Window A World – Dublin Theatre Festival – Review
by Frank L.

Choy-Ping Clarke-Ng 吳彩萍 – WINDOW A WORLD
Venue: Dublin Theatre Festival Box Office
Preview(s): 5 Oct
Date(s): 5-8 Oct 8pm, 8.30pm & 9.pm

Please note: A smartphone with data internet access and headphones (over-ear recommended) are necessary for attending this piece.

This performance takes place outside the Project Arts Centre where in a large window, on the first floor on the opposite side of the street, a video is screened. Each member of the audience through their mobile phone and earphones is connected to a soundtrack. So as you look at the images in the large window and listen to the soundtrack you are, in effect, an eavesdropping “Peeping Tom”. There are several different sequences which at times include both the use of Cantonese and English and locations which include Hong Kong and San Francisco so the journey taken is global in scope.

There is also an element of fantasy, particularly in the last sequence where Hong Kong has a marine element with a variety of fish swimming through the streets – a sort of vast goldfish bowl, a common means by which many humans peep habitually on the everyday existence of a captured fish.

Towards the end of the performance, the soundtrack directs you to cross the street and when you look up you see a quite surprising sight! It is an uplifting image to end an innovative and well-executed thirty-minute happening.