The Multipli City is an ongoing project about the myriad stories that make up life in the city. It currently exists as a web based narrative, and as a game that I sometimes play - following people around the city until they have an exchange with someone else, and then following the new person instead, and so on and so on...

A series of tiny glimpses into lives around the city. At the end of each story a new character is introduced. Feel free to tell that person’s story...

Click here to read the stories and add one of your own

I am also slowly developing a performance strand. We presented the first stage of this as a work-in-progress in August 2008:

Development History

August 2008, Forest Fringe, Edinburgh

Thirteen performers create characters and improvise their story. By the end of the show all their voices are creating the multipli city and the audience can choose which to listen to. It is impossible to listen to everything.

Directed by David Overend

Performed by Ed Cartwright, Helen Cuinn, Tessa Flannery, Nic Green, Chris Hall, Kieran Hurley, David Lees, Robert McElwee, Danny McLaughlin, Kevin Millington, Debbie Pearson, Eric Robertson and Harry Wilson

Programme note

This performance is an early stage of an ongoing project. I started a secret game: following people around the city until they spoke to someone else, then following the new person instead. It worked in theory better than in practice because people don’t talk to each other that much, so the encounters that we have aren’t always that obvious, and a lot of people stay still most of the time. So I tried imagining it instead, on a website. I wrote a very short story about a fat loser called Peter who woke up with a  hangover one morning and decided to take up cycling. The story stopped when he fell off his bike and a schoolgirl laughed and threw something at him. I invited others to take up the girl’s story. Now there are many more interweaving stories and they continue to be added. Visit www.themultiplicity.co.uk to add your own.

So, The Multipli City includes my game for wandering round a real city (Glasgow), an interactive web-based narrative of an imagined city (still loosely Glasgow), and now also a performed imagined city (and since performers come from all over Europe, America and Canada, it will be even less of Glasgow).

The stories you will hear this afternoon are entirely improvised. None of them have been told before, and the order that the performers take the microphone has not been planned. Hopefully this will reflect the way that chance encounters shape our everyday life. The forty minutes of the performance represent a full day in the Multipli City. Feel free to stay with one story for the duration, but the experience will possibly be better if you treat this room like an art exhibition rather than a theatre, and wander from performer to performer - from story to story, taking in all that the city has to offer.

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, or especially if you don’t, please share your thoughts with us at the end.

David Overend, August 2008