The Exquisitum takes the thirty six scenes of the theatre text (developed online by The Thirteen during lockdown) and attempts to continue to ask, what form does this theatre need to take to express the uncontrollable process that has created them and the time in which that process took place.

 

The meaning of "exquisitum" comes from the Latin: ”found out by inquiry, investigated, engaged in a search after truth”. The Exquisitum presents a state where the search for one truth and one form becomes impossible; a multi-focal state that unravels on the stage, online, in daily progress reports, as theatre posters and at various off site locations.

 

In the process of creation, the original Thirteen were killed off and have now been replaced by a company who are a cross between police investigators, stage managers and despotic theatre directors. They exist in an office set that contains 13 autopsy type trestle tables, video monitors, fake laptops and boxes of archived evidence. This space is reconfigured every day it is presented. This is the space in which  the investigation takes place, as well as delivery meals are eaten, soundtracks are composed and daily Amazon deliveries of props and costumes are deposited.

 

Into this space The Diviners send their instructions.

 

The six Diviners work online in different cities around the globe. They forensically explore the different parts that make up the scenes and offer their own interpretations of what the original Thirteen had intended. They send their translations as posts through to the stage world for them to then be retranslated and rehearsed by the investigators. 

 

A rehearsal of the thirty six scenes develops in front of the audience. There are no beginnings and no ends, just a collapsing state of retelling, contamination and chaos. A wild and declamatory theatre language constantly forced to evolve and reshape itself . 

 

The Exquisitum presents a state of exposing its own desperate making in a landscape on the brink of collapse. 

​