“Deborah Pearson’s piece uses old video footage to explore the gap between the person she was in 2005 before she left her native Canada, and the person she is now. The person she was is a ghost behind the camera, never as in focus as the laughing female friends she will soon wave goodbye to; the person she is stands before us as flesh and blood. This piece is the crack in between the two.” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Like You Were Before was developed at BAC and the Arches. It was presented as a studio show, but in Edinburgh I performed an intimate version at Alphabet Video, the legendary independent video store that has since closed, and where I worked when I first arrived in the UK. Using a video from the last day I lived in Canada in 2005, in the piece I attempted re-insert myself into the frame. This was a show that wanted to lament the fact that time keeps going, and a show about moving forwards backwards.
“As a whole this is a beautiful, accomplished, bittersweet and philosophical work on love, loss and memory.” **** The List
“An unmissable homespun glance into how we got here, even if we don’t quite know where we’re going.” ***** The Herald
Winner of a Herald Angel, Shortlisted for the Total Theatre Award for Innovation and the Arches Brick Award
Like you were before was shown at BAC in London, the Arches in Glasgow, Alphabet Video with Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, the Broadway Cinema with Hatch in Nottingham, the Ustinov in Bath, Arnolfini in Bristol, the Parabola Arts Centre in Cheltenham, the Junction in Cambridge, the London Word Festival, and Culturgest in Lisbon.
This show was revisited in November of 2015, ten years after the initial video was shot and five years after the original show was made, and double billed with an excerpted version of The Future Show at BAC as part of an evening called Time Pieces.
It was performed again at the Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas, on April 7th, 2016.
Deborah Pearson 