Theatre is a contract between its creators and its audience that something will be delivered, in real time by one to the other, that involves skill and purpose and has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is not part of the deal that a different performer is landed on stage each night with no clue as to what they will be expected to do. Yet 15 distinguished actors including Fiona Shaw, Toby Jones and Sheila Atim have signed up to perform Echo (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen), a multimedia meditation on the lot of the international emigrant by the Iranian dramatist Nassim Soleimanpour.
This isn’t improvisation. Apart from a few minutes of introductory banter between the playwright on video link and the actor alone on the main stage of the Royal Court, everything is scripted and relayed to the performer either through an earpiece or in typescript that flashes up on one of three large screens.
