“But let there be the least return to the active, plastic, respiratory sources of language, let words be joined again to the physical motions that gave them birth, and let the discursive, logical aspect of speech disappear beneath its affective, physical side”
Antonin Artaud



Performance Archive

The Phlambards Dine at Riposte (2024)

Dinner with The Phlambards (2024)



Phlambard Productions, a UK-based performance collective formed at Central Saint Martins, London, subverts language, social codes, class, and cisnormativity through a Bacchanalian, frenzious, toxic dinner party scene. The same 8 lines are repeated throughout each performance:

“SHE’S BEEN GONE FOUR YEARS NOW” / “OFF A BALCONY” / “I’M SO HAPPY YOU FOUND IT” / “CRAVINGS” / “FATIGUE” / “THE LOGIC OF FAILURE” / “LOST PIANOS” / “IF YOU COULD STILL OFFER LOVE”

Through the ritual of repetition, language has become meaningless, only the affect and delivery of these phrases can allude to any sort of twisted narrative.

The words supplement the chiefly violent physicality of the performance, accompanying the throwing of wine, the smashing of crockery, the crawling across the table, being thrown to the floor. The violence that Artaud writes about, the assault on the audience, sits neatly in the collective’s orbit, as the performers enact responses of carnal discomfort and passion; referencing the carnivalesque, the spectacle, the fleshy becoming excess, the fine line between the orgasmic, suffering, and the grotesque.

We share our feast, breaking it with our hands and pouring wine, into glasses, into mouths, down eachother, and as jelly is thrown and fingernails rip into buttercream icing and ink-soaked-spaghetti, the boundaries between flesh and food seeps away and we become monstrous...