Hannah Nicklin

The Player as Political

In scattered and barely noticed ways, the desire to construct one’s own life was shaping the twentieth century (McDonough 2004, 10)

From the bypassing of human interface devices (HIDs) such as mice and keyboards represented by the iPhone and the iPad, to the removal of a media interface represented by the increasing popularity of social media, the current trend in digital technology centres around the removal of the interface. This trend has recently been seen as becoming increasingly prevalent in theatre and performance.

[A] key ’09 [theatre] trend was the removal of performers from performances altogether. Whether directed by headphones or left to negotiate for themselves […] increasingly the spectator was becoming the spectacle. (Haydon 2009)

In 2009 the biggest selling entertainment item on Amazon.co.uk was a video game – COD:MW2 outsold both Harry Potter and Twilight on DVD. We spent 30% more on video games last year than we did on going to the cinema and purchasing DVDs combined. And in a recent survey done by the BBC, 100% of 6-10 year olds gamed regularly.

With gaming you’re involved and in control. With other things you just have to sit back and watch. I’ve been gaming for most of my life. – Callum, aged 10 (BBC 2005 Source (PDF))

Although digital strategies and ideas have been examined in a performative context since the 1960s, this technology and these strategies have reached a point where they are ubiquitous enough to form a real trend in narrative consumption. As thus ours is a culture becoming much more used to being embedded in its stories, political as well as social. In Theatre and Performance in a Digital Culture Matthew Causey discusses the political move from simulation to embeddedness, suggesting that

The site of power has shifted from the exterior screens of simulation to the interior body of the material subject. (Causey 2006, 179)

The example drawn by Causey contrasts the illusion of Gulf War I – of cut together clips, narrators, and news packages – to the rolling embedded coverage of Gulf War II. ‘This is happening now’, the spectacle says, ‘there is no room for editing, cutting, or simulation; this is reality’. In our age of so-called reality TV, 24-hour rolling news, and the advent of the ‘real-time’ and ‘social’ web, we are witnessing a corruption of the data-flow of contemporary life. We are led to believe that the data we receive is live, uncut, unmediated and true. As thus we lose the critical tools afforded us by distance and reflection. It is the ‘interior body of the material subject’ where the political battle for subjectivity must now be fought, in our selves.

Pervasive gaming and interactive theatre takes the digital idea of player-as-protagonist, and applies it to the lived body of performance. Pervasive games are ‘playful experiences’ which combine aspects of childhood parlour games and video game ethics and t to be played in groups across large urban spaces, interactive theatre moves these ideas into thicker narratives. Both forms allow the audience to become agent, and can be seen to expand their storytelling over space, technology, and/or time.

“All theatre is interactive. To call this diverse spectrum of work ‘Interactive Arts’, is only to suggest that it acknowledges that relationship and seeks, in some way, to interrogate it.” (Field 2010)

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My First Paper

Twitter strikes again! This time one of the postgrad organisers at  the Theatre and Performance Research Association spotted me on Twitter, found my blog and invited me to submit a paper to their Dealing with the Digital symposium. They’ve kindly agreed to let me post my proposal here. I’ll be writing the paper over the next 2 weeks, and no doubt will blog some of my thoughts/conclusions along the way. Enjoy:

Proposal for a 10 minute paper at

DEALING WITH THE DIGITAL

TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium

10 – 5.30, 20th March 2010, Bedford Square, London

The Player as Political.

The video game ethic of player-as-protagonist is beginning to influence mainstream non-digital approaches to narrative. In theatre this is seen in the emerging popularity of interactive forms pioneered by companies such as Blast Theory, and current being popularised by Pervasive Gaming companies such as Hide and Seek and the mp3 or locative technology driven soundwalks of Duncan Speakman and Subtlemob.  This paper examines the root of the current drive towards total and pervasive performative immersion, and how we can tackle the traditional problems of immersion that are suffered by video games and other escapist narratives – a loss of political power, objectivity and community experience – within a theatrical context. This paper investigates the ethical implications of suspending the weight of disbelief in one person, and suggests that in hyperlocal performance, and a new world of fractured, multi-facet identities, gentler tactics are necessary, and locative and site-responsive aspects are the best way of preserving the political power of theatre within an individualist context.

Hannah Nicklin

Hannah Nicklin is a first year PhD student at Loughborough University. Her research interests include questions of theatre and digital technology, with a particular focus on selfhood and storytelling in a digital age. She has spoken at Nottingham Trent and Leeds Met universities on new narrative forms and social media for theatre companies, drawing on her work with Foursight Theatre and Theatre Writing Partnership. She maintains a blog at hannahnicklin.com, pieces of which have been reproduced by the Telegraph, Subtext Magazine, and the Arts Council, and she will be speaking at the Shift Happens UK arts, learning and tech conference in Summer 2010. Hannah is also a playwright, her most recent work Awake – the story of a gamer meeting her avatar - will be performed at Theatre503 this March.

“Educate Yourself”

I’m posting (in a more collated manner) the content which I took from the Unite Against Fascism protest against the English Defence League march on the Houses of Parliament in support of the screening of Geert Wilder’s inflammatory and anti-Islam film. The protest clash was this Friday (5th March). You can read more about Geert Wilder’s politics here, and about the EDL here. I went to support UAF in protesting against the EDL, but I would like to say that I would never suggest the EDL shouldn’t have the right to protest. They certainly should get the opportunity to speak their views, so that they can be listened to and tackled. To dismiss a member of the EDL, or any other nationalist organisation as ‘Scum’, completely dehumanises them, and says that we are somehow fundamentally different and unreconcilable. Nor are they working class victims of an education system and cynical right wing tabloid press, they are individuals, who believe what they do because they have come to it by a reasoning process as valid as our own. In the same way as terrorism, race tension and unrest works in the favour of a police and media state, and against us, all of us, justifying stricter laws, guns on the streets, and an infinite loop of press coverage.

“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 superieor to the reign of terror.” Gianfranco Sanguinetti in a 1978 text On Terrorism and the State.

50 people arrested according to the BBC, most of them were UAF, as the EDL had only announced their march two days before it went ahead the UAF were unable to officially sanction their counter protest as required by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which states that:

6 days notice must be given to the Metropolitan Commissioner [...] He must then allow the demonstration but may impose conditions upon it. The conditions can be changed without notice on the day by any senior police officer. One of the considerations is ‘disruption to the life of the community’ – a catch-all category that allows the police to stop almost any protest. Loudspeakers are banned except for use by those in various positions of authority. (Read More)

Because the UAF hadn’t had the time to have the counter-protest approved, anyone protesting was effectively breaking the law. I can see why it’s necessary for the police force to be informed about protests in order to provide for the safety of both the protesters and the public, but at the same time think that it was right that the UAF were opposing the EDL. It was necessary for the police to clear the protestors, but necessary isn’t always the same as right. Though the police, for the most part, were just doing a very difficult job, they were also, at times, poor at communicating what was happening, some people though people were being arrested when they were just being moved, kettles were set up to split the UAF protesters which people were unwittingly allowed into, and then refused the right to leave, and people were arrested without being told why. I will say that some of the UAF are just as guilty as thinking in black and white, however, and some of their shouts and behaviour went beyond the peaceful protest principles of hold on, sit down, make yourself difficult to move. The EDL were mostly pretty offensive and violent.

Here’s a selection of videos and audioboos – the audioboos in a player and the twitvids, all of which are followed by links that should work on iphones (damn flash/apple).
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