Back to the future

There have been some surreal highlights of Hull’s time in the spotlight as UK City of Culture. Even before the programme had been unveiled, a few thousands people painted themselves blue and wandered around the city’s streets as part of Spencer Tunick’s mass nude art installation.

Where Sea of Hull led, others have followed. A giant wind turbine blade appeared one morning outside the Ferens Art Gallery, Opera North joined forces with a group of Norwegian composers for a hauntingly eerie sound installation on the Humber and now comes One Day, Maybe which might just be the most unsettling of them all.

One Day, Maybe, the latest show from site responsive theatre company dreamthinkspeak, takes place in a multi-storey office complex in Hull City Centre.

The promotional blurb says that “the journey begins after you buy your ticket” and given the company’s form for leading its audiences around tunnels, derelict buildings and old office blocks, it’s likely to be right.

By way of background, One Day, Maybe centres on the UK launch of a Korean global technology company on the 30th anniversary of the Korean Sixth Republic. The company pioneers and develops a range of new technologies for international governments and multinational commercial organisations, including gaming experiences and interior navigation apps. For each performance, the fictional, but seemingly very real, company will throw open its doors to the general public. The audience is invited to access the public areas as well as the private offices and laboratories where they are allowed to test and participate in the technologies that are being developed.

Artistic director Tristan Sharps says: “One Day Maybe is inspired by the May 1980 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju, South Korea, that paved the way for democratic rule and the birth of the Sixth Republic in 1987. It shines a light on the brutal interrogations that followed, but is set largely in the present day and looks at the modern world we all inhabit from the perspective of that landmark day, imagining those who died as spirits who return to witness the results of their sacrifice.

“We wanted to ask, what if they could step into the shoes of the young people alive today and see the same world that we see? What would they make of the world we live in? Would they see an exciting world of global economic expansion, rapid technological development and freedom of expression?”

Given we live in a world with an insatiable demand for new technology often produced by cheap labour by those who will never earn nearly enough to buy the smartphones and laptops they spend their days making, the premise is an interesting one and with tickets selling fast for the month long event it seems to have already captured the imagination of Hull and beyond.

Sharps will lead a company of more than 30 Korean performers and 50 collaborators to create a multi-layered series of audience journeys, mixing live performance with film and installation, ranging from pioneering technology to ancient ritual.

He adds: “As the audience is drawn deeper into the labyrinthine technological world they have entered, they find themselves slipping between past, present and future.”

One Day, Maybe to October 1. Tickets from hull2017.co.uk