London Theatre Breaks the rules

South London Theatre breaks the rules in 'Who Wants to Be?'

"The game show where the crowd has all the answers, makes up the questions and sets the rules."

On the 9th October, a London based art collective 'The People Speak' conduct a radical experiment in live entertainment. 'Who Wants to Be?' mixes democratic decision-making, interactive animation and improvisation into a dangerously spontaneous game show.

Using a computer vision voting system designed for use by hoards of rowdy people, the audience at the Albany Theatre in South London, Deptford will be asked to decide how to spend a £1000 cash pot: the entire box office takings!

But unlike other so-called 'democratic' game shows on TV, 'Who Wants to Be' takes the idea of audience participation to its most creative and potentially surreal conclusions. By suggesting ideas to the host and then voting, the audience can even change the rules of the game itself.

For example, test participants who survived an early version of the game were only a few votes away from sacking host and demanding their money back. Next they were close to ditching the voting system altogether in favour of making decisions by doing a massive dance-off to Jean Michelle Jarre with a cash prize for the winner.

The same audience generated all kinds of ideas with what to do with 1000 quid from a flotilla of canoes navigating London's river Thames, to renting a London flat for a month for the entire audience to use. Luckily, they eventually decided to commission us to do a bigger, better event - and this is it!

What happens at the Albany Theatre on the 9th will be anyone's guess, and is entirely up to whoever comes to put their 10 quid and their ideas into the pot.

Tickets and more information are available at: http://whowantstobe.co.uk

For more information, please contact Saul Albert (contact details below)

-- The People Speak | 17-25 Cremer St. London E2 8HD | http://theps.net
studio +44 (0)20 71007915 | saul: +44 (0)7941 255210 | ms@theps.net

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