Quizoola!

Q: So what’s Quizoola?

A: It’s Forced Entertainment’s durational question and answer show (the clue’s in the “quiz” part of the name). Sometimes the company perform it for a full 24 hours, but at Forest Fringe they just do six hours with three alternating performers: Richard Lowdon, Terry O’Connor and Cathy Naden.

Q: How does it work? 

A: One performer asks questions, the other one answers. After a while, they swap. That’s it. Oh, and they’re all wearing clown makeup.

Q: What’s so interesting about that? 

A: The interesting—and extraordinary—thing about the show is its varying texture. The format of questions and answers is deceptively simple, opening out a huge range of scenarios. The tone shifts from quiz show to interrogation to conversation to philosophical discussion. At several points, it breaks down into hilarious word games or extended jokes, while another line of questioning spins a whole narrative around the two figures on stage. And because we as an audience are free to come and go, our own fragmented experiences of those six hours also alters the nature of this slippery, multi-faceted event.

Q: But isn’t it all a bit…meaningless?

A: In a way, yes. At times it’s meaningless, but at others it’s surprisingly meaningful. Mostly it’s a little bit of both, though it can be hard to tell. The banal becomes the profound and the real collapses into the fictional.

Q: Do you want to stop?

A: Yes.