Pinchbeck, M., Smith, O., 2025.

Between an Ellipsis and an Ouroboros: Reflections on, and repetitions of, The End

From 2010 to 2016, Michael Pinchbeck and Ollie Smith toured a performance called The End, exploring endings and exits and colliding the bear in Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale with a blindfolded man facing the firing squad, forced to play and replay his last words. Borne out of Pinchbeck's resignation letter to theatre, the piece self-referentially drew attention to its own theatricality (drawing attention to the fourth wall and the fire exit signs etc.), the script was written on index cards to be discarded after reading ('the script becomes the set' and the show imagined the end of itself, its own post-show discussion and the end of the tour 'when Ollie will work with bigger companies on better shows'. Now, nearly 15 years later Pinchbeck and Smith reflect on how the piece resonates today, when many of the venues where it toured have closed e.g. greenroom (Manchester), and the industry itself seems to be facing a kind of execution.

They write this article now as an updated resignation letter to theatre, asking why artists are often fascinated by the denouement and their own demise? The ellipsis left at the end of the show ('It's a dot dot dot not a full stop') has been replaced by other shows with similar titles, Bert and Nasri's The End and David Eldridge's Beginning, Middle, End. Caught between the metaphors of the ouroboros and the ellipsis when making the show, the artist-researchers consider how the finality of finishing a performance, or ending a tour, causes another form of theatrical ending or exit to occur. From the last time you wear a bearsuit to the last time you get shot. Standing onstage at Nottingham Playhouse when the piece was shown for the final time in 2016, and last words were truly last words, they did not know that this would be the last time, and so it continues.