Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes Review
Find Your Eyes begins with Benji Reid sitting with his back to the audience while the dimly lit body of a model lays on a table before him. Reid leans in with his camera, snaps just a fraction of skin, and within seconds the photo is projected on two large displays on each side of the stage. A few quiet gasps and murmurs ripple through the audience. The performer, Slate Hemedi, carefully molds his body into the next choreographed position, and Reid takes another photo in piercing black and white. The precedent is set: Reid isn’t going to describe his artistry to us, he is going to show it.
Reid works as a self-described “choreo-photolist: where theatricality, choreography and photography meet in a single or series of images.” Premiering at Aviva Studios in Manchester, the city where Reid grew up, this innovative performance combines all three forms for powerful effect.
Image Credit: © Oluwatosin Daniju
Riddled with intentional imperfections, Find Your Eyes is a raw deep-dive into Reid’s process both as an artist and as a man dealing with a lifetime of conflict, grief and joy. A standout moment of Reid’s performance, which is divided into titled acts and subsections, is the Afrofuturistic “Mum and the gods” sequence. It is a beautifully choreographed, moving portrayal of Reid’s contemplations after his mother’s stroke. Reid’s narration echoes through the space while performer Salomé Pressac wears a bright yellow dress and writhes on a cold white slab. Pressac’s movements decrease in precision until her body is reduced to a shell on a bed, reaching out to a robotic god of Reid’s creation. Reid describes his mother’s strong spirit and dedication to years of “back-breaking” work, before the stroke left her at the will of carers in plastic medical gloves with no regard for her humanity. His narrative reflects on the injustice of reducing a woman who has dedicated her life to caring for others to a piece of “meat”, whose body is no longer “her own.”
The entire performance is a contemplation of bodies – our relationship with, ownership of and connection to skin and bones. In a paradoxically empowering segment, performer Zuzanna Kijanowska receives a mid-show applause for her staggeringly strong pole routine while Reid photographs striking images of her as a “human kite.” It is a scene that, despite choreography, requires live adjustment as Reid tells Kijanowska to “find her light” and Hemedi adjusts the wind machine for the best shot. The result is a series of remarkable visuals, the products of a seamless collaboration between Reid, his performers and Ti Green’s simple yet imaginative set.
It is the creative process which is on display, and Reid embodies multiple roles during the 90 minute performance. In the portrait segment of the piece, Reid becomes a vehicle for his model’s story to be captured; he has no interest in photographing “what you look like,” but “what you have been through.” In the narrative section of the performance, for which the camera is put aside, Pressac and Hemedi enact abstract choreography of a traumatic experience in Reid’s life. In this scene, Reid blurs the line between storyteller and performer, moving the performers’ bodies as though he is both a peer and a puppeteer in this stunning, silent negotiation of how Reid handles trauma.
“The audience experience is almost one of walking through a gallery, observing individual works in an exhibition and being urged to weave the web yourself. ”
In other scenes, however, Reid instructs the models in different positions, tuts at images he is unsatisfied with and nods to the visual programmer, Ross Flight, who is uploading Reid’s work live at the edge of the stage. Here, Reid is the photographer. Despite the blend of theatricality, choreography and imagery, the photographer’s lens seems to be one he cannot shake. In format, the performance is spliced and compartmentalised into subsections, comprising a collection of visual art, performance, narration, quotes and titles projected on displays. Each moment is provocative, but narrative fluidity is sacrificed. The audience experience is almost one of walking through a gallery, observing individual works in an exhibition and being urged to weave the web yourself. Find Your Eyes is a site of many starting points, without articulating fully for itself.
While unusual for a long-form theatre piece, I do not think this stylistic choice is ineffective. In one of the opening quotes, Reid announces that perfection is ugly, and it soon becomes clear that he is interested in the raw process over the finished product. Find Your Eyes becomes an interrogation of why we enter an auditorium expecting the nuts and bolts of a performance to be hidden from our eyes, and Reid’s refusal to hide the imperfections of the artistic process—and the human experience for that matter—makes for an innovative visual spectacle.
Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes is a deeply moving display of artistic innovation, birthed out of an intimate collaboration between Reid and his small but mighty team of talented performers and the tech crew, who are as much part of the performance as Reid himself. Spearheaded by Reid’s remarkable photographic talent and radical honesty, it is a work of performance art that will leave you inspired.
You can still catch Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes at Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford, London, June 4-7th.