Stan's Cafe presents: Home of the Wriggler April 25, 2009

Home of The Wriggler is a lo-fi sci-fi docu-drama:

Lo-fi because the lights and sound are all powered by the cast, giving the show a strange intensity and immediacy.

Sci-fi because the show is set at some indeterminate future time when the Rover brand, the Longbridge plant and cars in general have become the subject of myth and speculation.

Docu-drama because the show is founded on interviews, anecdotes, personal experiences and documents about living, working, growing-up, falling in love, making/buying/selling/driving/sitting in cars in Birmingham.

Home Of The Wriggler is based on a host of entangled and fractured stories told in the pulsing beams of car headlights. An exploded view of a car’s transmission system serves as a backdrop. Names of the show’s 87 strong fictional cast replace car components. Four actors, dressed down in workwear and parka coats, drive the show on. An exercise bike and twelve speed racer have been customised with dynamos and switches to run seven lights, a kettle and a home-made turntable. Stories leap back and forth through time and across the globe. A hand-cranked flywheel powers four more lights mounted on stands, chest-high as if microphones. A barrage of names and relationships become impossible to follow only to later come back into focus. Shake-to-shine torches help navigate. Scenes are emotive, detailed and boiled down, full of local colour and global import. An wind-up phone charger powers a single blue LED. An eco-legend is told. Action is simultaneously tender and distant. A few bars of Phil Collins’ eighties hit Another Day In Paradise are picked by a punch card running through a miniature musical box.

The show is written out of love and fury. The cast say it is the most demanding show they have ever had to perform.

Official Website: http://www.stanscafe.co.uk/homeofthewriggler/index.html