This new play is inspired by Gracian's 'Oraculo manual', a seventeenth-century 'self-help-book' that advised ambitious courtiers in self-promotion, social skill and psychological cunning. Yet behind Gracian's worldly wisdom there lay a paranoid message: other people are only waiting to harm you. Unpicking the multiple layers of the original text, 'The Manual Oracle' investigates the ambiguities between self-consciousness, strategic thinking and paranoia, by following a cast of four actors through a kaleidoscope of contemporary scenarios inhabited by border-guards and bond-traders, spin-doctors and schizophrenics. Shifting between the deeply disconcerting and the absurdly funny, this new play will take you on a journey through a society obsessed with surveillance, self-representation and manipulation, a world in which you should always act as if you are being watched. Featuring specially commissioned scenes by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams| 27 May 14 to 14 Jun 14 | The Yard Theatre Outer London, Greater London Performance Details => Venue archive |
