The Time Out

An interactive piece for 12 players who get to don swimming caps (with headphones inside) and become a water polo team. If this fills you with trepidation, it’s meant to. The focus shifts between Ken, the cliché-spouting coach with motivational tidbits about the game ahead, and instructions relayed via the headsets from an unseen performer. The audience are enticed into revealing personal truths, taking part in trust exercises and forming bonds with a bunch of random strangers.

Exploring this ‘loaded moment’ (the charged minutes before an act), South-East of England-based Non Zero One pushes the bond of trust between audience member and performer. There’s not just the trust that nothing humiliating will happen during the performance, but also that there will be a pay-off, a uniting theme for the disparate interactive elements.

The different sections of The Time Out work well together to create a coherent whole, in which the separate stages work up to fostering a certain relationship between members of the audience. It’s an interesting exploration of group psychology where the techniques of interactive theatre are employed to good effect.

Forest Café, until 27 Aug, 1pm, free.