Photo: Jonathan Turner
The Speech Maker
The Speech Maker offers an opportunity for people to get on their soapboxes… without having to actually get on their soapboxes. Borrowing the words of the people that have shaped our history and fitting them seamlessly with the voices that represent our city, this durational work is a testament to ‘telling people what you think’. It is a snap-shot of a city’s aspirations, dreams, fantasies, failures and frustrations. The Speech Maker is truly participatory: Watch him deliver his rhetoric live or mediated, and, through the seamless beauty of technology, put words in his mouth. Contribute your own gripes, celebratory messages, political manifestos, as all contributions will be threaded live through The Speech Maker’s address.
Oliver is such a brilliant performer and well aware of the effect his words may be having on us. He’ll take us through the “famous speeches of history” and invite us to get into his autocue with our own contributions. He keeps going for 12 hours. We can’t escape the power of rhetoric and after a while we see the cracks appear and the fakery nudge its way through to the light. It’s an endurance and a revelation. Annie Lloyd
The Speech Maker offers an opportunity for the people of Leeds to get on their soapboxes… without having to actually get on their soapboxes.
The Speech Maker borrows the words of the people that have shaped our history and fits them seamlessly with the voices that represent our city.
This durational work is a testament to ‘telling people what you think’, it is a snap-shot of a city’s aspirations, dreams, fantasies, failures and frustrations.
The Speech Maker is truly participatory. Watch him deliver his rhetoric live or mediated…and, through the seamless beauty of technology, put words in his mouth – contribute your own gripes, celebratory messages, political manifestos – all contributions will be threaded live through The Speech Maker’s 12hrs of non-stop speech – put words in his mouth.
About the Artists
Oliver Bray is a Leeds based, experienced contemporary theatre maker and performer. He is the Artistic Director of Until Thursday Theatre Company. His work seeks always to be innovative, edgy and watchable. He has directed and performed in work that has toured nationally as well as being performed at international events and festivals. He was (before its recent closure) an associate Artist at greenroom, Manchester, and has won a number of major commissions and awards for his work. He is also a Senior Lecturer in Performance Practice at Leeds Metropolitan University where he leads the course BA (Hons) Art Event Performance. This particular work sees a departure from his usual theatre practice into a live-art context.
Mark Flisher is a Leeds based Live Artist and digital performer, whose work has regularly been located in Plymouth, and more recently Hull. His work aims to interrogate the masculine trope of the phallus in Lacanian and, more generally, psychoanalytic frames. Although he is very interested in the production of ‘live’ performance, he has also spent some time exploring how his established works are [re]presented within a digital space – these spaces have included Twitter and Chatroulette and other digital modes. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Performance at Leeds Metropolitan University and is also studying for his PhD at the University of Plymouth
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