ZU-UK presents: Project Perfect Stranger and PlagueRound
Created by ZU-UK 10 – 20 February 2021, online “Well developed and flawlessly executed...actually challenges you to be human again and try to see someone else for who they truly are.” «««« Londonist (on Binaural Dinner Date) @iamzuuk | #ZUPerfectStranger | #ZUPlagueRound | zu-uk.com |
In the midst of the current global pandemic, experimental Brazilian-UK theatre and digital arts company ZU-UK seek to remotely connect audiences to one another using everyday modern technology and play.
We are now entering the post-normal. We must ask ourselves: What can we learn from what we experienced collectively in 2020? What tools can help us to rediscover a sense of ourselves in the post-normal?
Project Perfect Stranger is a series of playful provocations and collaborative tasks with an anonymous partner over five days from a set of instructions sent via WhatsApp each morning. You and your partner will then select a 15-20min each day to connect. The project is an investment into a connection to another human being who knows nothing about you, and who has no judgements, no prior knowledge, no historical or emotional baggage with you, and vice-versa. Your collaborative relationship will be whatever you both decide it should be. You will be required to commit to the daily tasks with your partner over the five days. Your identity will only be revealed to your partner if/when you and your partner meet each other for the first time on the 20th February.
The PlagueRound Game Show is the culmination of the five days of play between the Project Perfect Stranger participants and can be experienced either as a live participant on Zoom, or as a spectator via YouTube live stream. During the game show, Project Perfect Stranger participants reveal their identities to each other for the first time. A space of interactivity, participation and fresh ways of generating remote connection, the event utilizes game design to spark genuine human connection through the shared, global experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. PlagueRound is split into several thematic sections where contestants sometimes compete individually or in pairs, and others collaborate in small groups. Cracking open how collective experiences can link us, how we find a sense of ourselves in the post-normal and how we can define what the post-normal looks like. Only if you have participated in Project Perfect Stranger can you apply to be a live participant in the Game Show.
Persis Jadé Maravala, ZU-UK’s Artistic Director said: “There are paradigms and values from old normal that have no place in the world post-covid19. All the old orthodoxies and established ways of thinking are dying. We need to grow up and forget about a ‘new-normal’. The new normal implies an old normal - but the old normal was constantly mutating in such a way that it was unreliable, and the new normal will be equally illusory. Because normal was the problem in the first place.”
Formerly known as Zecora Ura and Para Active, ZU-UK is an established multi award-winning theatre & digital arts company ZU-UK is based in Newham and led by immigrant working-class artists Persis Jade Maravala and Jorge Lopes Ramos. Persis is a disabled artist, ethnically Persian, originally from Yemen but raised in East London. Jorge was born by one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas to a Polish-Romanian family. In a world where mainstream narratives normalize hate and fear, where contemporary loneliness is a new epidemic, we believe in the need for shared rituals, new narratives & experiences that empower those most vulnerable to experience and make excellent art. ZU-UK creates interactive experiences using games, performance and technology. They can happen anywhere including on your phone, in your house, on a stage, in a shopping mall or a field. Previous projects include VR experience Goodnight, Sleep Tight, the post-immersive dating experience Binaural Dinner Date, and #RioFoneHack at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. ZU-UK’s interactive audio experience Pick Me Up (& hold me tight) made all UK payphones ring simultaneously at 11am on January 1st, 2021.
Running Time: 15-20mins a day for Project Perfect Stranger
2hrs PlagueRound Game Show
Suitable for ages 18+
Company information
Directed and written by Persis Jadé Maravala
Sound design/operation by Ross Flight
Performed by Persis Jadé Maravala, Ross Flight, Hayley Hill, Janet Howe and Jorge Lopes Ramos
Listings information
Project Perfect Stranger
10 – 14 February 2021
Registration deadline: 3 Feb.
Takes place on WhatsApp.
Tickets: Free
PlagueRound Game Show
Saturday 20 February 2021
2 – 4pm GMT
Tune in on YouTube, or if you took part in Project Perfect Stranger, be a live contestant on Zoom
Tickets: Free
For more information, or to sign up please visit https://zu-uk.com/project/
Supported by credits/funded by British Council, InGAME (Dundee and Abertay), AHRC.
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