Lateral Events
Intellectual entertainment
Her face is intent, focused, earnest and smiling. Her face is a face in a sea of faces, all with the same expression. She makes no sound. Not a sound from 2,500 faces with their stare fixated on the stage. Their eyes are wide open. Their minds are wide open. They listen, they look, they learn and they are hugely content.
I look away from the stage into the sea of faces because this is what we’re about. This is what we are trying to achieve, a theatre with not a single seat unoccupied, an atmosphere that can burst at any moment into joyous laughter, a communal ahhh or an instantaneous, unplanned standing ovation.
This is no ordinary crowd. This is a theatre full of people who share common interest and a love for a person who is at the pinnacle of his or her chosen profession, who is a thought leader recognised around the world.
The faces were enthralled by Heston Blumenthal the man and his world-beating approach to cooking.
They were there in their tens of thousands for Sir David Attenborough… and why not? Is any man in the world loved and revered as much as Sir David? Mandela perhaps, but there aren’t many, are there?
They were totally absorbed by Prof Brian Cox, the physicist and former rock star who has the innate ability to make highly complex physics understandable. Brian could be talking about quantum theory and it is received like he is reading from Winnie the Pooh. Everyone is happy. And we get it. In the audience are aged academics, twenty something students and people who just quite like science – all completely wrapped by Brian Cox’s delivery, his personality and his impossible-to-hide yet understated higher intelligence.
This is what we, at Lateral Events, call ‘Intellectual Entertainment’.
So now we’re going to push the boundaries a bit.
We’re going to announce new shows in Australia next week which we’ll create with a person who is absolutely at the top of his game. This person will come from the other side of the planet to share his knowledge and enthusiasm and combine his honed communication skills with the best that theatre production can bring, to deliver a brand new live event experience. We’re hoping to make a bit of history by introducing this new show.