David Rosenberg has a play on at the Lyric Hammersmith. It contains violence. It's called Contains Violence. Here's the interview:

Binaural recording is a method of recording audio, which sounds uber-realistic when played back. It's like a really aggressive form of surround sound. In the right (or the wrong) hands it can be used as an endless source of amusement or terror. For one thing, it means that you can clamp a pair of headphones to a six year-old's head and watch his little face as the sonically accurate sounds of himself getting torn apart by a bloodthirsty animal scar him for life. That’s what a friend of David Rosenberg’s father did to him when he was a kid. They didn’t have Xbox then because they didn’t fucking need it. Some people just know how to have fun.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to have done David any harm. As one of Shunt’s founding members any long-term psychological trauma has probably served him well in the end. In fact binaural recording is one of the key devices in his new show, Contains Violence at the Lyric. Which adds weight to my theory that the best way to educate children is to scare the living shit out of them.

I met David for tea at Sacred Café in Carnaby street. Had I known about the dog-recording thing before hand I would probably have been tempted to run up to him and shout "WOOF!" really loudly. Fortunately I didn’t and we ended up having a chat about art, voyeurism, trust and Contains Violence instead.

DP: (Referring to the downstairs of Sacred, with it’s soft lighting, squidgy sofa booths, wooden Buddhas, and a craftily placed Don’t Panic dispenser) "It’s nice in here, isn’t it?"

DR: [pointing to a cubby-hole filled with smooth pebbles, candles and a miniature Buddha statue] "That Buddha is the best thing in here – he’s got by far the best seat."

DP: "What about the art on the walls?"

David eyes an oil painting of a boat.

DR: (In a deftly diplomatic tone) "It’s the perfect thing to have on the wall while you’re drinking coffee, I think."





Contains Violence is pretty deep and that. It asks questions about urban societies and our attitude to other's privacy. It’s likely to appeal to the anthropologist in you. But if you sometimes click through entire albums of stranger's photographs on Facebook in the secret hope of seeing a picture of someone’s arse, you’re probably exactly the kind of weirdo that will find it quite appealing.

Strictly speaking, the show itself doesn’t actually take place at the Lyric. The audience takes up position on the roof and observes the show through binoculars as it takes place in an adjacent office block. Will watching the story through windows while listening through headphones from the perspective of the characters they are they are observing make the audience feel like a bunch of sex-offenders?

DR: “Voyeurism is often sexualized unnecessarily. I don’t think that needs to be the case.”

DP: “We’re doing an issue on Trust. We reckon that trust is a strong theme in Contains Violence. What would you say?”

DR: “Mmm, there’s a violation of an unspoken trust when you’re peeping into someone’s life, prying into their stories. I think that consent is one of the things it hinges on too – if you possess the ability to give consent to something then you hold power. You have control if you know someone is watching you. And consent is obviously integral to trust."

I’m now interested to find out if the show is like a cheeky modern peep show. It seems a little bit tactless to ask him if there are boobs in it, so I just write ‘Boobz?’ in the corner of my notepad and underline it a couple of times.

I ask him how Contains Violence differs from other works that he’s been involved in, harboring a faint hope that his answer might be, "It’s got boobs in."

DR: “I think it’s actually quite scripted and more coherent than other things that I’ve done. It’s probably a lot closer to the classical theatre set-up than I’ve been before. Ha, I’ve been experimenting all of this time and I think I’m coming back slowly to the classic form.”

DP: "So how is the site-specific twist going to affect the audience?"

DR: “I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad or guilty, but people might leave feeling a little bit… unclean, maybe… soiled. They might want to have a shower and re-think net curtains!”





Sounds very promising indeed. And hey, it's an eighteen plus! It's got to have boobs in it, right?

Contains Violence is on at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Previews start on 27 March. What's Binaural Sound? Duh!