A collaboration between Kevin Spacey (The Old Vic) and Punchdrunk Productions (one of the UK's most innovative performance companies), resulted in Tunnel 228. Held over the course of 15 days, tickets to the free project were like gold dust, but thanks to my friend Charlotte, I was lucky enough to go. It was my first experience of theatre and art combined. Set up under a derelict tunnel at Waterloo....a surreal and unsettling feeling came over me as I placed the obligatory face mask over my mouth and entered the damp, smokey darkness. Containing the work of about 20 artists, I remember it as a series of snapshots:
Dark bodies pinned to the wall, floating in a pool of water, standing in corners. An unhappy metropolis. 'Workers' clad in grey performing random and inexplicable actions, scaling walls and the ceiling, running like hamsters in a wooden wheel, stopping and starting, falling to the ground, having jittery fits. Sinister music. A stripper dancing for a fat guy, creeping up to the slit in the door and staring straight into my eyes. Melting plates, orbs full of whirling water and air. Silver cherubs. A room of paper trees and moths. A ceiling full of lightbulbs. Jesus strapped to an electric chair. A man playing chess drags passers by into his office. Mini-scale convenience stores light up corners of darkened rooms. A tall wooden box, a televised couple kissing underwater hidden inside.
Escaping out into a graffiti'd neighbouring tunnel, I felt as if it had all been some kind of warped dream. It should be back in the Autumn, spots will be snapped up
here.
