Arthur Hunter

Arthur Hunter - who was playing guitar at the post-show party before he collapsed - is sitting in the centre here dressed as Baron Elberfeld.

Climb every mountain

Michael what are you doing?

I thought I would build myself a mountain and then climb it!

I wonder Michael if you can take us to where you are now?

Well I’m over here – but not here – here somewhere else – and you aren’t there. And these people aren’t watching. And it’s dark and it’s cold.

Tony walks to mic and turns light to blue

How cold is it?

It’s colder than it was earlier – it must be the altitude

Tell us what you see Michael?

This is what I see. I can see you and you can see me. We can see each other. This is where I stand when I say this and this is where I am when I hear or see it. This is where we are here. This is a map of the present on the stage of the past and at the moment we’re a bit lost. The show is nearly over.

This isn’t part of the act

The Photographs

Image: Kevin Edwards

The Work in Progress

Michael Pinchbeck and Tony Pinchbeck present a work in progress of The Post Show Party Show at Preset, Dance 4 on Tuesday 5 February 2008 at 5pm. You are invited to the party. The show. The post-show party. The Post Show Party Show. Whatever it's called. You're invited.
Image: Julian Hughes

The Concept

We are backstage. We are offstage. We are standing in the wings of the story. We are inviting you to help us to remember. We are pretending to be characters in a musical. We are pretending to be ourselves. We are pretending to be each other.

Michael Pinchbeck will work with his father - Tony Pinchbeck - to recreate the post-show party at which his parents met in December 1970. His mum was a nun. His Dad was a Nazi. It was an amateur dramatic version of The Sound of Music. At the post-show party, the men sang songs they had written backstage and the women danced. Arthur Hunter, who was playing Baron Elberfeld, collapsed leading to the end of the party and the beginning of Pinchbeck’s parents' relationship. It wasn't until afterwards they learned he had died.

The Post-Show Party Show starts at the end of the show and the beginning of the post-show party. Taking place somewhere between then and now, onstage and offstage, to the real-time soundtrack of The Sound of Music, the piece explores notions of performance and the nature of the father and son relationship. Reliving the real life event and revisiting the songs the men had written backstage, The Post Show Party Show asks what is professional and what is amateur, what is present and what is absent, what is dance and what is not dance.

Image: Julian Hughes

Photoshoot

Rehearsal

Image: Julian Hughes