Four lighting stands each holding multiple stage lights are arranged facing each other, framing a performance space in the round, in which a programmed lighting score is played out. A round spot elongates into an ellipse and dims. A distorted rectangle of light is thrown across the floor. Coloured gels slide in front of lenses to throw glowing painterly shapes on the rough concrete in shifting shades from mottled pinks and oranges to midnight blue. At the end, all the lights slam off in unison. It’s a dramatic finale but there is no applause, because this performance has no human protagonists. The workers in the title refer to the name given to backstage and house lights.
Janice Kerbel has meticulously analysed the language and conventions associated with particular activities before. She’s used the voice and scripted the commentary for an imaginary baseball game and used text to create Letterpress posters for fictional fairground acts. While these projects cleverly explore what happens when a fictional subject is inserted into an established narrative structure, ‘Kill the Workers!’ adds a twist in that the responsibility for carrying the narrative is given to the supporting players – in this case the lights themselves.
Perhaps because the convention here is so strong, it seems a far trickier shift in thinking to imagine the lights as characters acting out their own story than to visualise what their effects might physically represent – the rectangle of light as an open door, the mottled effects as sunlight through trees etc. It certainly has mood and drama but left me wanting to see the script.