What kind of decisions lead to you drinking rum and eating crisps on stage with strangers?
That’s not a question that Sylvia Rimat sets out to answer, but it’s one you end up asking yourself at the conclusion of her idiosyncratic show, If You Decide To Stay.
The unusual piece – part of Norwich Art’s Centre Live Art Club festival strand – charts the myriad of choices we make to live our lives and while the concept may not be original the execution is.
We, as the audience, get to pick Rimat’s outfit using miniature torches to indicate our wishes. We get to pick – and re-pick – our seat before being told the astounding odds for the particular arrangement we collectively chose.
We are challenged to consider what our decisions might be if the apocalypse was on the horizon: would we liberate our goldfish? Would we engage in casual sex? Would we change our outfit?
In-between, Rimat’s conversations with neuroscientists, mathematicians and astrologers provide a context for the varied constellation of choices we make.
And the rum? That’s the final decision, to choose to celebrate: seeing the show, being here, being us, with some spirit shots and £20 of snacks procured by an audience member dispatched to the nearby Ten Bells. It’s one I’m happy to live with.
