Phone Plays is the first publication in Scores, a new imprint co-commissioned by Montez Press and London Performance Studios that publishes scripts and performance texts by artists, theatre-makers and performance-makers working between the visual and theatrical arts.

Intended to be performed live over the phone, Sam Cottington’s Phone Plays invite readers and audience members alike to engage with a series of unclear relationships and scenarios, invoked and mediated by contemporary communication technology.

This collection of plays explore what critic Sianne Ngai has called the ‘gimmicks of production’: those moments when an object or person performs too much or too little; when it’s too easy, undeserving of praise or overly produced, trying too hard, camp; and how in those moments, the sublimated labour in everyday judgements of taste or aesthetic value are revealed. Channelling conventions of soap opera and sci-fi, these plays explore the experiences of desire, subjugation and alienation inherent in communication.

series Scores. 1

Sam Cottington is an artist and writer living between London and Frankfurt. Through interdisciplinary experiments in collage he often presents “reality” as contradictory and mutable; the product of specific historical and social economies. The production and trajectories of the theatre, the family, and desiring subjectivities are recurrent in his practice, often culminating in devised interventions which address their formal capacities as well as their audiences expectations. His first book ‘People Person’ was published by JOAN, and he’s presented work in London and internationally at Ginny on Frederick (London), Zaza (Milan), and Yaby (Madrid).

Montez Press, 2024

Paperback, 127 × 203 mm, pp 43