More experimental performance starring cheesemakers! Here's Exeunt magazine's review of a recent play/tasting/performance by the Bristol-based collective Stand + Stare:

"The audience for The Guild of Cheesemakers are members of the eponymous and historic guild, called to a gathering in the beautiful Georgian church of St Thomas The Martyr in central Bristol.... For the next half an hour or so, everything proceeds as if this were a connoisseur cheese, wine and bread tasting session, complete with explanatory talks by representatives of real local companies, Trethowan’s Dairy, Hobbs House Bakery and Avery’s Wine. Except, of course, that this isn’t quite as ‘real’ as it seems. At some point someone who appears to be an audience member pipes up and asks whether the man from Trethowan’s Dairy has ever heard of a cheese called 198...

198, it transpires, is a ‘cheese’ which a Mr Spalding occasionally peddles in seedy bars and which purportedly arrived on Earth in the form of a meteorite and confers the gift of eternal life."

The crux of the evening's events is a vote, by the audience, determining whether 198 will go into production and democratize immortality, or if it will be destroyed. According to reviewer Tom Phillips, "by couching it in terms of modern-day foodie fetishism, Stand + Stare gives [the question] a pertinent twist... what price would you pay for more time on earth?" and "Would you want to live forever anyway?"

Four stars!