Poem adaption of old EastEnders episode for BBC Two

The channel is to air an audio-visual poem adaption of a 20-year-old episode of the beeb saga

The cast of EastEnders in 1997

The work of experimental Scottish poet Ross Sutherland – along with musician Jonnie Common – the remix of the soap’s October 7, 1997 airing centres on the themes of nostalgia and loss.

That evening Ross was sat watching the soap with his parents when ten minutes in his friend James came to pick him up and the pair headed off towards Colchester. Fifteen minutes later, whilst the episode was still airing, Ross and James’ car left the motorway, careering into a road-sign.

Now, 20 years later, Ross returns to his family home to revisit the most important day of his teenage life. There’s no such thing as time travel, but maybe television is the next best thing. Ross plans to re-screen the episode of EastEnders that he walked out on two decades earlier.

“We came up with this idea specifically for Performance Live. For me, it still retains the spontaneity and ‘liveness’ of theatre, but I don’t think it would work as a piece onstage. Or in any other time-slot, or platform, or type of media, for that matter. The story is so closely connected to this single episode of EastEnders that it really has to be told on EastEnders’s turf, rather than by bringing a screen into a theatre.

 

“It’s a story about the passing of time, and how, despite the way that modern media can be stored and endlessly replayed, the real world never lets us go back. So we wanted people to experience the piece at home just as it unfolds for us. Then once it happens, it’s gone.” – Ross Sutherland, writer.

Performance Live: Missing Episode, Saturday 7 October on BBC Two at 10.30pm.