Absent

Tristan Sharps and dreamthinkspeak today announce the opening of their new piece Absent which will be staged at Shoreditch Town Hall from 24 August to 25 October with press performances on 1 and 2 September.

An intimate promenade installation inspired by The Duchess of Argyll’s residence at a central London hotel in the 1970’s.

A young woman enters a hotel, magnetic and compelling, yet strangely detached, as if in a dream. She books for one night and remains for a lifetime. She’s happy and optimistic, yet unfathomably sad. She is wealthy and ostentatious, but bankrupt and survives on credit. Beautiful, yet ugly, she has many lovers but loves no one. She is 18 years old – or is she 80?

The Duchess of Argyll booked into a central London hotel in 1978 and was ejected several years later, having finally run out of friends and credit. In Absent, she is surreally re-imagined entering a hotel as an optimistic 18 year-old in the 1950’s and being evicted in the present day, into a modernised and radically changed world.

Absent will create an intimate journey for audiences through the maze-like basement of Shoreditch Town Hall, mixing film and architectural installation with a haunting soundtrack. As you thread your way through the labyrinthine passageways, you become enmeshed in a constantly shifting dreamscape in which the past, present and future of both the protagonist and the hotel become inextricably linked.