The Gob Squad, a German and British art collective, will be performing in Current ArtSpace + Studio on Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.
The Gob Squad specializes in what some would call "experimental theater," though Simon Will, a member of the group, explained that they prefer to go without that label, as it gives the audience a preconceived notion of what their performance will be.
“That’s the wonderful thing about being a collective," Will said. "You tend to rotate around doing everything. In a way, the specialism is the ability to kind of switch between all these things.”
Gob Squad formed almost 25 years ago when a few college students from Nottingham, England, and Giessen, Germany, met and began making art together.
“From a series of exchanges we made friends, and made work together, and now here we are 25 years later still doing it,” said Will.
The artists at Gob Squad have made about 30 unique performances since the group began. They will be performing a show called “We Are Gob Squad and So Are You” on Thursday, and “Revolution Now” on Friday and Saturday.
“In Current, we are really interested in offering people immersive experiences and moments where they can sort of co-create things with the artists,” said Amy Russell, the director of programming at Carolina Performing Arts.
Hence Current’s choice to book Gob Squad. Both of their upcoming performances will incorporate a great deal of audience participation, but a significant portion of “We are Gob Squad and So Are You” is scripted, whereas “Revolution Now” is largely improvised.
“'We are Gob Squad and So are You’ is a performance-lecture,” Will said. “It’s a lecture of a particular aspect of Gob Squad’s work that’s happened over the last 10 years, which is a thing called remote acting, where we basically invite people like you — the audience — to come into our works. What happens in ‘We are Gob Squad’ is that the lecture is given almost entirely by the audience.”
