Running order

Hello, hello. So this is the current running order I imagine for TDTNL: it's not completely finalised, but its getting there. I don't really want to go over 70mins- after all, it's an intense show. Currently I think we're pretty close to that top limit. Putting something new in means taking something else out, which I don't really want to do.

0. (As audience are entering:) "Electric Voice Phenomenon" (video)
1. "George Aligayah" by Jon Osbourne (performed by James Fisher)
2. "Ghost Town" by The Specials (played by the 10th Street Band, with video montage)
3. "Sermon Intro" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)
4. "The Impossible Deathbed Lament Of Scrooge McDuck" by Tim Clare (performed by Tim Clare)
5. "Snow White finally succumbs" by Moxy (video)
6. "Andy Lippincott" by Jeff price (performed by Viv Wiggins)
7. [Song] by Ben Holland
8. "Rutger Haur" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Simon Hymes)
9. "Lon Cheney" by Claire Morgan (video)
10. "Marilyn poems"x3 by Angela Readman (performed by Angela White, Amanda Fearnehough & Shirley Lewis)
11. [song] by the 10th Street Band
12. "Grim Reaper" by Mike Edwards (performed by Mike Edwards)
13. "The 23786th Day" by Emma Hammond (video)
14. "Manson Family poems" by Jo Colley (performed by Angela White, Amanda Fearnehough & Shirley Lewis)
15. "Election" by Simon Hymes and Robbie Hurst (video)
16. "Autopsy" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Robbie Hurst, Viv Wiggins, Steve Urwin & Claire Morgan)
17. "Dog-eared death" by Moxy (performed by Moxy)
18. "Death Never Fucking Stops" by Ross Sutherland & Mike Edwards (performed by entire cast)
19. "Sermon close" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)

Jesus, that's one hefty mother-hubbard. My apologies to all those who submitted material that didn't make the cut. More often than not, those decisions were based on which work I could find audio-visual collaborators for. Some great stuff was rejected on the ground that it too far from the original conceit to justify inclusion.

Let me talk though the show thematically, or at least the way I see it: the first half of the show deals explicitly with the deaths of famous fictional characters. At "Rutger Hauer", things shift into the mediation of dying actors. Then, with the arrival of the Grim Reaper himself at no.12, we find ourselves on the other side of the looking glass. Fictional death can no longer be distinguished from reality, as we travel through the Manson poems, towards the surreal dogma of Moxy's 'Dog-eared Death" piece. Now that the logic og the show has disintegrated, the entire cast (along with the audience) sing a song. Namely, "Death Never Fucking Stops", which I'll post up here in a minute. It's written to the tune of the old hymn "To Be a Pilgrim", accompanied by the 10th Street Band. Then I close the show with a quote from The Incredible Shrinking Man. Then we get drunk, go to bed, and the next day is the first day of the rest of our lives.

So, not so much a narrative arc as a slow descent into madness. But I think it works.