Ultrapure questionnaire

Young people chew up America and spit it out.

Performed at The Royal Court in 1996 as a part of Barclays New Stages, Ultrapure is a collaboration between Blast Theory, the Royal Court Young Peoples Theatre, Youth Cable TV and the North Kensington Video and Drama Project. The young people from these groups ask : what is it about America and the Americans that we are so in love with? Is it a yearning for their enthusiasm and ambition, or are we merely hypnotised by a vacuous image machine?

The finished work – developed during workshops over three months – was more like a club or an exhibition than a piece of theatre. It combined performance, video, music and interactivity. You could drop into this promenade environment for 2 minutes or 2 hours over the course of the evening, and move about in an atmosphere charged with hip hop and grunge, Tarantino and Roseanne. You could browse all the American source material or drink Ultrapure branded water whilst being filmed live and projected up onto a billboard.

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