American performer Annie Griffin chose to mix her media with her latest project. It is For My Mouth Forever was a hybrid of theatre and film; a silent-movie given a live soundtrack. Annie introduced the piece by answering audience ‘questions’ about it, and was then joined on stage by a pianist and Foley (sound effects) artist. Equipped with a switchable, two-pitch microphone (for male/female voices), she turned her back on us, the lights dimmed, and the film began to roll. Thus a live audience in the Purcell Room watched a film, aurally performed by live artists, which opened with a shot of a performer standing in the Purcell Room
After this, unfortunately, the piece avoided any further involvement with self-reflexivity and the boundaries between media. Instead followed a disappointing and turbid tale of a singer who capriciously marries a security guard, moves him into a hotel room, becomes impregnated through her belly button and gives birth to a litter of guinea pigs. As is sometimes dismayingly true of experimental pieces, the central device was splendidly ingenious, the execution superlative, but the content frightful. Dissatisfying then, but definitely has potential.