Reviewed by:

• Show Me a Good Time by Sean Patten et al.
• Daniel Larlham

“Everybody needs a good time. That’s what all the songs tell us. Nobody wants to die alone.” With these words, staring directly into the anonymous, unblinking gaze of a webcam, actor Simon Will set the tone for the premiere of Gob Squad’s marathon durational performance, Show Me a Good Time. Over the course of the next twelve hours, from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am, Central European time, on June 20, 2020, the eve of the summer solstice, the performance would usher its viewers from light into darkness and into the light again, outlasting the year’s shortest night and inviting us to contemplate our mortality, our vulnerability, and our need for vitalizing communion.

Gob Squad had given themselves an essentially heroic task: to puncture the malaise of a world put on pause by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to deliver (remotely) a dose of playfulness, meaning, and connection to a viewership yearning for these basic needs. Toward this end, the Berlin-based performance group had devised an hour-long structure that would loop twelve times. At the beginning of each hour, one of the performers would take on the role of host, greeting livestream viewers from the empty stage of the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Theatre and orienting them to the piece’s main themes: time, uncertainty, impermanence. Soon afterward, three other members of Gob Squad, equipped with cameras, headset microphones, and plastic face-shields, would enter the livestream, appearing either in Berlin or one of two locations in England. These three would entertain viewers from their domestic spaces or venture forth into emptied-out cityscapes, as explorers questing for “something larger than our stupid lives” (to quote performer Berit Stumpf).

Early in the evening, Stumpf found a pair of abandoned, rain-sodden sneakers on a street corner, tried them on, and exclaimed, “I am walking in someone else’s shoes!” In a park, under some unremarkable bushes, Sean Patten found a shabby stone plaque marking the center of Berlin and mounted it like a podium. Bastian Trost gravitated toward the massive Weltzeituhr (“world clock”) in Alexanderplatz, where he invited viewers watching from Berlin to rendezvous with him and share a glass of kombucha.

Sharon Smith, streaming from the south of England, cooked dinner for her daughter, attempted to hex a homemade doll effigy of Boris Johnson, then ventured out into a moonless night for a surreal encounter with an indifferent horse. Sarah Thom cruised the streets of Sheffield in her car while her ailing mother slept, under sedatives. Feeling low, Thom sought some relief from depression in the golden light and glorious aroma of a fish-and-chips shop. Back in Berlin, Will, released from his role as host, journeyed on foot to Tegel Airport, arriving at 4:12 am. The sliding doors parted and, eyes twinkling with delight, he found himself entirely alone in a gleaming, silent, otherwise uninhabited terminal.

As they roamed and philosophized, the Gob Squad adventurers did their best to tease ad libs into themes, create compositions out of contingency, and extract interest from the everyday—albeit the eerie everyday—of the pandemic. At times, these attempts at meaning-making unfolded with the effortlessness of happy accident; at others, they came across as contrived, awkward, and overly conceptual. At forty-five minutes past each hour, the structure of the performance demanded that the host performer on the HAU stage generate an [End Page 108] existential crisis, lamenting their situation as an actor without an audience, in a theatre without a public, in a culture without a clear way forward. This crisis required an intervention from the other three Gob Quad performers: one would seek out a location or backdrop; another would track down an audience member (often a surprised pedestrian); the third would supply a title. The HAU host would then improvise a short performance—often an absurd song or an antic...

审核人：

• 肖恩·帕滕（Sean Patten）等人的《给我一个美好的时光》。
• 丹尼尔·拉勒姆（Daniel Larlham）

“每个人都需要一个美好的时光。那就是所有歌曲告诉我们的。没有人愿意一个人死。” 凭借这些话，演员西蒙·威尔（Simon Will）直接盯着摄像头的匿名，不眨眼的目光，为戈布斯·高德（Gob Squad）的马拉松长效演出《给我一个美好的时光》（Show Me a Good Time）的首映定下了基调。在至夏至前夕的中欧时间2020年6月20日的接下来的12个小时内，从中午6:00到凌晨6:00，表演将使观众从光明变为黑暗，并进入再次亮起，持续了一年中最短的夜晚，并邀请我们考虑我们的死亡率，我们的脆弱性以及我们振兴交流的需要。

Gob Squad承担了一项本质上的英雄任务：刺破因COVID-19大流行而停顿的世界的萎靡不振，并（远距离）带来一定的娱乐性，意义以及与渴望满足这些基本需求的收看者的联系。为此，总部位于柏林的表演团设计了一个长达一个小时的结构，该结构将循环十二次。在每个小时的开始，一名表演者将担任主持人的角色，在乌伯河畔赫伯尔剧院（HAU）剧院的空旷舞台上向直播观众致以问候，并将他们定向到作品的主要主题：时间，不确定性，无常。随后不久，配备了摄像头，头戴式麦克风和塑料面罩的Gob Squad的其他三名成员将进入直播，出现在柏林或英格兰的两个位置之一。

傍晚时分，Stumpf在街角发现了两双废弃的雨鞋，试穿一下，然后喊道：“我正穿着别人的鞋子走路！” 肖恩·帕滕（Sean Patten）在一个公园里，在一些不起眼的灌木丛下，发现了一块破旧的石匾，上面刻着柏林的中心，像登上领奖台一样挂在上面。巴斯蒂安·特罗斯特向大量被吸引Weltzeituhr（“世界时钟”）在亚历山大，在那里，他邀请观众从柏林看至会合与他分享红茶菌的玻璃。

来自英格兰南部的莎朗·史密斯（Sharon Smith）为她的女儿做饭，试图用鲍里斯·约翰逊（Boris Johnson）的自制洋娃娃雕像做六角形，然后冒险进入一个无月的夜晚，与一匹冷漠的马发生超现实的相遇。莎拉·汤姆（Sarah Thom）驾车在谢菲尔德（Sheffield）的街道上游荡，而病a的母亲在镇静剂的作用下睡着了。汤姆（Thom）情绪低落，在鱼肉薯条店的金色光芒和光彩夺目的香气中寻求缓解的压力。回到柏林后，威尔从主持人的角色中释放，步行前往特格尔机场，凌晨4:12抵达。滑动的门分开了，他的眼睛闪烁着喜悦的光芒，他发现自己完全独自一个人，在一个闪闪发光，沉默而又无人居住的终端中。

当他们漫游和思考时，Gob Squad冒险者竭尽全力挑逗主题，从偶然性中创造出构图，并从大流行的日常（尽管每天都令人毛骨悚然）中汲取了兴趣。有时，随着幸福事故的轻而易举，这些表达意义的尝试得以展开。在其他情况下，他们遇到了人为的，笨拙的和过分概念化的问题。在每小时的四十五分钟后，演出的结构要求HAU舞台上的主持人进行表演[End Page 108]生存危机，感叹他们作为没有观众的演员，在没有公众的剧院，在没有明确前进道路的文化中的处境。这场危机需要其他三位Gob Quad表演者进行干预：一个人会寻找位置或背景；另一个人会寻找位置或背景。另一个会追踪观众（通常是一个惊讶的行人）；第三个会提供标题。然后，HAU主持人会即兴表演短片-通常是荒唐的歌曲或滑稽的表演。