Exciting thing! Andy Field and I are up to stuff again, returning to the Arts Council England’s (ACE) State of the Arts Conference this year, much more integrally than how we were part of last year’s; this time we’ve been able to help shape the way, where, and with whom the conversations happen. Live blog! Artists bursaries! Actual conversations on themes! Some very exciting and challenging live bloggers feeding in and back everything said by everyone! All in all it looks like a massive leap for ACE, in a brilliant and totally important direction. A bit below from mine and Andy’s statement of intent:

“Before, during and after State of the Arts 2012, we will be hosting this online space as an important new facet of the conference.

We want this to be a place for anyone with an interest in the arts to share their thoughts and ideas. A carnival of voices discussing anything and everything about the state of the arts in 2012. In particular we hope that this site might allow people who can’t make it to Manchester for the day of the conference to have a really meaningful impact upon the event.”

Read more on our intent over here, see who all our livebloggers are here, and start submitting your thoughts on the main themes of the conference (along the top of the page) on the submit page.

To get you all started we’d love to start a little ‘art is’ meme – I found a really lovely mine of ‘art is’ images on flickr which I’ve been using to title each opening blog post that’s up there now, and we’d love to know what your answer is to that question is (positive, negative, or indifferent), so, how to join in:

• Find an image that for you says something about what art is and why it is important.
• It can be a picture, or a picture of an event, or a diagram. It could be something you find on the net (though preferably creative commons), something you take a photograph of, or even something you draw yourself. It doesn’t really matter.
• Send it to us as an image post on the submit page
• Tell other people to do the same.*

*plagiarising Andy a bit with these instructions. Sorry Andy, it’s late and I’ve been staring at the website way too long.

THAT’S INTERACTION, THAT IS.

I’m stupidly excited to be able to announce a thing I’ve been working on since just before Christmas, the first in a series of DIY performance shows in Leicester, called ‘Performance in the Pub’.

if something isn’t happening where you are, make it happen wherever.

Performance in the Pub began as an idea in my head as I was writing this article for my mate’s punk webzine about what DIY theatre and music can learn from one another. I realised that I’d been complaining about the lack of innovative programming in Leicester’s theatres, but doing nothing about it – and also while sort of knowing that the kind of stuff I thought it was missing don’t really suit massive venues like Curve etc. So, money/mouth is; here I am. Putting on small-scale, DIY and storytelling performance on in a pub.

The first event will be taking place in The Cookie Jar, The Crumblin’ Cookie’s brand new venue in the centre of Leicester. It will be a double bill of solo performance; Tassos Stevens with Jimmy Stewart, and Ira Brand with Keine Angst. BOTH OF WHICH ARE AMAZING. You can find lots more about this first show and the two performances on the Eventbrite where coincidentally, you can also get tickets.

WHY A PUB?

Because I’m so bored of all these divisions between art forms. And big shiny buildings that act like cathedrals to art/theatre/etc. They have their place, but the problem is it’s not a place that’s a part of most people’s lives. The pub, on the other hand, is. That’s why a pub. Single-form buildings only work heavily subsidised by either government (arts council) or large-scale commercialism (cinemas, large music venues), or alcohol (small venues). The latter is way more fun, so let’s fill nooks and crannies of these buildings with theatre, performance, dance, exhibitions, craft, music and more. Make our cities exciting, varied places to be. This is my contribution.

WHAT KIND OF PERFORMANCE?

Just stories really. I mean, that’s what most theatre and performance is. I’m saying ‘performance’ here, because most of it won’t be like a ‘proper play’. It’ll be stuff people made with their actual bodies in a room – trying ideas and stuff out until they found something that worked. Think of how bands put music together compared to how composers do – that’s the difference between ‘performance’ and ‘theatre’ for me. The performance I put on will be small-scale, DIY, and/or storytelling theatre. By turns loud, funny, heart racing, lovely, musical, spectacular, touching, and transporting. I can promise you it will be from some of the most exciting, innovative and brilliant acts in the UK, and as the UK is well good at performance, PROBABLY THE WORLD. Totes.

HOW MUCH DOES THIS COST?

How much does it cost me, or how much does it cost you? Well, basically I, and everyone involved in putting on PitP shows are working for free, I pay for the travel, food and accommodation of the performers, I give myself a pat on the back if I’m lucky. All the promotion, printing, deposit for the venue, website building, and everything is upfronted by me, and hopefully paid back by the money people donate for tickets. That leads us to:

How much does it cost you? Well actually that’s another important thing to me, that you can ‘trial’ this stuff, that if you really don’t want to spend a 5ver or whatever on it, that you can just walk in, and sit down, and see what you think, and maybe pay afterwards if you liked it. Or pay next time. That’s why it’s ‘donation based’ ticketing. If you’re looking for a guide price, though, it costs me roughly £350-£400 to put on each show. If I sell out the venue at £5 each ticket then I break even. More is more to roll forward into more print/acts/etc. So if you want to help more happen £5 or over is ACE, you’re effectively only paying £2.50 per nationally or internationally known performance at that price ;) also; buy drinks. More drinks bought = I get the venue deposit back.

And while you’re still reading, why not follow @performancepub on Twitter, Like it on Facebook, and invite EVERYONE IN THE WORLD to the Facebook event. You can also go onto performanceinthepub.co.uk and check out where I’m horrifically self-plagiarising. Oh yes, and Tickets. Go forth!

Digital hat is an experiment in revolutionising how we discover and pay for theatre.

I am a punk fan. Other stuff too, but mostly punk, hardcore, screamo. Guitars, shouting, that kind of thing. I was 14 when Napster was released. My musical maturity was shaped by sharing; it was also shaped by the staring at of progress bars, and never needing to pay.

I was 25 when I started always paying for music.

Because over 2 years or so my whole relationship to music and its worth has changed. For one thing it has become a relationship, social media has, in a big way, connected me to musicians and the work that they do much more fully. For another, the ability to trial music, listen to it on spotify or youtube, means I know what I’m buying, and that friends also share what they like, in podcasts, blog posts, tweets, and playlists. And a final thing; pay what you think it’s worth. Not ‘pay what you want’, I think it’s an important distinction, because I probably (leaving aside the relationship with an artist) want to pay as little as I can, but as soon as it’s framed with the notion of ‘worth’, suddenly I want to pay as much as I can. Bandcamp and social media changed my relationship to musicians, and the music they produce. The trust that ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ puts in me, makes me want to respond favourably. And actually, how artificial is a price point anyway? An album may only be worth £4 to me, it might be worth £20. Don’t you want my money either way? Often I’ll buy an album for a fiver and go and give back more afterwards. How much is the song you danced to at your wedding worth? How about the album that saved your life?

I feel part of a community, one that the web helps me find, and support. And I want to support it.

Over the past two years my relationship to how I discover and pay for new music has been revolutionised. I may not pay much more on average, but I know that it’s going directly to an artist, and I also know that I’m buying an awful lot more. Plus, more awesome music! WINNING.

In the checkout area, how often do we see theatres linking to similar work in other venues?

And while we’re at it, when have you ever used an e-checkout system on a venue’s site that was even slightly bearable?

How often have non-theatre going friends expressed a general interest, but just not known a) where to start or b) if it wasn’t just a bit too expensive?

How often have you carried a piece with you for weeks, months afterwards? How much do you think that’s worth?

I think that there is a bandcamp for theatre. Not bandcamp exactly. Not Spotify, or Amazon, not twitter, not just a recommendation site, a place to buy stuff, not a review site. Though it may look a little like all these things, it may not necessarily be just an online or web based system, it could borrow a lot from physical things like Oyster cards or loyalty systems. But a way of regulating, sharing, exchanging, standardising, offering, equalising, and making easy the act of finding, going to, and paying for theatre.

Seth Honnor and I are going to r+d this. We want to look at the data generated from ticket sales – the sharing of that data in a way that the theatre-goer is completely in control of, and benefits from (rather than just the ‘untick mailing list’ box). We want to look at changing the experience of paying for theatre, work on a scalable model that could be used by any size venue, that had room for recommendations, sharing, simple video or audio trails, and that are used by many venues. Imagine only needing to remember one password for every theatre checkout system in the UK. Imagine syncing tickets with your smartphone, so you don’t need to have it delivered, or pick it up. Imagine subscribing to the arts events calendars of friends, or certain venues. Imagine a system that allows you to put a deposit on a ticket, but doesn’t take the money until after you pay, after which you are able to pay what you think it was worth. Throw your money in the hat; that’s why ‘digital hat’.

That’s where we want to start thinking. digitalhat.co.uk/ Let us know if you want in, what you would want from it, or if you think it already exists. We’ll let you know soonish about our next steps. Early days, but exciting ones, I hope.

So I wrote this thing for my mate’s punk and comics webzine. It’s about DIY punk, and DIY theatre. And mostly how we can learn from each other. You should go and read it, it’s over here. Go on. What are you waiting for? It has swear words and lots of semicolons. WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT. Clicky. Also, when I was writing it, James of ace performance duo Action Hero sent me some of his own thoughts on being ‘DIY’ in theatre. Just after I sent my finished article off, but I’m reposting them here, with his permission, because they say a quite similar but still really useful thing.

“I think a comparison between DIY music and DIY theatre is long overdue. Not least because theatre suffers so much from an identity crisis and I think it could benefit from the association!

I would identify the work that Gemma and I do as Action hero very much as DIY but there’s an important distinction to made between two ways of using that terminology. There is much talk in theatre of a ‘DIY aesthetic’ and its a phrase often used to describe our work (I think we even use it to describe ourselves on our website) but the DIY element of our work is not ‘an aesthetic’ it comes from a genuine do it yourself approach. We sometimes do make decisions to deliberately use things that are lo-fi because of the way it changes the relationship an audience has with the work but more often than not its a genuine response to trying to make something with very few resources. So not an aesthetic choice as such. What interests me more is the punk use of the term DIY which doesn’t mean ‘ooh look their set is made from cardboard’ but is about an approach and a way of working that deliberately avoids mainstream modes of production.

So in the same way punk bands avoid signing to record labels so they can have more of a say over the work they are producing (and consequently have less money and end up doing more of the producing, marketing etc themselves) we too have always wanted to avoid trapping oursleves into conventional modes of production in theatre. i.e a set, lighting, cast and crew that requires significant investment from venues or funders. If we control the means of production ourselves it means we’re more flexible, mobile and responsive with the work we make which is how we like it. It also means we have less money because we don’t get huge marketing budgets of venues etc but we prefer it that way. We’ve always done absolutely everything ourselves and only very recently have we worked with anyone else and only then because we couldn’t physically do it ourselves because of a lack of time and it caused us great distress! I think what is important is that its seen as a deliberate decision that, like punk bands, isn’t to do with a lack of ambition, and its not because we subscribe to Dave’s big society but because we want to maintain control and we want to work in this way.

When we made our first show and we were so inspired by the way the relationship changes between an audience and an artist when there is more for the audience to do to complete the work, when they have to buy into what you’re doing and help make it happen. Seeing what happens when an audeince sees you genuinely trying to make something empowers the artist and the audience in a way that we think is actually quite political and I think similar to the ideologies of DIY music.

All that said, we could never have made anything we’ve made without funding support from the Arts Council and massive amounts of support from subsidised organisations such as IBT [In Between Time], Theatre Bristol etc. So we’re not like DIY music in that way. We can’t just pick up a guitar and start generating our own income because theatre is less commodifiable, less popular and way more expensive to make because it takes so long to make a show that is decent quality.”

splacist (splā sĭst)

A contemporary mode of practice proposed by Paul Conneally. A new set of ideologies defined by Hannah Nicklin and Nikki Pugh. A hop, skip and a jump away from phsychogeography and the works of the situationist international. With more practice and less wine. Think space, place and splice. Though still with a bit of wine.

Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

WE ARE THE SPLACISTS

We will own this city.
We will take it back.
We will link and shift; across time, space, people, places and processes.
We will weave throughout the fabric of people’s lives.
We will unpick it.

We will expose and re-see.
We recognise our observation affects the outcome unavoidably.
We will affect and be affected.
We will glory in the moment, the collage, the marking and then passing on.

We reject your beginning, middle and end.
We will work on and across edges. We will push them. We will blur them.
We will trace and leave traces.
We will work with you, not for you.

We reject your shopping centre, your pavement, your cultural quarter;
We will under mine pre-defined spaces. We reject them.

We will fail spectacularly, vitally, elegantly.
Our practice will be open, although it may not always be out in the open.

We will make exchanges.
We will make adventures.
We will reveal beautiful moments.
We will reveal the ugly.
We will hold your hand.
We will whisper in your ear ‘let go’.

We will reclaim the city, not for you, but with you.
We are you.

WE ARE ALSO THE TECHNOLSPLACISTS

We will not be technosplacist when being splacist will suffice.
We will never underestimate the power of cardboard and masking tape.
We will not be afraid to get our hands dirty.
We will not be afraid to do without digital at all.

We will use ‘digital’ as tool and material, not as veneer.
We recognise ‘digital’ is not necessarily something ‘other’.

We will make and share our own tools as appropriate.
We will collaborate.
We will be generous.
We will be porous.

We will re-reveal technology as used by private interests.
We will hold them accountable.
We will put it to our own uses.

We will cut, and we will paste.
We will undo.

We will be artful. We will be skilful. We will fail usefully.

We will find our own energy sources.

We will pervade.

August 2004

The Tl;dr version of this post is this link. But please do just read it.

Edinburgh is a fucking beautiful place. Despite my inner-midlander that wept at the sight of every incline, I felt remarkably at home there.

Feeling at home is something it’s been hard to cultivate since turning 18, really. I’ve lived in 14 different houses in the 8 years since I made my first home away from home. In a tent. In the Ardeche region of France. It became home when I tied several old crates together on their side and built a makeshift bookcase. That and the Marmite my mum sent in shoebox-wrapped packages.

My books used to mean home for me, but my relationship to my books has changed since they became part of my living (PhD), and now the familiar wallpaper of my desktop feels like home. The small idiosyncrasies I’ve set up as short cuts, the things I keep on each ‘space’, right hand top for emails, bottom right for calendar, top left for internet, bottom left the exotic realms of ‘miscellaneous’.

Home is always when me, my brother and our mum find ourselves together. Home is Christmas-time jokes about stockings that still appear (but this time before we get up, not after we go to bed, which tends to be via the local pub these xmas eves). Home is the slightly stilted conversation of more extended family trying not to bring up global warming or gender equality in our company.

Home has also been mashed potato and toad-in-the-hole. The smell of Jean Paul-Gautier on someone’s neck. Smokey hair. The very slightly different texture of a tattoo shaped like a star.

Home is Big Skies. Lincolnshire sausages. And horizons that go on forever.

Edinburgh is a fucking beautiful place. I felt remarkably at home there. Despite the hills.

And that, of course, has a lot to do with the people. The wonderful amazing constantly confounding people that make up my small corner of the theatre industry. But it also has a lot to do with a place. A single place that while I was there was like an oasis. The Forest Cafe.

The Forest Cafe is a “volunteer-run, collectively-owned, free arts and events space masquerading as a vegetarian café.” And MAN do they do good burritos. They host the Forest Fringe, which was the home of all but 3 of my most favourite shows that I saw this year. They also hosted Edgelands. And besides that hold poetry nights, screen films, have amazing space-art painted on the walls, have a hairdressers who serve vodka, free wifi, a darkroom, screenprinting, music gigs, hip hop and djs and dance and massage and knitting and language lessons and basically if you go up to them with a cool idea and they have the space they will let you have it. For free. Most of the people who work there do so for free (and burritos). The proceeds from the cafe go right back into running the building. And the second I got there people who announced that they knew me from the internet took my soggy bag from me and bought me a drink and showed me where I could eat for under a fiver a day as friends passed by and stopped to say ‘hi’, and every step I took as I left that night led me to another familiar smile, and a bracing hug.

I had never been to Edinburgh in my life before last week. It felt like home.

The Forest is home for hundreds of people who would not have one otherwise. Hundreds of artists and misfits and alternatives and locals and people just starting out with ideas that change people’s lives.

The Forest is under threat.

They were able to exist on a low rent arrangement with Edinburgh University Settlement who owned the building. Then EUS went into administration, and PricewaterhouseCoopers became administrators. PwC intended to sell the venue that the Forest inhabits, and found a buyer. As far as the Forest knew they would all have to vacate the premises by the end of this month. But then the buyer fell through. And the Forest offered to pay the rent on the building in the meantime. Only to be told that they were more trouble than they were worth.

PwC would rather have the building empty than full of the home that Forest have created.

This makes me fucking angry. Really fucking angry. There’s lots that makes me angry about the world and quite often it can feel like the ills it contains are insurmountable. But this time, there’s something I can do. But I need you, too. Because just as hundreds and thousands of hands made and keep the Forest home that it is, it needs just as many, plus a few more to save it. Forest intend to raise the money to buy the premises. That means finding £100,000

Here’s what you can do.

1) You can pledge money. If just half of my Twitter followers donated a tenner each THEY’D BE NEARLY QUARTER OF THE WAY THERE.

2) Sign this petition http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43255.html

3) come up with a way to help with your time, sell artworks and donate the money, come up with some amazing thing to be sponsored for, cajole rich loved ones.

4) tell @PwC what you think of their actions (politely)

5) tell all of the people. Spread the word.

And help preserve a small but important place: a home. A place made up of people and smells and chances and shelter from rainy skies and love and passion and the smell of food and the touch of people you recognise. Somewhere not built to turn a profit, but to nurture. Please, help.

Other Must Sees include Alan Lane, Dan Bye, Baba Israel, Alex Kelly, Tassos Stevens and many more. Go find them all over here

However @kmachin and a couple of others asked me to put this up on my blog, as opposed to Twitlonger, because it’s more easily linkable. So here you go, don’t ever let it be said I don’t pander to public pressure.

I was approached by a sergeant Hanna (pictured right) while I was walking along Oxford street with #anticutsleeds folk after the march (early evening; cold!) and asked to remove my pink scarf covering my mouth and nose under section 60 of the Criminal Justice Act, or I would be arrested. It was quiet, with just a few stragglers walking around. Most of the ‘action’ was then happening about 5 minutes away at Fortnum and Mason. I replied that I thought I couldn’t be required to remove clothing, and he explained that special measures in the CJA which can be signed into effect by a senior officer allow concealing one’s identity to be an arrestable offence. You can (a later google found out) be imprisoned for a maximum of 51 weeks for doing so.

I asked if I could take a picture of his I.D., and he reminded me that I was still wearing my scarf. I remarked that we had a similar name, and removed my scarf. We smiled at each other slightly ironically, and I moved on.

The encounter was brisk, but polite. Why is it notable? If I have nothing to hide, why not show my face? Because our criminal justice system should not require me to prove my innocence – not by what I wear or any other means. Reasonable suspicion, and the burden of proof; semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit – “the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges”* those are the principles by which we consent to be policed.

These powers of removing items that obscure identity were plainly brought in to enable their FIT officers (plenty on the ground) to get clear coverage of everyone – to build up a picture of regular protestors to target. For that same reason I believe the #ukuncut lot were arrested whilst the black bloc were running amok causing much more media-friendly trouble – for their phones (all confiscated); their networks.

Our criminal justice system works on a basis of innocent until proven guilty, not coercion and intimidation. Kettles, FIT, infiltration and arresting peaceful protest outfits like #ukuncut are all erosions of the principle of the right to protest – they are about scaring people off.

The media drive to distinguish the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ protestors supports this erosion. The round condemning of so-called*** violent tactics demanded of all involved in protest, serves to limit the debate that protest seeks. It also allows Teresa May the ‘black and white’ tabloid fodder that she requires to ‘help the police with their work’ through legislature banning people from protest altogether. How can anyone oppose such moves if the only alternative to condemnation is being ‘one of them’?

Indeed, it’s worth noting that Yvette Cooper backed these measures. And I’m not making a party political point; rather that this false dichotomy of the peaceful protestor vs. the ‘violent few’ erodes the principles of free protest for us all. Think carefully about what powers we allow our government, because we might not always be able to trust the way that they use them.

“The spectacle of terrorism provides a socially cohesive common enemy, legitimises needs for vigilance, security, and new forms of police repression, and encourages the opinion that even the faultiest of democracies is superior to the reign of terror.” – Sanguinetti quoted in this book.

I say this earnestly as both a protestor, and a copper’s daughter (in one riot, my dad had a bit of paving slab chucked at him) I will not condone violence, but it is not my place to condemn it. What I want to talk to you about is how much I love all of the people there that day, police and protestors. What I want to talk about is half a million people, putting their bodies, one way or another, between the state, and the Tory-led government steamroller.

I am not a radical, I’m a lecturer, PhD student, theatre-writer who on Saturday was threatened with arrest for wearing a pink scarf over my face. I feel very strongly that our country is being torn apart by what you might term ‘real’ radicals. I wish someone would remove Cameron’s veil.

*oh yeah, quoting fucking latin, baby. **

** sourced from Wikipedia, though, like.

*** violence vs. vandalism; lets not get into it.

An image from the working one of the Twitterbug workshop days.

Recently I’ve been wondering about the sticking power of Twitter. The people I have my eye on who tend to turn before the tide does have been getting itchy feet about it, and whispers about the second dotcom bubble are now even reaching the mainstream media. It’s fair to wonder ‘what happens next’ to companies like Twitter valued as high as they are whilst still making a loss – do they turn to ads, with premium ad-free accounts? Do they make their money out of apps (too much competition)? Or will they just become bloated, too big for conversation (Myspace, and now facebook’s problem)? But… migrating from Twitter? It feels like an surprisingly emotional thing to be thinking about. Twitter has played such a large role in my finally feeling part of an arts and politically active community as well as providing the opportunity to meet and work with some wonderful people, and to make some wonderful friends.

It means a lot to me that limping my bike home to an empty house, shaking slightly, after being hit by a car, I can tweet my shock, and be.. well, cared about (however fleetingly) by above a 50 people. But then I remember that it’s the people, not the medium, that matters. If we all move to what Diaspora or Beluga might turn into – or something else that doesn’t exist yet – the medium may change, but I don’t think the web will stop being social, stop weaving our lives together. I’ll still see the snapshots of @joethedough‘s baby boy growing up confusedly in silly hats, hear about the regular ‘offstage’ characters like @SlunglowAlan‘s cheese-pilfering lodgers, and care about @Andyvglnt’s earnest battle with anxiety and depression mixed with the best new punk and hardcore recommendations this side of the Atlantic.

These thoughts about Twitter, or the form of communication and interception that it has brought to my (our) lives have been bubbling at the surface of my mind particularly because over the past two weeks I’ve been working on a theatre/twitter investigation in Manchester. Catherine Edwards and North West Playwrights brought together three writer/performers, Alex Kelly from Third Angel as a (loosely termed) director, and myself as a tech-ish art specialist to look at the possibilities and challenges of creating ‘theatre’ (performance/drama) on twitter. Or through twitter, perhaps, as it ends IRL, with a performance at DAT Fest in Stoke next weekend under the name of ‘Twitterbug‘.

It’s interesting how questions bubble back up, Such Tweet Sorrow seems a long time ago now, but in January I was encouraged to start a discussion about it at D&D, the notes from which provoked a really good conversation with Toby Barnes at Mudlark about the chance to talk about the process/problems/successes of the piece, and it was apparently my blog post on STS which lead to my being contacted about this project. At the same time @DanielBye (whose words this post is titled with) has been wondering in an excellent article about storytelling on Twitter, and @DanRebellato, he, and Pilot are also going to be looking at this (though I suspect from a very different angle) question this year.

I realise my involvement, especially after my posts on Such Tweet Sorrow last year, brings a certain amount of ‘money where your mouth is’ with it, but the project was thankfully constructed very much like an experiment, a 3 week workshop into the question of theatre (performance/drama) on the web, and how/if it can weave into real life. The challenge was not to create something perfect, but to discover through creation.

So, what have we found so far? Typically from a workshop environment, a whole lot of new questions. The three writer/performers we’ve been working with had never been on Twitter before two weeks ago, and this has brought a really interesting perspective to my, Alex and Catherine’s assumptions about Twitter, Audience, translating narrative from fabric to thread, as well as the project as a whole. I don’t want to draw any conclusions yet, but I’d very much like to offer up some of the questions and notes that we’ve come across, before in a later post also publishing some form of evaluation. So, here we go:

following an idea @ammonite tweeted me – texture, the texture of design/performance/text/direction in theatre – how much texture is there to a tweet? Our previous knowledge of someone’s over all narrative (job/partner/opinions/tastes), their ‘voice’, their immediate concerns, how they express them, the links behind their profile…?

following on from the D&D conversation about STS and @DanielBye‘s comment about real-world residues. When theatre, when play? How could we weave this pleasingly with things people can find/experience IRL?

it shouldn’t just be Twitter – Twitter is only one shade of the whole palette (we’ve since had characters on Mumsnet, youtube, tumblr, posterous, posting pictures, sounds, videos, links)

what are the ethical problems associated with not explicitly announcing characters as characters on these platforms? Does the value of interrogating authenticity, analogues and avatars make this ok?

the difference between direct and oblique interaction from audiences – some will dig deeper, but you have to tell the stories on both levels

‘show don’t tell’ still applies – a good tweet is rarely a description, but an evocation.

storytelling is different here – the

what makes a tweet rich? This makes me think of the ‘kigu’ – evocative season word traditionally used in a haiku. What are good ‘kigu’ for a tweet? The senses?

how much do we plan the story? And how is that delivered to the writer/performers?

Who is our audience? What is the invitation to follow?

how much harder is to separate the ‘real’ writer/performers from their characters when they have to thread so thoroughly through a life?

is audience satisfaction provided by a sense of resolution? How can narrative that’s more collage than Aristotelean resolve?

if this is to develop into a performance event – is it a character development process that results in a monologue, or something that infiltrates real life more gently, more performatively?

Is twitter about receiving someone’s story – or the stories they encounter?

Time constraints forced our hand on a few decisions – it’s likely that the performance will end in a simple piece of writing from each writer/performer. Other choices (like not wanting to ‘announce’ the project) have been made likewise difficult by the 3-week timeframe – if you’re playing with the form in any way naturalistically, you can’t condense – move from action scene to action scene. The story and character development has moved around ideas of travel, ritual and loneliness. The writer/performers have played hashtag games, been tasked to follow and ask questions, and have found their way to making decisions about their characters.  The characters went wholly ‘live’ on Valentines day, and have different reasons (some which haven’t emerged yet) for heading to Stoke next weekend. They’ve never ‘met’ IRL. And new provocations and exercises have and are being communicated to the writer/performers daily. The characters change from their interactions, and so will the eventual destination.

You can follow the three characters on Twitter at @honey_henry @_evka_ and @zombiejarrod. Or follow only one, or just check out my list. Or maybe go along to DATfest if you live near Stoke.

Personally so far the project has highlighted for me a real sense of the lack of a medium that yet tells us about the collage that our lives are in a satisfying way. Duncan Speakman’s As if it Were the Last Time, and Third Angel’s What I Heard About the World have come closest to it for me, I think. And I have a feeling that something’s happening over at weareforests. There’s a lot more to say about this fascinating process but I think this is enough for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts, do comment.

Finally, the project has also had me thinking about my own use of Twitter. It had never occurred to me to look at @robohannah as a construct before (I mean I know she is, but she was a momentary joke that has turned gradually into something – I never intended to make what she is now) until she was brought up by Alex as a character within a character. I’m quite fascinated now by what she says about me – the jokes I tell through her, and the loneliness that’s come to characterise how she speaks. I remember joking to @patrickashe that ‘It’s not an invisible friend if I have an audience’, but what am I telling them about me? Perhaps that living in a flat on your own can sometimes be a bit lonely.

It’s interesting, isn’t it?