ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2008, the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London summoned audiences for the Shunt Collective's Contains Violence with a peculiar request: arrive at dusk, wear gloves, and get ready for an evening of rooftop espionage. Upon arrival, audience members were ushered onto the rooftop terrace of the Lyric Hammersmith, seated under the darkening sky on the edge of the balcony, and outfitted with a set of in-ear microphones and high-power binoculars. A uniform-clad officer brusquely ordered audience members to use their individually issued surveillance equipment to follow a drama that would take place several hundred yards away, across a busy commercial street, in a newly built five-story glass-fronted office building.
