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Summertime (slip&sync) was a 15 minute, very intimate performance in Filmbase studio– as part of the Dublin Fringe Fest. The chosen location of the performance offered a live view of the outside world: the strange and curious eyes who were passing by trying to figure out why people were sitting in silence with huge headphones. The audience was welcomed to a sitting room. Some people were already there, for example, stage managers, and actors. Yet, the audience couldn’t know that they were actors because they were all dressed casually and silent as everyone else. When everyone was ready and their headphones were all set, the character’s interpersonal worlds, frustrations, and thoughts of two people were revealed: Stash, who is an artist but currently works in a pub, and her boyfriend Steve. Two different perspectives of shared events, two beautifully distinctive emotions occasionally combined in a keyword. One struggling couple.

The use of microphones and headphones gave this intense experience in which the audience could even listen to the exhausted breath of the characters, the change in intonation and the whispering parts of the poignant monologues of two people fighting to make a relationship work. While having one’s own existential crisis, fears, and doubts to be an artist in modern days.  Besides, the real approximation between actor-spectator was exuberant, the characters told their stories while looking into the spectators’ eyes as if they were all part of the stories. They could see the most vivid emotions with their facial expressions, and eye contact.

The accessibility and time of the performance gave everyone who saw Summertime a break from work, college, and other responsibilities and gave the audience this intriguing, intimate 15minutes experience. The performance of Summertime definitely moved the audience who was emerged in this beautiful fiction world, and who was left with the joys of storytelling in the middle of a busy day in town.