A room. Boxes. A teddy bear. Laminated is a story about last attempts and giving up.
Meet Charlie. Packing away his life, he assesses its successes and (more often) its failures. Recalling the events that have lead him to this point, Charlie invents stories and memories that suit his version of events and plays them out to amuse his audience. Much of the world of Charlie’s creation is made up as we go along – discarded clothes transform into people, boxes grow into mountains and puppets tell the stories he cannot bring himself to relive.
As he moves through his version of events, he finishes the story of the boy and his bear that seek to escape the town that traps them and remove the laminate from their dreams. Through his stories he presents Katie, his ex girlfriend, who he attempts to manipulate to suit his version of events.
Battling his own memory, he reshapes his life into the fantasy scenarios he convinces himself are the truth and desperately fights to hide his own role in his failure. Charlie rapidly loses control and Katie takes over, as the boundaries of the ‘real’ are rattled until no one is sure that anyone is who they claim to be.
Laminated is an imaginative and wonderfully visual piece, using puppetry and physical theatre to bring life to the stories and memories of Charlie’s world. It asks us to consider the reality of chasing our dreams, and all the things in life that we can see, but not touch.
