For ten years, live art collective Rotozaza has explored the use of instructions given ‘live’ to unrehearsed performers. This gave rise to the company’s ‘Autoteatro’ strategy (pioneered in Etiquette, seen at the British Council’s 2007 Edinburgh Showcase), wherein participants find themselves exchanging audience and performer roles by following instructions fed via headphones. A massive international hit, Etiquette has since been translated into 12 languages and is currently touring to venues and festivals across Europe and the USA, Mexico and Ghana.

While Etiquette explored conversation between two people, GuruGuru takes the model further, playing with group dynamics and animation and taking a skewed look at marketing focus groups and self-help therapy. Five audience participants are led by a sixth, on-screen, animated character whose twin roles of marketing and spiritual Guru are confused by his reliance on accident-prone technologies. Chaos ensues, exposing today’s consumer-mad inability to distinguish between what we want and what we need. A sophisticated yet accessible piece of interactive theatre, GuruGuru is extremely simple to tour, can be re-created in different languages and can be presented in a range of private spaces from an empty stage to a hotel room. GuruGuru (meaning ’round-and-round’ or ‘the sound of confusion’ in Japanese) is created by Ant Hampton together with acclaimed film-maker/animation artist Joji Koyama and long-time collaborator Isambard Khroustaliov (Sam Britton – musician, electronic composer and one half of the group Icarus).

Hugely entertaining… This smart, mysterious exercise in programmed thinking and collective chaos is strange but exhilarating.The Times

You may find yourself frantically looking for yourself again in the moments after the performance has finished.The Guardian

A fascinating hour. The Herald