundtrack, the grotesque imagery and the empty room which creates a sense of loneliness, upset and discomfort for the audience to feed from until the performance hits its stride and really blows one away with its simplicity and sadness.

The BE Festival ran in Birmingham from the 2-6 July 2013. It will return next year. For further information, please visit the BE Festival website.