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LIVING ROOM THEA TER ENGLAND'S ACME ACTING ( "1 E-r3P P, STUART COSGROVE A... Although there is no central impetus, Britian has recently seen the emergence of a new wave performance movement every bit as inventive as the musical equivalent of the last few years. The Acme Acting Company , though by no means comic in their intention, have much in common with "the guerillas of new wave humor" that congregate at The Comic Strip above Raymond 's Revue Bar amidst the hard-core pornography of Soho. It would be unfruitful to insist that new wave performance is a conscious movement but it does seem that Alexi Sayle, Gasmask and Hopkins, 20th Century Coyote, The Outer Limits, the various exponents of Alternative Cabaret, and Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura have much in common with the Acme Acting Company: not only a commitment to new forms of performance but a concern for cultural zeitgeist and theatrical style. The low-key publicity handouts for the Acme Acting Company offer an impressive array of performances for the stay-at-home spectator: "kitchen sink drama in your kitchen ," Psycho in your bathroom, and Apocalypse Now in the comfort of your own home. Although the idea of performing live theater in the home began as something of a joke with no conscious awareness of similar ventures in the '60s, the Acme Acting Company immediately seized on the early publicity that their ideas generated and accepted bookings even before they had fully thought through the implications of domestic performance. They have deliberately tried to remain mysterious and frequently change their names in order to foreground the company's importance over its individual members. At present, and for the duration of this article, they will be referred to by their assumed names of Louis, Tim, and Jim Acme. (The company has recently been joined by their first woman member, Pippa Acme.) Blanche Dubois (Tim Acme) Initially they responded to requests for their performances by offering to do livingroom versions of well-known films and plays. They willingly accepted commissions , but soon tired of requests for home versions of Ben Hur, which forced them into the unenviable role of a spoof theater group. According to Louis Acme: If you do Ben Hurin someone's kitchen it's got to be a spoof. There's no way you can really approach it seriously. We are not into "spoof theater." Nonetheless, the Acme Acting Company's repertoire is highly eclectic, designed to suit various tastes within the nuclear family . It includes specially adapted versions of The Big Sleep, Psycho, Look Back in Anger, The Fallof the House of Usher, Eraserhead,Streetcar Named Desire, and Citizen Kane. The performance space is the entire house and its surrounding streets. As Louis Acme says: When we ring the bell that's the start. Then we use all the rooms in the house. We really live the performance . It's much more intimate than the smallest theater could ever be. The drama spreads all over the house. When a character is not involved in the action he remains in character. Obviously, household pets pose a problem. Each performance is planned well in advance ; care is taken to ensure that the environment is suited to the performance and that the rooms do not harbor problems for the company's atmospheric style. Jim Acme: We go in advance to every house and size up the rooms for their size, shape, and atmosphere. You can visibly see people beginning to worry. They begin to think our preparation is a complex con and we are not really hired actors but burglars who have come to case the joint. One of the Acme Acting Company's major regrets is the metropolitan nature of their audiences. Ideally they would prefer to reach more provincial working class 111 households, but reject the idea of "impositional " forms of performance such as street theater and agit-prop. They are currently working on very short performance pieces with the intention of taking them to housing estates and randomly knocking on doors to seek out an audience. At present the Acme Acting Company will perform during the day or night. Although their performances are rigorously...

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