Artist and writer Emma Sporton shares her experience and reflections on We Move in Close Circles by Salamèche, Orley Quick and Sam Pardes, which took place at three different homes in Nottingham across three different nights.

Emma shares her experience from the show on Wednesday 15 October 2025.

Socially chaotic, uncomfortable, bizarre, and hilariously tragic. Many of us have been to a house party before, but never one this memorable.

Our hosts were four friends, supposedly, and the full attention of all of them immediately trying to one-up each other on the niceties was intense. The night was littered with excruciatingly awkward conversations, failed ‘check-ins’ and back-handed compliments.

Sometimes, an interaction felt almost normal.

It never lasted. Padraig, Paul, Orley and Sam had big smiles, quick frowns, and a whole lot to say. If you were (un)fortunate enough to catch their attention. Suffice to say, I don’t think anyone managed to escape the increasingly unhinged plot. We were very much along for the ride, and anything we said or did could end up impacting the events around us in dramatic ways. I’d feel my face getting increasingly incredulous and would catch the eyes of someone across the room just to remember that this was in fact crazy, it wasn’t just me.

If you had told me before I went to this show that I’d be holding people’s hands, catching them as they ‘fall’, and singing along a cappella to ‘Hide and Seek‘ by Imogen Heap, I would’ve laughed in your face. I, now, almost believe that impromptu singing is capable of resurrection. The world we found ourselves in was so nonsensical that playing along was addictive. We were characters in a mesmerising, unbearable plot, and our reactions and non-reactions were essential to making this story a living and breathing world.

The camera was a character unto itself and was passed between all of us with no explanation. The whole night was filmed non-stop, and through this each of us switched between the roles of observer and participant as events unfolded, and we could film whatever drew our attention. There was a deeply uncomfortable conversation happening between two of the performers, for example, and I noticed that the camera was pointed at one of the lights in the room as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. Maybe even the camera couldn’t watch as feelings were mansplained and talked in confusing circles of blame and victimisation. I could hardly bear to watch either.

I think the power that the audience and the performers had was constantly changing and shifting between us all. It was almost addicting to giggle through the dramatic silences, to pull faces because some guy is shouting and stood on a bed and whose bed is this? Whose house is this?! I found myself calling the performers out on their dubious morality just because I could.

Every moment, a disaster was waiting to happen, and I think we all wanted it, even while each social faux pas made us cringe. It was difficult not to want to be a part of it all, and by the end of the show, I was sad it couldn’t go on well into the night.