Lone Twin

Who better to banish to our imaginary desert isle than a pair of professional travellers? Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters, the British-born performance duo that is Lone Twin, have spent the past nine years traversing the globe, making pit stops during which they craft scrappy performance-art pieces based on their journeys. They once took to the streets of Melbourne, Australia, on their bicycles, riding through the city for seven days straight and relating their experiences to audiences each night. In another instance, they spent eighteen hours criss-crossing, on foot, the various bridges spanning Norway’s Glømmer River. This month marks their first jaunt to the Twin Cities, but, sadly, the pair won’t be embarking on any marathon tours while here. Instead they’ll present Nine Years, an anthology of sorts, as part of Out There, Walker Art Center’s annual festival of alternative theater and performance. Now, about that other stop—what would they bring along to The Rake’s desert isle? Read on:

1. One ukulele, three chords, and the truth. This would count as one item, one little package of joy, which quite accurately describes the ukulele. If you’ve never played it get your hands on one right now—this is the gift that keeps on giving: small, light, great to handle, and deceptively easy to play. Plus a sound that swings between all that is lonesome and all that is righteous, in equal measure. The three chords would possibly be C, A minor, and G—both C and A minor can be played with one finger and G is really the D shape as played on the guitar, so it’s super easy. The truth would have to be your own.
2. 1976. An extremely long and hot summer in the UK, the Ramones release their first album, the Band hold their Last Waltz, and Milton Friedman wins the Nobel Prize for economics. Just a great year to have around.
3. The moment at the end of Love Story [the 1970 movie, not the Erich Segal novel] when Oliver, recently bereaved of Jenny, is embraced by his estranged father in the hospital lobby. It’s a genuinely beautiful moment. As an audience we realize the final narrative turn of the piece is hopeful as Oliver delivers the devastating line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It would be a constant reminder during island life that while one might have lost all that one has cared so truthfully for, life must be continued with joy.
4. A Swiss Army Knife. For its multifaceted usefulness in such circumstances.
5. Tom Hanks. Ditto item no. 4.