‘When “Lady in Red” Plays, Dance with the Person Next to You’

Abstract

This article considers the dramaturgies of proximity employed by the performance artist Kim Noble in his show You’re Not Alone (2016).[{note}]1 It does so by analysing the relationship Noble establishes with his audience and the potential impact of several moments of the performance. This analysis is based on four viewings of You’re Not Alone throughout 2015–2016 (Soho Theatre, London, and Contact Theatre, Manchester). Following a personal description of my own experience during a performance of You’re Not Alone, the article focuses on how Noble uses moments of abjection and precarity to explore loneliness in contemporary neoliberal society.[{note}]2 To analyse proximity in Noble's performance, the article turns to the work of Julia Kristeva, Imogen Tyler and Sara Ahmed when discussing the abject and Judith Butler and Emmanuel Levinas when considering precarity. Drawing on Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism (2011), the article concludes by arguing that Noble's work is less optimistic than marketing rhetoric surrounding the show might suggest: the utopic projects featured in You’re Not Alone are intentionally bathetic. In You’re Not Alone, Noble purposefully presents his spectators with images of failed utopias to highlight the contested space of proximity: attempting to become close to someone (both physically and emotionally) can be simultaneously a comfort and a threat. The ideology of neoliberal projects such as the ‘Big Society,’ in which individual voluntarism is encouraged, have failed as a policy and You’re Not Alone makes this explicit in performance.