Response: Folk in a Box, One on One Festival at BAC

Perhaps more than any other piece at the festival, Folk in a Box is a performance in the traditional sense. It involves watching a performance, albeit one that takes place in private. In a festival when one is braced for all manner of present participles, that makes it quite an interesting proposition.

In a corner of the courtyard is a box, probably better described as a crate. It has the look of a travelling sideshow: the words Folk in a Box are painted in a stamp-like font, the sort that labels American military crates. On its front is a little white door, peeling slightly, presumably with travel. Stepping through, craned over like an oversized Alice, the space reveals itself to be dark bar the orange flicker of a cheap, sort of sci-fi lightbulb, which casts a glowing streak across a performer’s face and instrument (a guitar – it’s not that sort of show). Pleasantries exchanged, he (or she) plays a folk song, selected seemingly from a small library of tunes in mind.

It’s a gentle, soothing experience – a dainty, jovial song played in darkness – but, at the same time, it’s little more than that. If one was seeking something noteworthy to draw out, Folk in a Box manages (only half-wittingly) the oddity of functioning as audience in a one on one encounter. In this situation, face to face with a performer, audience response becomes a performance in itself. Admittedly, the same is true in larger crowds: consider the exaggerated laughter that testifies to getting a joke and finding ‘this sort of thing’ funny. However, one on one the motivation changes. It becomes about not causing offence to the performer.

Personally, I found Folk in the Box uninspiring. In the near-darkness, as the performer concentrates on the guitar, there’s a relief from the pressure of having to perform appreciation. Come the end, the silence demanded filling and so I let slip a couple of claps, but that felt absurd. Instead I proffered a ‘thank you’, only the sort that one is nudged into as a child, perhaps on leaving a friend’s house or on receiving a bland birthday present. A 'what-do-you-say?' thank you.

That leads into this curious feeling of being gifted something in this configuration. It’s remarkable how quickly we extrapolate the private to the personal. And even more interesting that, on account of that leap, we feel obligations based on everyday etiquette. The result is insincere gratitude born of a platitude. I left, smiling at the assistant outside the box, still maintaining the deference, forcing a nod and a smile, faking it until out of sight.