THE
CHARACTERS ARE ABSURD, ALMOST FROM A MONTY PYTHON
SKETCH
THE OLYMPICS OF THE EVERYDAY
OLYMPIAN TASK
A new show from Glasgow theatre company Ankur celebrates those boring, mundane achievements of everyday life. By Mark Brown
A s the eyes of the world are i xed upon the London Olympics and the superhuman exploits of Usain Bolt and his colleagues, Scotland’s leading black, Asian and minority ethnic arts company, Ankur Productions, will be celebrating The Olympics of the Everyday. For four days the company’s culturally diverse cast of Glaswegian youngsters will mingle with the users of Bellahouston Leisure Centre, on the southside of Glasgow, as they create a large- scale, tongue-in-cheek alternative Olympics, which awards the little successes people achieve every day of their lives.
‘I wanted to celebrate the boring, mundane achievements of everyday life,’ explains Ankur’s artistic director, Shabina Aslam. ‘For a lot of people, everyday life is really difi cult. We deserve a medal just to get through it; as well, of course, as celebrating sporting achievements such as running 100 metres in under 10 seconds.
brush your teeth; looking after the kids or going shopping,’ she continues. ‘It requires the same attributes that sport requires: stamina; endurance; mental agility. No one ever gives us a medal for that, so I thought I would create a satirical comedy celebrating those achievements, as if they were Olympic-type events.’
The result is a show in which an audience of 50 people will be divided into i ve groups of 10 and taken, in promenade, on different routes around the leisure centre. As the audience moves from room to room they will i nd themselves in a series of vaguely ridiculous, and hopefully humorous situations where everyday life and sport collide. ‘When the audience enters the spin room – where people use exercise bikes – the space turns into an airplane, which is powered by the pedalling,’ the director explains. ‘In the sauna area the audience will hear a prayer for the Everyday Olympian.
‘The rest of us struggle with mortgages; getting out of bed; having to ‘In each space of the leisure centre we’ve tried to work with the
102 THE LIST 9–16 Aug 2012