Tim Etchells / Aisha Orazbayeva Heartbreaking Final

Heartbreaking Final, the fruit of a collaboration between Tim Etchells and the Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva, well known for her radical interpretations of classical music and contemporary repertoire, plunges the spectator into a sensory, immersive and powerful experience.

One of the co-founders of Forced Entertainment, Tim Etchells also leads a parallel career as a writer and visual artist drawing upon digital media, video and installation. On a stage dominated by one of his imposing neon structures, the music of a string trio combines multiple voices and a range of different sound materials, ranging from drones and fragments of melodies, to percussive sounds. This rhythmic construction, with its foundations in loops and variations, evokes a mental process in perpetual agitation. A mixture of fears, memories, love letters and segments of stories progressively comes up to the surface, either whispered, shouted out or sung onstage. Over the course of the unbridled improvisations, an ensemble of actors and musicians – of which Etchells and Orazbayeva are part of – construct and deconstruct their performance practices. Piecing together a network of free associations, Heartbreaking Final enables us to see and hear a disintegrated, feverish world, which is both alien and strangely familiar.