World's End is an apt place for starting the Zero Hour Bus Tour...
Debbie Pearson, founder of artistic collective Forest Fringe is thanking me for “committing”, as we sit at a bus stop in Chelsea at 1.10am. What is it I've committed to exactly? To turning up in the middle of the night for whatever it is she has planned for me on the Zero Hour Bus Tour, an audio play by Hannah Nicklin with Steve Kilpatrick.
Her piece has me looking out of a window for half an hour while I listen to a man deliver a confused apocalyptic goodbye. He tells me about waters rising and cities descending into chaos and all the while I can hear the steadily reassuring voice of an announcer telling me what to expect when I get off the bus at the refugee centre.
Her voice and his make an effective contrast. While the man relates our carefree meeting with youthful, hurried nostalgia, he also details our relationship and why we're no longer together. His voice is urgent and desperate but his automated counterpart is frighteningly straightforward. There's a predictable 1984 air about her, but also a very British, depressingly patriotic angle on her script. It works brilliantly and at times I'm uncomfortably concerned about where this bus is headed. But the audio fails to surprise me.
Since I'm not much of a romantic the protagonist has a difficult job. Telling me how we held hands as we ran to catch a bus doesn't do much for me. But looking out the window to see an excited couple running down the street hand in had has me sitting up straight, grinning inanely. It's adorable and funny and excellently timed, but it's also unambitious.
Thankfully, it turns out that the openness of Nicklin's piece doesn't really need those scripted visuals. Her male protagonist talks about the city in such a way that each tiny portrait of human behaviour you see unfolding at night feels like it's part of the story. A couple kissing at a bus stop, three people sleeping in the doorways of Topshop, the deserted parts of the city all add to the desperation in the audio.
There are four audio pieces in the Zero Hour Bus Tours, which is part of InTransit Festival. Hannah's one I would call romantic but Kim Noble, Greg McLaren and Abigail Conway have each created pieces reflecting their own thoughts on what a ride on a city bus might turn out to be. The running theme for these is apocalypse and as a format the possibilities are vast, and the potential for things to go wrong makes it all the more intriguing.
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