But I Know This City!

On September 21st 2015 sixty readers (and Jonathan Coe thanks to a pre-recording) were scattered across twenty five Nottingham venues, from ten in the morning until ten at night, to read B.S. Johnson’s ‘The Unfortunates’. It was a phenomenal success. Over the day around 750 readings of this classic Nottingham based experimental text were given, many of these being one to one but also many to groups of up to a dozen people.

This was a very different project to any that we have ever done before, and in many ways was the most logistically complex; but it was also one of the most powerful. The response from the audience – many of whom spent hours with us on this journey around a novel that can be read in any order and the unnamed city it is largely set in – was incredible with many people being very moved by the text and the emotional amplification that this site specific reading gave to it.

The Spectator wrote a really interesting article on the project which you can read here. (And the Left Lion were equally impressed.)

For more information on how the project worked on the day, and the publicity that we used to guide people around the city, click here.