So tonight I achieved my 2nd career choice; leader of a political party. Unfortunately this seemed to require acting and sounding like a politician. Though probably wasn’t hindered by my secret weapon; a Teacher Voice. It doesn’t come out very often (power/responsibility etc.) but I do have one of those voices that when raised tends to carry, and is reported to make people want to sit down and stare very purposefully at their quadratic equations. Anyway, yes, ‘leader of a political party’, I hear you cry, ‘that’s the interesting bit, expand!’. You’re probably not crying that. But I will expand anyway.

Tonight I went to a first-stages scratch of Coney’s Early Days of a Better Nation at BAC, and fascinating it was. Somehow I ended up leader of this glorious nation, and incredibly uncomfortable for it. A quick ‘what is’; Early Days… was a 2 and a bit hour long interactive (emergent, since you ask) ‘thing’, set in the opening days of a new nation – you are cast as yourself-as-member-of-an-interim-government, allocated a party according to the responses to a short questionnaire (to which I did not give short answers, sorry person who got my form), and then invited along with 4 other parties of politicians to begin deciding on the constitutional points and priorities of your government. A system of beans as pay and allowing people to cast votes is a nice mechanic which makes voting a weighty decision (but these are MY beans!), and members of a tabloid and broadsheet style press hover around the edges, stoking rumours, reporting on events and generally being the eyes and the ears of behind the scenes goings on (that is, what the parties are up to, not what they are voting for). Members can defect to other parties, and certain events occur in reaction to previous decisions that sometimes have difficult or unforeseen consequences (fwiw, I did suggest we add to the ‘universal health care free at the point of use’ constitutional point the caveat ‘for all citizens’, but never mind, I love me an american health tourist). News footage provides the beginnings of a contextualisation, and the events mirror financial crises and decisions from politics, like, what are happening now. Anyway, in the end I was elected as leader following the (SPOILER) sudden assassination of our previous charismatic leader. Our party (Green, some kind of odd libertarian party I didn’t really agree with on paper, but in the end was full of Good People, I think it was the one people got put in if they took the questionnaire a little too seriously) had the most members by this point, and so we were asked to field some candidates, I put myself forward because there were no women candidate from the party (and also because I wanted to), and after a short campaign, I won. And stood on the stage and talked to the press man, and was leader.

So, yes. That’s what it was. And why was I uncomfortable? Because ringing in my ears was something Dan Bye said to me about half way through; “isn’t it interesting, people have been given the task of doing politics, and actually what they’re doing is Acting Like Politicians” – I’m paraphrasing him, but there it is. I spoke to the press in support of my candidacy, was asked questions, and gave short succinct answers about what I believed and thought my party also stood for and was earnest but aware that probably what we were calling for probably couldn’t be implemented. And BAM, I was speaking in the language of the stuff we’re so tired of. There were parties that became extreme, others that played up (monster raving loonies), people who tried to sell votes for beans, people making important impassioned stands that not many people saw and that I respected but probably wouldn’t do, and a couple of centre-ground parties made up of people-taking-things-probably-a-little-too-seriously. There were three leader candidates at the end, and when the other candidate I was on similar political terms with was looking low on votes and I didn’t quite have enough we formed a coalition, he became my deputy and OH MY FUCK I’M THE TORIES.

That’s why I was uncomfortable, but also a little pleased, and excited and wanted MOAR POWER opportunity to Change Things For The Better and it’s fascinating that for all we’re fed up with politics we generally don’t have another language to express this kind of stuff. Sure we’re told we’re playing politicians, so there’s a degree of parodying what we know – but the set up is of the early days of a better nation; how do you build a framework which asks us to think about frameworks in the first place? Because I suppose that’s what I wanted the piece to do, which it didn’t quite do yet, but if it gets even a quarter of the way there it will be astonishing. Or maybe it needs to let us repeat the same mistakes, maybe it needs to be a space to fail, so that we go away and think ‘must try harder’.

Other thoughts, and responses to the questions on the feedback sheet, because it seems like a good way to respond usefully:

Thought: People played the game in one of two ways; they played like it was a game, and they played the game. ELABORATE, HANNAH. Half played like it mattered, and half played like they were playing. Neither are wrong, I was the former. Of course I was. The most time I spend first off in any RPG with character design is making my character look exactly like me (But usually without my nose, there are never enough odd nose options), I played like it mattered, because to me, most things do. I’m pretty serious, I think. This as it stood made the experience a little chaotic; a little too chaotic, perhaps.

What was the most interesting moment tonight?
Aside from being interviewed by the *very* cute press man? It was mainly watching myself. Watching myself listen and judge and say things that weren’t really what I meant but that I knew sounded better than me. Better than the honest truth. But still managed to sound like honesty. I calculate and weigh things a lot. I wish I was funner than that, but that’s the truth. And I need to watch and weigh that thing about myself; fair isn’t always right. I typed that but I don’t agree with it. I think I mean the beginnings of something like ‘balance isn’t always for the best’…. Politics shouldn’t be all compromise? But then in a lot of ways it should be. THIS IS WHY THIS IS INTERESTING. We actually need to invent a whole new language and form to discuss this in. This kind of work opens up the fissures between ‘what is’ and ‘what if’ and asks us to find our way from the one to the other. At the moment the piece has the ‘what is’ spot on, I’d like to it to find a better way to asking ‘what if’.

What would you do different if you could do it again?
Crashed on someone’s sofa so I could stay and have a drink and chat afterwards. This kind of show really is as much about the bit afterwards.

What did you talk about most tonight?
It was definitely the ‘we’re just doing what we’ve always done, just with some tongues in cheeks’ thing.

What was Early Days about for you?
It suppose it was about me, and actually something I’m a little ashamed to admit; a calculated urge to lead that I am always checking, tempering, saying ‘stop now, let this or that person say something, you’re thinking again, stop thinking and remember to listen’. It was also about not being able to find a way to speak about something that we don’t yet have a language for; we have a current language for politics, and we add the odd word here and there, meanings shift, but actually we are never given the chance to reinvent it. Games are systems – and because of that they’re very good at examining systems, how we are swept along with them, how they mould our actions. I wonder if I’ve found a game yet (or any bit of art for that matter) which has been able to ask, in a meaningful way, ‘how we redesign a system’?. It’s the Wittgenstein/Heidegger thing of ‘bring language to language as language’ thing, really. I wonder if, actually the task that really would get to the heart of ‘how do we build a better country’ might look a little like ‘how do we build a game system that would enable people to think about how to build a better country’. Maybe that.

Did you feel connected to your house/colour?
I did! Surprisingly, in fact. At the beginning when I read the description of my party it sounded a little too much like libertarianism to me, and I was muttering to people who would listen how I didn’t agree with this or that, but really the party was about the people, not stuff on a piece of paper we none of us wholly agreed with. It was nice when they voted for me, too. WINKYFACE.

What was the most controversial rule in the constitution?
Can’t remember – was never quite sure how the voting worked, but I’ll admit that sometimes I wasn’t listening.

Is there anything you would add to Early Days?
More Leader-before-he-was-shot, I didn’t care enough about him or feel his presence enough to miss it, or feel enough of a sense of serious turmoil when he left. I wanted to feel it, I wanted there to be a turning point where things fell apart – just in case there was a space left where something new might fit. That’s well theatre-y feedback, isn’t it? But I did want a lot more context, I felt like context from the beginning would be a way of unifying the people playing a game of politics and the people playing politicians, a smaller space, a dedicated press room, a sense of the crowds outside, and a little more about the nation we had left behind. And better speeches. I could definitely write some better speeches. That’s another thing I’ve always secretly wanted to do.

Is there anything you would take out?
No… I don’t think so, I think the next task for me would be a tying together; of action with a perhaps deeper sense of consequence. Is there a way to a win and a way to lose the game? As a collective? What do you do about politics, which should really be a conversation about collectivism, which begins from a place of ‘teams’? How do you have a conversation, in fact, away from ‘teams’ and the rhetoric of the necessity of opposition – which I’m pretty sure it one thing that current politics struggles with. Maybe the game is to play a game for half the time, and then in the second half, redesign it; which then becomes the version that the next night’s participants start with.

I love that it has me thinking like this. It’s the offer of agency in the micropolitics that echo the macropolitics of reality thing that play does so well, but with the added realisation that there isn’t a macropolitics yet, just a different couple of hundred people, in a slightly more expensively furnished room. With cheaper drinks.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/05/early-days-of-a-better-nation-scratch/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/05/a-conversation-with-post-sampled/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-conversation-with-post-sampled http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/05/a-conversation-with-post-sampled/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 19:43:26 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=2699 Continue reading →]]>

So here’s some of the reviews and tweets from this weekend’s premier of the current version of A Conversation With My Father. Sampled was ace, and I was performing amongst some pretty humblingly awesome company; I particularly loved see Laura Mugridge and Tom Adam’s Watery Journey… after it’s Performance in the Pub work in progress sharing, and also loved Molly Naylor’s My Robot Heart with music from the Middle Ones (totally in mind for a future PitP), Andy Field’s fizzling writing about the city in Zilla!, and Chris Thorpe doing his astonishing and gripping thing with There Has Possibly Been an Incident. Gutted to miss Melanie Wilson, Curious Directive, and Ross Sutherland due to having to do my own show. But on that – I was incredibly pleasantly surprised, and learnt a lot. Ridiculously low on time right now (hence no linking up the above, you can google, right?), but here’s some of the stuff I learnt/found interesting about performing ACW:

• goodness me audiences are different
• either that or I need to get more consistent in performance
• apparently I can remember words, which is good.
• sometimes the sort-of-funny things I write turn out to be VERY funny, and I need to structure the performance to balance that
• This is an important story, that appears to be reasonably approachable
• It makes people cry.
• I don’t like making people cry. I want to find a way of (metaphorically) telling people ‘it’ll all be ok’ afterwards, but don’t think it will unless I also make people want to Do Something
• I don’t think it’s up to me to tell people what that Something is.
• people are really interested in all of the stuff I pack for a protest, and want it explaining. No one ever works out that the number for GBC LEGAL that I write on my arm (with the label) is for a lawyer, and why you do that.
• I think there’s something in comparing the ritual of readying for protest for both protestor and police office
• the sound recording I have of me and my dad is not very good at higher volumes. This is rubbish and I need to get someone who knows more than me to fix it.
• I think I’ve found a ‘TED’ version of this story – performance lecture, but would like to explore how it possibly becomes more performance, or maybe more story.

As for the future of it, I’m hoping to get a producer or director on board somehow, and spend a week on it in a rehearsal room somewhen and somehow to work it up into a 50-60 minute solo show. And I might even have some photos to show you soon.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with some some self-congratulatory highlighting of positive reviews/tweets:

“Nicklin is a thoughtful and engaging performer, and she shares experiences of protesting, and discussing protests, with her retired-policeman father. [...] For such a simple concept, the piece is surprisingly moving. Nicklin merges the personal and the political with consummate skill; here the political is personal. The relationship that Nicklin has with her father-the-police-officer and with her Daddy becomes a microcosm through which much bigger ideas can be examined – ideas about fairness, about politics, about family, about genetics and inheritance. The piece is never preachy but is always engaging. Nicklin makes her points almost gently, but they strike home and make the audience consider the bigger picture. It is a piece that works as it is but has room for more, and it lingers in the mind.” – Eleanor Turney, A Younger Theatre Sampled Review 

“Just came out of Hannah Nicklin’s piece. For first thing in the morning this was a rather touching piece. I’m not sure I could actually sum up what I’m feeling right now from it. It brought a tear to my eye, but I don’t mean this dramatically. It’s a simple story, one about the relationship between Nicklin and her father. It’s a piece that questions her role as a protester, and her father’s role on the other side of the enforced line as a policeman. It’s informative; Nicklin describes how a kettle works, what happens inside and her own experiences. It’s also about Nicklin as a performer, and her questioning whether if it is better to be a politician striving to change small policies or if it is better to be an artist telling stories to people. For a work-in-progress piece this is really developed, it’s a piece that tugs away at you. Nicklin’s honesty shines through the piece, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it so much.” – Jake Orr on the A Younger Theatre live blog 

Andrew Haydon ‏ @Postcard_Gods Gorgeous first show of the day by @hannahnicklin - simple, effective, and unexpectedly very moving #AConversationWithMyFather#Sampled12

Kate Unwin ‏ @kateunwindesign @hannahnicklin moving, relevant and very promising indeed#AConversationWithMyFather @TheJunctionCamb #sampled12

Well, what image would you use to illustrate the monstrous in the city? Shared via CC, click through for originator

For those limited number of people interested in this kind of thing, pleased to announce I’ve had the following paper (and accompanying playful experience) accepted in a conference/symposium called “Performing the Monstrous in the City” at QMU in September. Interestingly they seem to have invited 2.8 Hours Later lot to feature, too, which is interesting. Not least because I think they actually offer a pretty poor experience (at least in terms of what they promise; i.e. a gaming/interactive experience, which it mostly isn’t. Read a bit on what I think interaction is over here. It’s definitely not ‘hot’ interaction in those terms, and extremely linear and much closer to film than games or performance. What it is extremely interesting as is an exercise in pre-marketing. Anyway, this is a LONG bracket. Stopping now)

What I shall be talking about:

Playing with the monstrous; restructuring the ‘other’ through loveliness, adventure, and curiosity.

The city makes us all monsters; it channels us and distracts us, and fills our lives and heads with monstrous noise.  It casts all others as potential monsters; it provides no ‘safe place’ or ‘home’. As media, message and surveillance culture become more pervasive, new tactics of resistance are required. Games and play are a growing and powerful route to reconstructing the monstrous on and of our streets.

This paper will consider the playful practices of the Agency of Coney, looking at the power of first-person performative experience in breaking down the monstrous of the city, and the ‘other’.  The paper will use the lens of Coney’s three main principles of  ‘making good play’; adventure, curiosity, and loveliness; and look at the Agency, it’s training, and activity, to consider new strategies for re-connecting individuals with the monstrous other – in the people and the city space they move through every day.

A 20 minute paper with accompanying playful experience.

The playful experience will be a practical example of the application of playfulness, delivered as small adventurous, curious and lovely tasks that can be discovered and completed by anybody at the conference, at any time during the day.

So I’m burrowing away in the old PhD at the moment. Only about 4 months to go so I’m in the process of researching and writing the last chapter and some case studies, before heading into full redraft ‘let’s make this make sense’ territory. Re-reading chapter 2 (written in my first year) as I work up some case studies for it, for example, made me simultaneously proud of how far I’ve come and weep at the job I’ve yet to do. Anyway, for those of you who don’t know (actually that’s everyone including my supervisor because I tweaked it, again) my thesis title is roughly this:

First-person theatre; how performative tactics and frameworks (re)emerging in the digital age are forming a new personal-as-political

I’ve just finished writing a chapter called “First-person theatre and the body; transcendance vs. transposition” which is all about phenomenology and interactive theatre and why it’s better than immersive theatre in dealing with the frameworks/systems that make up the politics of daily life, and is more effective in terms of tackling the specific breed of capitalism expressed in/via personalisation and pervasive media. Anyway, a big part of talking about interactivity, and a bit part of talking about interactivity demanded defining it. This is a definition I’ve had knocking around in my head for a long while, and which has been informed by my reading since (obvs) and I go on about it so often, and rant so much at people claiming their work is interactive when it isn’t (and doesn’t need to be! ‘Interactive’ is not a synonym for ‘good’ or ‘relevant’ or ‘appeals to young people’) that I thought I may as well post my definition. Y’know, so it’s Out There. So here follows a short extract (extended quote, really) from draft one of chapter 4 of my thesis. Enjoy. If this is your kind of thing.

[...]

At this point it seems appropriate to offer some definitions for words to be used herein that are largely overused with regards to contemporary performance, and indeed most interfaces between the story- and real-world (marketing, News, other art forms, entertainment, etc.); those of ‘interaction’ and ‘immersion’.

Interaction.

The misuse of the term ‘interactive’ – or rather the necessity to talk in greater specificity when discussing interactivity – has been highlighted in more detail in the discussion of games and first-person performance in chapter 3. Steve Dixon likewise raises the issue of ‘levels’ of interaction in his extremely thorough Digital Performance (Dixon, 2007, p. 563). Here we attempt to refine these, along with other notions on the subject discussed in chapter 3 and set forth in other works such as Rules of Play (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004) and Pervasive Games (Montola, Stenros, & Waern, 2009), to form the following four ‘levels’ of interactivity:

1. Reactive
2. Navigational
3. Conversational
4. Emergent.

It should be emphasised that they are not hierarchical in value – one ‘level’ is not more effective than another – rather they mark levels of the participant-audience’s involvement in the work. Reactive work is best described as switch-based – you press ‘play’ on an mp3 player, you turn a light on, you take something that a performer hands you – the work is ‘on’ because you are there, but you do not shape the content or the context in which it is experienced. Work such as Analogue’s Lecture Notes on a Death Scene is a useful example of this, you are situated in the story-world; you pick up phones, open letters pushed under your chair, and are directly addressed, but you cannot choose to look from a different perspective, or shape the content or context of the work. Most immersive work fits into this first category.

Navigational work allows you to choose context, you not only get to choose how and where to direct your gaze, but also where and how you act – this may be guided (speed of walking, specific directions in which to approach something), your actions colour and shape the experience but the work does not react to it, although the work constantly stops if you do not take an action. Where reactive work offers moments for switching on/off, in navigational work your movement and actions are a constant on/off. Duncan Speakman’s (Circumstance’s) Subtlemobs, as discussed in chapter 2, are usefully characterised as ‘navigational’.

Conversational work is work in which the content as well as the context is shaped by the participant; there is a construct controlled by the artist(s) (who might be considered to have lexical control), but the content is directly shaped by the interaction with the participant whose responses fundamentally form the work. Ontroerend Goed’s Internal is a useful illustration of this; the key markers in the journey of the piece are the same with each performance, the performers select an audience member, they take them off and talk with them, then return to the group and discuss one another, but each time the work is contingent and made up of the responses of the participants.

Emergent work, finally, occurs within a framework – but content, context, and lexical control are all within the power of the participant; the content, and, crucially, conclusion is decided by their actions. Emergent work allows the greatest amount of agency for its participants and most often involves more game-like tactics; the asking of a question; a ‘what if’; which the participants are invited to inhabit. Coney’s A Small Town Anywhere is an emergent work, in this example, relying on game mechanics to build a framework for the question ‘would you let the fascists in?’.

Further to these clarifications, in Performance, Technology and Science, Johannes Birringer offers a useful insight into the effective use of interactivity using the metaphor of ‘hot’ (complex) and ‘cold’ interactivity:

 [...] cold interactivity entails purposive decision-making and effectivity. [...] Complex interactivity draws on metaphors of social interaction adding many layers of human behavior and emotion which reflect the grey areas of play, performance, and theatricality, all those hot zones of indecision, frivolity, irony, and confusion that affect the nature of action-reaction. (Birringer, 2008, pp. 238-9)

While different ‘levels’ of interaction suit different questions and forms of work, it is the area of ‘hot’ interactivity that this chapter is interested in; those tensions between play and performance, the mirroring of social activities in the embodied participant, and a dialogue between the ‘what is’ of the real world and the ‘what if’ of the performance framework that true or partial agency offers. Different kinds of interaction may all offer hot interaction, but they are found more often in navigational, conversational and emergent work. It is in hot interaction that the cracks between old and new ways of being can be discovered, investigated, inhabited, and thus form relevance to the socio-political thrust of this thesis.

Finally, as we speak to a direct theatre and performance context, it’s worth refining our application of the term ‘interactive’ with regards to performance in particular. Birringer offers another useful insight, here:

First, I think of “interaction” as a spatio-temporal and architectural concept for performance that maintains a social dimension even if intersubjectivity […] is reframed […] Secondly I look at “interactivity” in the more narrow sense of collaborative performance with a control system (Birringer, 2008, p. 110)

The second sense we have just tackled; levels of control systems for collaborative performance; the first is of further interest. Birringer here highlights for us a difference between the interactive – characterised by a maintenance of the real world amongst the invitation to re-frame it and our selves – and what we will call ‘immersive’ performance – not a ‘concept’ (framework) that maintains social dimensions and intersubjectivity, but an entire shift in context.

References:

Birringer, J. (2008). Performance, Technology & Science . New York: PAJ Publications.
Dixon, S. (2007). Digital Performance. Massachusetts: MIT.
Montola, M., Stenros, J., & Waern, A. (2009). Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play, Game Design Fundamentals. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

I’m talking to you. Yes, you, the person who reads my blog, or clicks on the links I post on Twitter, who is involved in contemporary theatre and performance. I need you. All of you, to help me solve a pretty big problem. We’re invisible. On wikipedia.

Stop laughing.

This is important. Because this is one BIG way in which laypeople (in any subject area) discover. It’s how I find out more – in a reasonably unbiased way – about countries in the news, about complex physics discoveries, about the history of Henry V who it turns out got short in the actual face by an arrow when he was only 16, about the peasants’ revolt, about a TV series and when a previous episode was broadcast. Wikipedia is fundamentally part of most people’s first pages on google searches. It is an entry point. And contemporary performance is all but invisible on there. Consider this outreach. Mainly because that’s exactly what it is. This is a really important way of putting contemporary theatre and performance where people are. Of helping them find out about us.

We’re small community, and it appears very few of us are on there updating and creating articles. So, here’s what I propose: we all sign up to wikipedia today, and commit to creating an article every week or two weeks. Just one, on an aspect of contemporary performance/theatre of which you feel like you can contribute something. This is our lives, don’t tell me you can’t tell me something.

So far (and a while back) I’ve done an article on Dan Rebellato, but I quickly got overwhelmed by how many other artists and companies were missing and just let it fall by the wayside. So I want your help, I want to know I’m not alone, and I want to commit, along with a few other people, to doing at least one article a week/every fortnight.

I even made us a hashtag so we can share new articles, and so others can know they’re out there, create new ones or help develop current entries. You don’t make hastags. Shut up, Hannah. Use #wikitheatre, if you like.

And, to help us all out, and because it can look a little daunting, I’ve put together a few tips, a how to get started, and a how to format guide in below.

Where to start.

To sign up, go here. Then the next step is to learn how to create and format an entry. The first thing you might feel is a little daunted, think about it as someone looking at backstage for a show that you’ve been working on for a while, or at a lighting desk for the first time, this is the backstage area – to someone without the knowledge it can look impenetrable, but really you just need to know a couple of things and then it’s really easy.

First off, here’s some rules and principles about editing wikipedia that you should know:

1. it shouldn’t be someone with whom you have a potentially biased relationship, not a close friend, or a company that you’re on the board of, or that you collaborate with often. This is why we need a lot of people, because so many of us work together.
2. when you reference a source, good practice means that it shouldn’t be anything biased, and should be from a reputable source – this means no referencing the personal websites of the subject of the article (this article on Rotozaza, for example, is incredibly bad practice, and has been highlighted as such); sources that are preferable are things like the Guardian, the Times, the BBC, performance journals. Referencing venues for show information should be acceptable, look for interviews, reference books if you have them (linking to google books is useful).
3. look at other pages. Find something that will have been well edited and often checked over and model your entry on that! Go and look at the entry on Shakespeare, or Chekhov, or something. Work out what your main headings should be, and start researching content!
4. search first! Make sure the article doesn’t already exist.
5. edit first. Try editing a bit before you jump into creating a whole page, if you feel a little nervous.

Things to write about:

Writers, dancers, dramaturgs, auteurs, performers, companies, theatre buildings, festivals. There’s probably more. You get the idea.

The Sandbox.

You know how sandpits are places where you can play at building things? Americans use the term ‘sandbox’ and because US english is the standard of the web, that’s why you can make a bit of the site where you can try things out before making something live is called the ‘sandbox’. I can’t remember if I created it, or if it was already there, but you can get to it from the little menu bar, top right, if you want to play. This is what it looks like for me:

Try your editing out here, before you head over to create an article, if you like.

Creating an article.

Type the title of the article you want to write into the site search box, if it’s not already there, it should show you “You may create the page” on the search results page, in red. CLICK THIS. Begin to edit. Job done begun.

When you are done with an edit (next up is how to do editing), you can hit “Show preview” to see what it all looks like, and fix any bits of formatting that you want. When you’re happy with the article, just hit ‘save page’ and it will be live on Wikipedia, where other people can join in editing it.

This is the wikipedia guide to creating an article: clicky.

Editing an article, or:

HANNAH’S GUIDE TO HOW SHE PROMISES IT’S EASY TO FORMAT A WIKIPEDIA ENTRY.

To make things like headings, and to add in links, references, and formatting like bold, italic, underlined, you’ll need to use a bit of wikipedia’s code. THIS IS NOT HARD. I promise you. It’s a bit weird looking because they have to use combinations of symbols that wouldn’t occur in normal typing, otherwise thing would happen accidentally. That’s the only reason it looks confusing. It isn’t. Here’s some examples:

The main text formatting is done with a ‘, to make something italic, you use two: ‘ ‘ italic ‘ ‘, to bold it you use three: ‘ ‘ ‘ bold ‘ ‘ ‘, to make something bold and italic, you add them together; five: ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ bold and italic ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘

To link to another wikipedia page you simply use square brackets, like so: [[ wikipedia page name ]] and to make it link, but read as an alternative bit of text, just add a divider in: [[Name of page|Text to display]]

You’ll want to have headings, heading sizes go from 2 upwards, 2 being the big underlined ones, and the larger the number, the smaller the heading (the levels go down, think of level 1 as the main top heading (the ground floor) and the rest as sub-basement. Equals signs make headings happen.

==Level 2==
===Level 3===
====Level 4====
=====Level 5=====
======Level 6======

Bullet points are made with *, and you can indent them with a double **

Regular indents are done with a :, the more : the more it indents ::: is like hitting ‘tab’ three times.

And finally, the all important REFERENCING. This is a really simple bit of code: <ref> turns the reference on, and </ref> strikes it, turns it off. Simple as. So, if, for example I was linking to a BBC article on The Passion I would do the following:

Sheen returned to Port Talbot a year following The Passion to reflect on the project, and to launch a film about the project<ref>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17652887</ref>.

OR if I wanted to reference something hard copy I’d just do this:

“At the end of the twentieth century, it is evidently still necessary to insist on the obvious: we are embodied creatures” <ref>Hayles, N. Katherine, “Embodied Virtuality: Or How to Put Bodies Back into the Picture” in Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments (MIT Press, Cambridge MA: 1996)</ref>

Those <ref></ref> tag turn into the little [1] [2] [3] references that you see, and then all you need to do is paste the following in at the end of the article:

{{reflist}}

And it will list all of your sources, in order. Clever, really.

Don’t worry about bookmarking this post, though, there’s all this stuff, and more formatting options over at the Wikipedia formatting Cheat Sheet: clicky

So there you go.

I can’t think of anything else you need to know, but if you have any questions I’ll try and answer them in the comments below (I’ve only done one article, so try and google it first, that’s all I’ll do).

And please, please let me know if you’re going to get involved. In the comments, on Twitter (#wikitheatre), and spread the word. Contemporary performance on the internets needs you!

// edit - some useful things I’ve discovered, or that people have pointed me towards since writing this article, first off Wikipedia’s inclusion criteria – what is actually Wikipedia-worthy. Definitely read that. And secondly, the referencing is actually a lot more thorough than linking in the way I mentioned above, that will get you tagged as linkrot! Referencing, where possible, should be a proper academic format I’ve fixed all the links on my first #wikitheatre post (Non Zero One) now, but there’s a handy guide to that over here. Read that, too.

More, *ahem*, seriously, it’s an incredibly exciting line up, that I feel proper privileged to count myself among. And if you buy a ticket from that link above, you get a ticket for the WHOLE DAY, there’s properly loads of good stuff both days though, so you should definitely get a weekend ticket. LOOK AT ALL THE GOODNESS YOU’LL BE GETTING:

I wish I was just trying to sell this because I’m going to be there, that would show career drive, or something, but just look; Little Bulb, Andy Field, Brian Lobel, Bryony Kimmings, Laura Mugridge, Chris Thorpe and Hannah Walker’s Oh Fuck Moment, Ross Sutherland, Melanie Wilson, Action Hero, Curious Directive, Michael Pinchbeck, these people are all people who actually make my FAVOURITE ART STUFF. Man. But yeah, come and see my show, too.

Here’s a little bit more about ACW, in case you’ve forgotten:

What? A Conversation with My Father is born out of a conversation between an ex-policeman and his protestor daughter. A conversation about fear, grey areas, them and us, duty, and standing up to protect what you think matters.

The piece is based around a recording of Hannah talking to her father about policing and protest. This is not a piece about which side you should take, it’s a conversation about the problem of ‘sides’ in the first place.

Why? “I love the way A Conversation With My Father negotiates the personal and the political so cleverly. Deceptively simple, it deals with big, complex issues. I find it informative, engaging, startling and very moving.”

Alexander Kelly, Third Angel (he’s been kind enough to read over/advise on what I’ve worked up so far and gave this quote for the brochure)

When? 11:00, 12:15 and 4:15pm on Sunday the 6th of May.

How? Just click this link already!

This is my excited face.

“back from a brilliant night watching @performancepub […] you’re a twat if you miss it” – @churlishmeg
“lovely fun” – @spunshon
“I’m not a theatre goer *at all* and it’d normally be something I find intimidating, but @performancepub proved…that there’s more to theatre than stuffy pantomime and shakespeare and it can be all kinds of entertaining & provocative =)” – @frivolousshrig
“heart meltingly beautiful stor[ies]” – @discoverbrevity
“try the latest Performance in the Pub at the Crumblin’ Cookie on Thursday night” Lyn Gardner The Guardian

The next one’s a little further away, this time, because I have this pesky PhD thing  to deal with, but without further ado, here’s completely non-proofed information written by my tired brain on event THREE. Did I mention you get a sticker for donating? BECAUSE YOU DO.

We are delighted to announce the THIRD Performance in the Pub, happening at the Crumblin’ Cookie, Thursday the 24th of May, at 7pm.

TICKET LINK

Following the lovely and funny line up of Performance in the Pub event 2, we’re excited to be able to bring you a double bill of established and upcoming Leeds/Sheffield-based talent. We’ve put these shows together because they both look at words and stories; how and what we tell people about ourselves. The two performers are really lovely, and conversational, there may not be glowsticks this time, but there is the downing of a pint of beer.

The up-and-coming Jodean Sumner, of Trace Theatre, will be bringing us It Starts Like This. It Starts Like This plays with words. Words from your favourite song, words from that poem in that film with Hugh Grant in, maybe words that someone wrote for just you; how they can be perfect, how they can trip you up, how they can mean everything… and nothing.

Jodean Sumner is a solo artist as well as being part of Trace Theatre. A recent graduate of the Leeds Met ‘performance works’ MA, she makes site specific and interactive performance as well as performance that talks about being yourself – not playing other people. The work Trace makes is based on the actual conflicts of trying to make things together.

“Trace Theatre’s Once Upon a Something was all heart. It genuinely made me laugh out loud [...] Beautiful.” – Vee Uye

And the internationally touring company Third Angel will present the one-man show The Lad Lit Project. The Lad Lit Project is about men/blokes/lads/mates/chaps/fellas and their stories; stories of mates, of wanting to belong, stories about girls, (mercifully brief) stories of sex, stories of love and of loss. Lad Lit is like chick lit, but, y’know, for lads. A fun, semi-autobiographical piece about how you might fit your life into a story.

Established in Sheffield in 1995, Third Angel makes work that talks openly and playfully to audiences. They make work inspired by films, comic books, novels, television, radio chat shows, music. Third Angel has shown work in theatres, galleries, cinemas, office blocks, car parks, swimming baths, on the internet and TV, in school halls, a damp cellar in Leicester and a public toilet in Bristol. The company has taken work to festivals and venues across the UK and mainland Europe, including Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, France and Spain.

“consistently innovative and challenging… extraordinary performances” – The Times

Doors will open at 7pm, and the shows will start at 7:30 prompt, the first show is 30 minutes long, and the second approximately 55, there’ll be a 20-25 minute break in between for people to get more drinks. Tickets are by donation, £5 helps us break even but as much or as little as you like. Donators get a STICKER. What more could you want?

TICKET LINK

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/performance-in-the-pub-3/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/how-i-got-my-head-back/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-i-got-my-head-back http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/how-i-got-my-head-back/#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2012 21:30:43 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=2632 Continue reading →]]>

Image by me, from the Story Map I worked on in Stockton-on-Tees

So it’s been 2 years and 5 months, and it turns out that I actually have to write a PhD, now. Quite a lot to do really; have started actually saying ‘no’ to brilliant arts practice opportunities (sob), and am gearing up for May-September being Just PhD Months. In starting to ease into that it turned out actual sustained and deep concentration seems to have been an ability I’d lost. I’ve been busy levelling up all my multi-tasking, map-view, tabbed-browsing, horizontal thinking attributes, but try to settle to just one detailed task and my brain just sits there and FIZZES. So I fixed it. A bit like getting better at exercise, by throwing myself in at the deep end/just seeing if I could hit a half marathon distance in one go (what, no one else does that?). Anyway, I’ve been spending time away from the internet. And you know what? It’s fucking amazing. Like realising there’s a buzzing in your ears only when it stops. I am so much less stressed. I have the room for my brain to sink into things, I feel actually, genuinely productive, and when I return to the web, much more refreshed.

HOW HAVE I ACCOMPLISHED THIS INHUMAN TASK?

That discipline stuff, partly, but mostly a Chrome extension called ‘website blocker‘; I’ve pasted in amazon, bbc, guardian, Google reader, twitter, Facebook, etc., urls in, set my blocking hours of 9.30-1.30 and 2pm-6.30, and defeated that breaker of discipline: habit. Now when my click wanders to the Twitter or Facebook shortcut in a ‘something to do while I remember why I opened the window in the first place’, or an unwitting link takes me there, I get a lovely message that reads “Relax, you don’t need to fill your head with this stuff, You should probably be doing some work, yes?” And it’s almost always right. Coupled with new rule ‘the world will not end if you do not reply to the email immediately’, a muting of both computers’ email alert noises, and a phone with data and WIFI signal turned off from 9am-6pm I’M FUCKING FLYING. And while I love the people I know online, and respect what it offers me (almost all of the work I’ve had in the past few years for example, and some brilliant places for learning, finding cool stuff, and having my mind widened) I suddenly, suddenly find myself productive, concentrating, and to be honest, happier. Which is nice. Something something ‘in moderation’ something.

In that productive vein, here’s a few things wot I have done/am doing, UPDATE COMMENCE:

I did another Story Map with the brill Third Angel/mala voadora team in Corby. In this one I attempted to post an entry for every single country that we covered (all of them: 202) -  a much more literal content-based representation of the show. This involved a photo, piece of text, and links to the CIA World Factbook (the least disputed record of what is and isn’t a country among geographers), for EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY. That, assuming I took no breaks (I didn’t), turned out to be 3.5 minutes per post, and only then if I started regularly (which I didn’t because I took the cards as they were covered by team, which was only 2 in the first hour, a lot more later on)… and those 3.5 minutes needed to include searching for details, writing a paragraph version of a story and taking, editing, and uploading a photo. Oh and the website went down to tumblr’s daily image post limit (which I had no reason to discover before) and I had to drastically re-theme for about 45 minutes around 1pm. Anyway, I finished about 60 (40 unstirred, 20 storied) countries short. You can see the results at: http://storymapcorby.tumblr.com

I’ll be doing another Story Map in London next weekend – this time at the Albany. I think another version of the web coverage will be used in this one. I think we’re going to try and make it a lot more audience-focussed. It’s the last for a while, but we have two versions of coverage which is very much an account of the team’s journey, and one of the content, so this time I’ll do a lot more talking to the audience, asking them to tell new stories to me (& the web), and to re-tell their favourites.

Also, next week is PERFORMANCE IN THE PUB EVENT 2 – with the lovely and funny Laura Mugridge and Daniel Bye. It got a lovely highlight from Lyn Gardner in the Theatre Tips on Friday, and there (fingers crossed) seems to be growing interest. With a venue capacity of 70, and if you’re travelling especially for it (you should!) I’d recommend getting your (donation-based) tickets up front, you can do that over here. GO GO GO.

Also I should have a rather exciting lineup to announce (and flyer) for event 3 on that night, too. Stay tuned.

And finally (for now) I’m going to do a triathlon. I’ve hit my target for fundraising for the brilliant FareShare, but you should definitely donate if you think secular food charities are worth funding – they feed 35,000 people a day redistributing just 1% of supermarket food that would otherwise go to waste. Feels like a really tangible and useful way to do something about individuals, couples and families being tipped over into poverty by regressive government welfare reforms and the financial climate in general. Go here if you fancy doing that. Triathlon is 22nd of April, wish me injury-free training!

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/how-i-got-my-head-back/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/unfinished-thoughts-godhead/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unfinished-thoughts-godhead http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2012/03/unfinished-thoughts-godhead/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:24:05 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=2628 Continue reading →]]>

Image shared via CC by Craig A Rodway

On Wednesday I went to see God/Head at the Ovalhouse Theatre. You’ve probably missed the boat unless you’re reading this before Saturday night, if you haven’t, do go see it. I should really curb my habit of only ever being able to fit a show into my life right at the end of the run. Anyway HERE FOLLOWS THOUGHTS. And probably spoilers. Consider yourself warned on both counts.

I’m pretty tired at the moment. Pretty exhausted actually. I have every day up until the 1st of September planned in detail, and only a very few of those say ‘day off’. I’m burrowing into the last 5 month dash of my PhD, training for a triathlon, trying to get people to go to the second Performance in the Pub event, writing an EP with my mate Simon, preparing for two consecutive weekends doing Story Map with the ace Third Angel, gallivanting off to Cambridge and London and Lincoln, trying to find a dress suitable for an observant Muslim wedding. That kind of thing.

This isn’t about me. But it is. Because I’m writing it. In fact to pretend that I don’t feel all of those things, and that they’re not effecting how I react to a show and what I write, is a bit like lying, really. The bad kind. The kind that doesn’t ask you to come with me on the crest of a lie, but that pushes your head under the surface and tells you to breathe in.

I’m pretty tired at the moment. I fell asleep briefly 4 times while trying to read today. I understand Chris when he stands on a stage and talks about a full mind, and yet still filling it with sound, and shopping lists, and having to do those tasks that keep you alive, and then how you’d feel if suddenly, suddenly something continuum-shattering happened to you; ‘I don’t have the time to feel this’.

That was one of my first thoughts when I had my heart broken last year;  ‘I don’t have the time to feel this’. This isn’t about me. But it is. Because when Honour Bayes - Chris’ guest for the night I saw the show – when Honour told us about a time when she had lost control in public I remembered fainting in a station in Leicester. I remembered not recognising the new layout of Loughborough station, missing my stop, crying, sobbing, and fainting in Leicester station.

This isn’t about me. It’s about God/Head. Which is a fucking brilliant title, really. It’s a show about a true story. It’s a show that is true, both in content, and about the fact it is a story. It is a show that contained the incredible, brilliant, grounding presence of Honour, who looked out into the audience with her kohl rimmed eyes, and read lines like they were words on a page Chris had written for her. I never saw someone look so much like a boy you imagined in your head as Honour looking up from her page, and fixing us with her gaze that said ‘I’m reading this out because Chris asked me to’.

God/Head is about writing. It is about being God. About being inhabited by God. About words. About The Word. It is about a boy. It is about voice, and the rhythms that infect us, breath, and inarticulacy. Repetitions again and again remind you that you are hearing a story. The weight of God inside a writer. The opportunity when the boy gets to speak to his creator. Theatre as a form of incantation.

This isn’t about me. It’s about God/Head. In which Chris talks about the sound, the rhythms of religion. About dreams, too. And psychosis. Words fall away. Repetition dulls the story. Symbols rise to the surface. Hieroglyphs are performed away from us. And then we’re left with the rhythms, then the instructions, then the objects.

“In this world of states reduced to symbols, phenomena such as sound and light, for which linguistic representations are lacking, are coded and added to the world of objects. As contagion becomes transmission, matter is redefined in terms of the signal, and bodies turn into beams of light” – p.39 Frances Dyson, Sounding New Media, Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture.

Chris and Honour tell a story about falling apart. At least, that’s what I see.

It felt less ‘finished’, to me, than the work in progress of Keep Breathing I saw last year. I think it was meant to, or even if it wasn’t, it was right that it should do so. ‘This is an unfinished story’, it says, with equal emphasis on both words.