An Attempt to Lose Time

Before the railways, there was no such thing as ‘the’ time. Villages and towns had their own local times. Time was decided by the sun, and all people had to do was look at it.

200 years later, Miranda can’t stop thinking about time.

What time it is, how long she’s got, how long she’s been doing something, how long she should have been doing it, what time she needs to wake up, how long it will take to get there, how long she’ll have to sleep, is that long enough, and how long is left?

Does it have to be this way? It hasn’t always been this way. It isn’t this way for everyone. What if she decided to stop living like this? Would life be better?

Would it be possible to live without time?

...and what is time anyway?

Featuring musings on climate change, quantum physics, the destruction of humanity and dinosaurs, this solo show sees Miranda leave the city, take to the canals, travel to a remote Scottish island and form questionable relationships with moorhens in her quest to escape time.

Touring in 2024

Australia tour dates:

1st-4th & 8th-11th February - The Jonesway Theatre, Perth

18th - 25th February - The Warehouse Theatre, Adelaide

UK tour dates:

4th April - MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton

10th April - Colchester Arts Centre

19th April - Kegworth Village Hall with Live & Local

21st April - Irnham Hall with Live & Local

24th April - Oldham Library

25th April - The Dukes, Lancaster

"A wonderfully weird exploration of time, climate change, hubris and how humanity can do things differently"

On The Record

Accessibility

All performances on the UK tour will have:

Captioning: Thanks to our collaboration with Digital 4, all performances will be captioned

Audio description: All performances will have creatively integrated audio description (no extra tech needed!)

Audio intro: An audio described introduction to the show is available below. This introduction is for blind or visually impaired audience members, or anyone who would prefer to know a bit more about the show before they come to see it.

"Truly outstanding...Prag is clearly a gifted writer and a captivating storyteller"

Fringefeed

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO INTRODUCTION

An Attempt to Lose Time 1

An Attempt to Lose Time 2

An Attempt to Lose Time 10

An Attempt to Lose Time 1

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Creative team

Created and performed by: Miranda Prag

Produced by: Veronika Diamond

Supporting director: Anoushka Bonwick

Movement director: William Lang

Set design: Tom Mills & Miranda Prag

Lighting design: Amy Daniels

Costume design: Katie Duxbury

Composer/sound designer: Alice Gilmour

Touring & technical manager: Amy Daniels

Audio description consultant: Alice Gilmour

Graphic Design: Richhand.co.uk & Stephen Caton

Trailer: LOCARTANDFILM.COM

Photography: Joe Twigg and Paul Fuller

Outside eye support (2022 R&D): Theodora van der Beek and Sam Holley-Horseman

About the show

An Attempt to Lose Time is a solo performance exploring time and our differing relationships with it. It looks at time from varied perspectives, blending collective experiences with my own personal relationship with time. Revolving around my attempts to 'give up' time in order to escape the stresses and pressures of schedules and deadlines, it explores the idea that time is running out - both in terms of my own life but also, in environmental terms, for all of us.

The modern Westernised world is obsessed with time - or rather timekeeping - measuring and dividing it increasingly accurately. Life in cities is ‘fast-paced’ and ‘time-poor’. Corporations value efficiency and productivity, and governments espouse their economic benefits. Time is a commodity.

After five years living in the city I thought about time all the time. It became exhausting and restrictive. This project asks the question: could I live without time? Would it be possible to change my relationship with time or learn to perceive it differently? Through a series of ‘experiments’ I attempted to find out - to escape from time.

The project also explores time from varied perspectives: how different cultures perceive time; the colonial imposition of standardised global time; and the nature of time in radical quantum physics.

The show is informed by interviews with people from the communities local to my scratch performances - Camden and Bolton-le-Sands - about their own relationships with time. The narrative is shaped by my transition from living in the city to living on a canal boat in rural Lancashire and how this affected the pace of my life, and I was interested to find out how different environments influence people’s experience of time.

The result is an interconnected network of ideas, a rumination on time blending the personal and the collective, a questioning of the status quo and an invitation to see time differently.