This knotty and stimulating multimedia show created and performed by Lekan Lawal is so jam-packed that it is hard to know where to start. That’s partly the point that Lawal, artistic director of Eclipse theatre company, is making. The pilot of the title is the TV kind – one of those tentative beginnings designed to encapsulate the idea for a successful series but that sometimes lead nowhere. The show looks at how we package ourselves – the first impressions we make as well as the internalised beliefs that are insidiously sparked by others.
Lawal goes for an unassuming introduction and begins seated among the audience. With an an easy smile and minimal cajoling he gets six of us alongside him on an impromptu dancefloor. It loosens us up, ready to add our own memories to his patchwork of firsthand and fictional stories that blur the boundaries of personal life and pop culture.
