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?

Image shared by ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser on Flickr via CC

Is this a title you didn’t expect to see on my blog? If so, why? Did I not seem like the ‘type to like romantic comedies’? Well let’s stop right there, shall we. Since when was it OK to dismiss a whole genre? I’d struggle to find even a sub-genre that I’d feel comfortable dismissing as universally rubbish, probably Snuff, though is that a form, not a genre? Sub genre of documentary? Anyway, killing people is fucked up. Stop it.

Back to point.

I AM SO BORED of the lazy dismissal of romantic comedies. I was having a discussion on Twitter yesterday about Space Westerns, I like the genre, and I thought I might try one, probably in a comic book collaboration I’m vaguely starting. Cue much self-satisfied snarking of ‘you mean like Firefly’ as if a) I had imagined I had invented the genre (srsly) and b) Firefly was the only one of its kind (try Star Trek (‘the final frontier’?) Star Wars, Halo Jones, Mass Effect, Cowboy Beebop, and they’re only some of the good ones). I tried to put this point to someone who suggested it could be nothing but a Firefly copy, by suggesting that had I said I was going to write a Romantic Comedy, he would not have suggested it must be a ‘Singing in the Rain’ ripoff. He responded that if that had been the case he would have considered it immediately rubbish anyway.

Though this made me facepalm, I’m willing to admit that there was, many a year ago, a point at which I would have agreed with him. That was the point, probably in my early teens and recognising something in society, I was in full-blown tomboy mode. I did not like musicals and romantic comedies because they were all rubbish, weren’t they? Why? The same reason I was imitating male clothing, academic ambitions*, sporting prowess. Because I have always wanted to be good at things, score high, understand how things work, learn. And what I had learnt from society was that ‘girl’ was not as good as ‘boy’. It was an insult. ‘You throw like a girl’. I bloody well didn’t, I bowled on a par with the boys and made it onto the school cricket team, I got the highest GCSEs out of the whole school, boys included**. And I won acceptance from boys for acting as they did. And Romantic Comedies, with their ideas of love and happy endings, they were uniformly feminine. And therefore, obviously, rubbish.

“There are the stereotypes – oh, the abundant stereotypes – about women, not me, of course, but other women, those women with their bad driving and their relentless shopping habits and their PMS and their disgusting vanity and their inability to stop talking and their disinterest in Important Things and their trying to trap men and their getting pregnant on purpose and their false rape accusations and their being bitches, sluts, whores, cunts. And I am expected to nod in agreement, and I am nudged and admonished to agree. I am expected to say these things are not true of me, but are true of women (am I seceding from the union?). I am expected to put my stamp of token approval on the stereotypes. Yes, it’s true. Between you and me, it’s all true. […] Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened. Well. I certainly didn’t see that coming.

These things are not the habits of deliberately cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.” Source

Romantic comedies do the worst thing a narrative can do – they typically have a female protagonist. Which means obviously they aren’t meant for men. Never mind that most other films have a male lead, never mind that the white, straight man*** is considered the ‘neutral’, that women are expected to watch all manner of in pretty much every other genre and have the ability to identify with their leads, but if a film has the temerity to buck this trend there’s no way it could be for a straight man.

There’s something called the Bechedel Test. It is not a measure of a good, or feminist movie, but rather is the measure of a movie that 1) has at least two women in it, who 2) talk to each other 3) about something besides a man. It is simply about the presence of women in a film/other fiction. There are plenty of excellent movies who fail this test. There are not enough movies that pass it. examples: here

I’m not saying that romantic comedies are feminist in any way, I bet most don’t pass the Bechedel test. Some might, but many reinforce anti-feminist ideas about needing a man, beauty, capitalism. But that they are universally dismissed as rubbish-as-default is the same as calling someone a ‘girl’, or ‘gay’ when you mean ‘not good’. You’re saying that a woman could never have something to say that might interest you. And that’s a problem.

If you’ve ever gotten all the way through my ‘about’ page you’ll know I did the flagship playwriting studies masters at the University of Birmingham, the one Sarah Kane hated, y’know. On that course several different playwrights ran our weekly sessions, including the course’s founder and eminently serious and political playwright David Edgar. Do you know what we studied with him? When Harry Met Sally. It’s fucking brilliant example of exposition-within-a-form – whenever the two male characters talk about their feelings they’re engaged in sport. It’s brilliant and hilarious

Here are some excellent romantic comedies:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Pride and Prejudice
The Importance of Being Earnest
Singing in the Rain
Annie Hall
When Harry Met Sally
Stranger than Fiction
Scott Pilgrim
The Secret of Monkey Island
Juno
High Fidelity
Sleepless in Seattle
Wall-E
Amelie
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Groundhog Day

Comment with any of your own Rom-Com ‘must-watches’ (especially ones with a female lead, there aren’t enough in my list).

I generally don’t appreciate Hollywood Action movies. But I’m pretty confident that there are as many shit Action films as there are Romantic Comedies. And brilliant films in each. An individual film may not be to your taste, but if you find yourself dismissing a whole genre, just for second, it might be worth asking yourself why.

*male academic ambitions consist of believing you can be good at any subject but Home Ec.

**actually the boy I beat by one A* was my boyfriend at the time, is still a friend, and is the loveliest person ever.

***There are a few exceptions to this of course, see Will Smith.

———

EDIT

I decided to try collating recommendations and comments that I’m getting on Twitter on here with Storify:

Me mid-June, with my freshly broken arm and super-attractive cast protector.

Mandatory end-of-year reflective blog post ENGAGE.

So, yep, here we are. And what the heck could you want more than my reflections on My Life in Art 2010 Edition? Exactly. This is going to be meandering and will probably miss things out, but is a rough account of art wot I have done, and art wot I enjoyed this 2010…

So, apparently I’ve actually done quite a bit of art stuff this year, despite the full-time PhD (and I managed to deliver two papers this year without having anything thrown at me, or getting thrown out) plus a broken arm in June… which still hurts actually. Half a year more and it should stop. Anyway, art!

In March I had my first full proper-play production at Theatre503 with Box of Tricks Theatre’s Word:Play – Awake was a short 15 minute conversation between a dying gamer and her avatar. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t really rate it as a piece of writing, I think I’d found a story but not really the right form; so I next moved from the stage to the street… In May I released my first experiment in sound-based pervasive work – Walk With Me, a 10 minute soundwalk for one to be done anywhere in the rain. I got some lovely feedback, handwritten notes, posted found items, and twitpics and photo albums from people who went on the walk. I then got to develop to 30 minutes worth of sound-walking for The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You in July, which although admittedly breathed it’s first breath out of Walk With Me, was this time built out of memories collected from people online. It was commissioned by the Green Room as part of the Hazard Festival, and I fell slightly in love with Manchester as well as learning a lot about working with a group audience, not just a single person. APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T HERD THEM. Who knew. Then Fierce‘s Interrobang allowed me to push my practice beyond the soundwalk (which I didn’t want to get stuck in as a form) into a 4 minute piece of live art called ‘Home’… OK it still used recorded sound. And was pretty damn authored. But it was a step, and I learnt a lot more about live art as a form. A brief art/academia mashup occurred for the TaPRA conference with A Soundwalk without Organs - a soundwalk done as part of a paper delivered which described the contemporary academic conference as completely useless in representing either academic thought or arts practice. FUN. Then it got to Autumn, and I got to make a soundwalk with a piece of entirely new music from the brilliant Lantern Music, Nightwalk York happened as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York Festivals in October/November. Finally towards the end of November Hibernate! a game for Larkin’ About took to the streets of Manchester, and I was at least able to push my practice a little bit further in terms of pervasive stuff…

I also attended and liveblogged Mayfest for Forest Fringe and Inbetween Time for New Work Network, did my first 2 guest lectures in January, and followed with a few speaking events, culminating in Shift Happens in July. I’ve got a lot better at speaking/teaching since the shaky beginning of this year, and hope I get the opportunity to do more of it in 2011.

This year coming I’d also like the opportunity to collaborate more with OTHER PEOPLE. I really don’t see enough of them other people types. Although I suppose it’s harder to fit in if there’s more than just me to cater for, I do often wish I had a collaborator to bounce ideas off, too often end up bouncing my head off a wall instead. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a part of some kind of company. But it’s all a long while off. 2012 (all going to plan) is when I’ll be PhD-ed up and looking for some kind of game-plan.

And what about other people’s work? Well here are some of my favourite things, where possible in twos (for no real reason at all).

Music – This year was tinged with a Scottish rockish feel, Frightened Rabbit captured me for the Summer, and We Were Promised Jetpacks came in time for Winter to ease me into the darker days. I got to see Frightened Rabbit live, but WWPJ haven’t ventured south yet from what I can see. Hope they will soon, because Scotland is expensive to get to.

Film – I saw Moon in January – seriously amazed this didn’t get ALL OF THE OSCARS. And the exquisite Bright Star is well worth a watch – I don’t care if you ‘don’t like films with bonnets and dresses in’, watch it. It’s a wonderful piece of writing/acting/direction.

Theatre – Although not a personal favourite, it was an absolute joy to introduce someone to theatre with Kneehigh’s Red Shoes – a friend who I discovered had never even seen a panto had their MIND BLOWN by what theatre could be. Highlights (more than two) otherwise divided between Yorkshire’s Unlimited, Third Angel and Red Ladder stage shows, and Bristol’s Duncan Speakman, Mayfest, and Inbetween Time festivals which woke me up to what more theatre and performance could be. London gets a look in for the one piece I could afford to get to (it was free and on a Sunday) – Hide and Seek’s adventures in and around the National. And then to Birmingham for The Author, which resulted in my FIRST PROPER QUOTE IN THE GUARDIAN. It made my parents forgive me for getting quoted in the Telegraph.

Apps/Games I finally forked out for World of Goo – and there’s an Android app called Spaghetti and Marshmallows which channels it a little bit which is worth a go if you can’t access iOS4 – I like them physical puzzlers. Papa Sangre OMG buy it now, and the Board Game Remix Kit, which is going to form the basis of basically the COOLEST DINNER PARTY YOU EVER HEARD OF early next year, are all worth the small amount of money you’ll pay for them.

Comics I woke up to comics care of the iPad my mum kindly bought me with some inheritance money – I could cart whole series across the many train journeys I take monthly; bliss. I kill Giants and Preacher are the two I’d pick out if I had to.

Book Serious? I haven’t read anything without pictures for pleasure for… since the PhD started. I try, and then I fall asleep. Incidentally I’m currently encountering the same problem with PhD books so it’s nothing personal (or genre-ific?)

And a resolution? Well last year’s to eat less meat got turned into 360 day a year vegetarianism, so I have high hopes for 2011′s SORT OUT YOUR MONEY.

Have a lovely 2011 all, thanks for reading the blog. Here’s to exciting new projects *raises glass*

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/12/2011-a-year-in-art-mine-and-other-peoples/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/11/i-didnt-applaud-was-that-right/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/11/i-didnt-applaud-was-that-right/#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:39:15 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1972

I am so tired at the moment. I am so tired of being angry, of feeling each stupid, ill-thought-out, privileged and destructive decision of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition hit me like a punch to the stomach. Have you ever been punched in the stomach? I haven’t, I spoke to someone who has though, and I think it’s an adequate metaphor.

I went to see Tim Crouch’s The Author, today. I had tried to avoid reading details about it, all that I knew was that it was an interactive-ish play with two lines of audience facing one another, and that it was about writing, and accountability. I also knew people had walked out, fainted, thrown things in reaction to it.

And I was apprehensive. I was apprehensive about doing it wrong, it wasn’t clear how much of it was a script, and how much of it wanted audience input. I knew that it asked for some, but had also read one of the performers bemoaning ‘wrong’ interruptions.

I was also angry. And tired. Which I normally am these days. And I knew that if someone stood up and tried to imply that I did not hold myself accountable to the world, to all that people do to other people, that I did anything other than spend every second I am not (and also some that I am) trying to earn a living or make art; protesting, writing, coding and shouting about the wrong in the world, I would react with violence. Like the image of the Millbank protester kicking the window. I would speak out of turn, and shatter their words.

“I looked at the performers on the stage and I saw that they had imagined me, badly”*

I sat down. The door closed. And as @danrebellato said, it was cleverer than that. It asked you to lean towards it, but it didn’t exploit.

It described some shocking things. But not with the aim To Shock, rather with the aim To Show. Shocking if you have never forced yourself to look, certainly. But it also talked about what looking means.

Here’s something about me: I have never, and will never purposefully watch a youtube video or recording of someone dying. I won’t even watch people breaking bones, or hitting a hard bail whilst skateboarding. Might not sound unusual to some of you, but for most people my age it I am an anomaly. It’s not that I don’t admit the horror or the pain, but rather that I won’t abuse someone’s embodied life by cheapening their death or injury with disembodied mimesis.

This person is not a symbol of the Iran riots, this woman is called Neda, and she is dying, bleeding to death, struggling to breathe, suffocating. She’s not 500,000 google hits.

I struggled with the wikileaks release of the Iraq shooting video for a similar reason. Should I face this video, as something I, as a member of my society, am complicit in? Am I actually just shielding myself from facing the reality of my place in the system – both complicit but (more of a hurt to me) essentially powerless? After all, in a democracy we all have units of power, but we lend them, one by one, up through the system, where they are traded, some handed to lawmakers, others to decision makers, perhaps redistributed to the armed forces… But if I do watch this film of people dying, what am I facing? Their deaths? The people killing them? My accountability? Or some pixels representing those things, never exhausted?

People are wrong if they have described this play as ‘interactive’. It isn’t, you can’t affect the outcomes. But that’s not to say that’s a bad thing. This play was about something that is sometimes the result of interaction, but here was found elsewhere; through embodiment. The Author illuminated the bodies which in a conventional play are erased by darkness, or by becoming a part of a mass. The Author addressed you. Called people by their names, and when it did use darkness, you and the performers were all in the same light-less-ness.

The actors used their acting voices. You were clear about who you had traded your power to, and though they lent it back to you through the occasional question, you were always clear, I thought, about where you stood.

I have never nearly died. I have been hurt, though. Had serious injuries. I am scared at the moment – after seeing how easy it was to simply slip and snap the end of my radius off this Summer – I am scared of hurting myself. I see it play in front of me with every pothole I cycle over and patch of wet leaves that I step across. I am scared of injuring myself again, but probably more of the moment of being faced by my own fragility, my own pain, my bodily mortality.

Someone on Twitter described The Author as beautiful. But I wouldn’t say that, I would call it exquisite, in the same way as heartbreak is.

I have had that happen. It remember it felt like I couldn’t breathe. It hurt to fall asleep with my thoughts and it hurt to wake up and remember who I was. My body shook, lost all sense of time and hunger, and I didn’t recognise it. Because really, for the first time, I saw it. I saw my mind – I saw the metaphysical – connect with my body, and affect me in such a way that I stood in a shower and cried and cried and couldn’t leave, because needed the water to wash over me and render me and my tears invisible.

I didn’t applaud after it finished. It didn’t seem right. Not the right way to react to it. Not appropriate. In the same way I wouldn’t applaud at a funeral. Was that wrong? Was that not the right thing to do? Was that right?

*paraphrasing, I couldn’t afford the script.

Image shared on Flickr by somegeekintn via a CC license

I saw two very different pieces this week. Both made me react quite strongly so I thought I’d scribble a few lines about them. (aside: what’s the typing equivalent of scribble? Patter?)

Although really very different pieces, one devised, one scripted, one raucous and difficult, the other anxious and heartfelt, it felt like they were both, in some way about inarticulacy; Ugly the inarticulacy of a potential then, What I Heard About the World about the inarticulacy of being, now. Here are some thoughts:

Ugly

Ugly is a piece touring regionally with Red Ladder Theatre, the script is by Emma Adams and is a really challenging piece which I struggled with. It was only actually by the post-show discussion that it really began to work for me. That’s the first time how I felt about a piece has been changed so dramatically by talking with people involved. <insert something about me being stubborn>

Both the text and the direction was relentless. There were no still characters, no still moments, even moments of (opted) coitus were frenetic and impersonal, the characters seemed to be archetypes left out in the sun too long then fed a combination of amphetamines and ritalin, and the language warped and broke and jarred and choked with swear words. I struggled to hold my attention to it because it rattled on without respite. And I think that now feels like it was the point. It was not structurally sound. It felt like it was too long. And it said big things, at the same time as (with the frequent swears) saying nothing. It was a flawed vehicle about a flawed future. When I got back from Twitter I described it as a mix of Alice in Wonderland and Threads. And as I pile similes and metaphors on you – you hopefully see something, too, of inarticulacy. The experience of the play, not the words or the action, is where the heart of it lay.

But I also think that this play wasn’t really for me – not that I didn’t like it, but that for me, it’s not necessary. It was a piece for younger people, the ones who don’t see beyond now because as yet their life doesn’t require them to, and don’t connect the many news reports to a future. I don’t need convincing climate change is deadly. And I’m not one to be convinced in such a frenetic, physical way. I think it did want for a greater connection to that audience – this came out afterwards – ‘what happened in between’, ‘how did it get to that’ – they needed a glimpse of something they could recognise, to tie them back to their own lives. But it stubbornly refused that. And that’s a point in itself – you won’t recognise anything apart from that these are people. But some of them aren’t even that.

The other Climate Change Play that has stuck with me for a long time is (the lovely) Steve Water’s Contingency Plan. A completely different, very realistic, near-future double bill about flooding somewhere very like my home county and Westminster’s reaction to it. The script was an exquisite piece of almost porcelain sculpture – and as Steve, and like me, cerebral at heart. That was my watershed. But I think for a few people, younger, Ugly might be theirs.

What I Heard About the World

The ink bleeding from an upturned plane, sunk in a salted fish tank. A love song for a massacre. A little girl with magical powers. The sound of…

These are images swimming in my mind after seeing What I Heard About the World last night.

This piece, devised by Sheffield’s Third Angel with the Portuguese Mala Voadora was a much gentler, stiller, but also more anxious experience. It felt more about the weight of storytelling, the weight of being the storyteller. It took me about 15 minutes to settle into and I think I’ve put my finger on that being down to each of the 3 people in the piece’s approaches. Alex felt like himself, telling stories – Chris, with his mode of um’s and er’s felt more writerly, but at the same time as someone performing someone telling stories, and then Jorge felt much more like ‘just’ a performer. As though each of them took on a different stage in the telling of the stories they’d been given.

The piece was nicely woven together, I appreciated the music (and hint towards storytelling of old) and the linking sections of action and fast rambled accounts of the real-life journeys to reach the places talked about. My opening unease about not really knowing whose piece it was – which character it belonged to – relaxed, as it felt like mostly that actually it belonged to none of them, all of them, both.

In a very different way to Ugly there was again something there about inarticulacy – this time the inarticulacy of being in the world and the decisions – conscious or unthought – which we make in order to fit it in our heads.

The end section really brought this into focus, and reminded me of a passage I just read from a book on Heidegger;

“What art can do is bear witness not to the sublime, but to the aporia [undecidability] of art and to its pain. It does not say the unsayable, but says that it cannot say it. ‘After Auschwitz’ it is necessary, according to Eli Weisel, to add yet another verse to the story of the forgetting of the recollection beside the fire in the forest. I cannot light the fire, I do not know the prayer, I can no longer find the spot in the forest, I cannot even tell the story any longer. All I know how to do is to say that I no longer know to tell this story. And this should be enough. This has to be enough.” – Lyotard, here

Particularly for the (character of?) Chris Thorpe, the piece felt like it was hinting towards a kind of liberal inarticulacy. A want for parity in world that offers none, a need to not take stories as wide-brushstroke constructions, when as soon as they’re told, that’s what they become. And a resistance to narrative causality, because you know that the bad stories end with an ending that can’t be undone. At the last, he can’t take the accountability, and reads instead from a worn piece of paper – to me that said ‘this one isn’t my responsibility’.

Although perhaps it was just ‘I haven’t had time to memorise this yet, so we aged the paper to make it look intentional’.

[see what I did there?]

Greetings all, hope you’re enjoying the cooling down of the weather and the reddening of the trees. Autumn always gets me excited, not just because I can make crumbles and gravy dinners with more than usual impunity, or because it means the approach of my birthday, but also because it feels like the beginning of new endeavours. School years, university; Autumn makes me want to purchase stationary. And in the spirit of new endeavours, I have three very exciting things to tell you about…

One: I will this Saturday (25^th September) be performing a piece of Live Art in Stoke Newington Airport’s Live Art Speedating as part of Fierce, Birmingham’s Interrobang. Lots of words there that might not make sense to everyone. Go look at the poster, and check out this video, for more on what it’s all about…

Two: I shall also be talking at the Coventry Pecha Kucha on the 12^th of October on Theatre in the Age of the First Person. 20 slides of 20 seconds each. See here for more info. Other talks, too, I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘safe sex with robots’ one.

And three: I’m very excited to announce a new soundwalk! Nightwalk; a guided walk through the light and dark of York will be happening on Wednesday 27th & Friday 30th October at 7pm. The event will be free, and is happening as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York festivals. I’m especially thrilled because this will be my first collaboration with real music-making people, the brilliant Lantern Music. Hopefully it will mark the beginning of a beautiful collaborative relationship. The site for the piece is http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com – do share it, and join/invite people to the Facebook Event. And follow me and @umbrellaproject on Twitter for whisperings from the writing process.

So there you go, lots of exciting things to lead me up to the beginning of November, and the prospect of launching a very exciting country-wide project come next Spring… but you’ll have to wait to hear about that.

(Youtube link here)

So, a couple of days writing, recording, and editing later, here’s a quick taster of the first minute and a half of The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You.

The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You is happening (rain or shine) at 5PM on this Saturday 17th of July, at Piccadilly Gardens, in Manchester. For more info go to rainreminds.tumblr.com and join the facebook event at bit.ly/RainRemindsFB for a reminder when the MP3 and instructions are live.

Follow or discuss it on Twitter with the #rainreminds hashtag.

The soundwalk is part of the Hazard Festival, Manchester hazardmcr.org/

http://walkwith.tumblr.com

Just squeaking in a blog post at the last moment to keep to my ‘at least 4 a month’ quota. Lots has happened this month, Mayfest took up a great deal of it, then I completed 10,000 words of PhD chapter 1 and other material for my first year progress board, including all of the fore-planning (I actually have the next two and a bit years planned out, which is an unusual combination of reassuring and scary). I’ve also released a first foray into soundwalk style storytelling to the general public, and agreed to and submitted an abstract for a joint paper on the inefficiencies of the academic conference in representing performative thoughts for a TaPRA conference in September… That’s written better in the actual abstract. So a busy month, though I really do intend to do a run down of my experiences at Mayfest sometime soon, promise.

The image above is from the soundwalk I’ve released, check it out at http://walkwith.tumblr.com – all it requires is an mp3 player, 10 minutes, and some rain. I would really appreciate any feedback you have – either in text/audio/image/video form via the site, Twitter, or even posting me handwritten/collected things (as some people have). It’s my first experiment in the form, and at the moment is a bit like a monologue-with-interactive-bits than something that might be called truly interactive or player-as-protagonist driven. I shall have to get working with the second-person referential, I think. I’ve also got plans to play with binaural audio – to develop a real 3D feeling with the headphones. You can hear some really good examples of where that can lead at Papa Sangre’s house, the audio storytelling is there described as a ‘video game without video’. Make sure you wear headphones when listening. I’m getting some mic’d up ear buds and a cheap minidisc player (from Twitter, the lovely @daveisanidiot) to experiment with that. My brother (trained sound engineer if you’re hiring/have intern work/want someone to hold a boom mic whilst BREAKING WOOD) is also going to help out, so more technical stuff and higher quality hopefully forthcoming.

These experiments are all eventually leading towards the ideas I have for the currently quite cryptic Umbrella Project (no zombies involved), which I’m trying to secure some funding before lift-off. If you know of any funds, grants, or tech/web/music support-in-kind that might be out there and interested in being involved in a country-wide pervasive storytelling experiment, let me know. You can follow the Umbrella Project on Twitter here, and if you have £8,000 (I have a fully costed and sensible budget and everything) you wanted to throw at me, please do!

Finally, as June arrives and July seems much closer than it did in May, I’m beginning to think about what I might talk about at Shift Happens on the 5th and 6th. Shift Happens is an industry (as opposed to academic) conference about arts, learning and digital technology, and there are some really big speakers from places like 4ip, The Guardian, and the National Theatre also up there, so I’m trying to work out how I can best fit in. I suspect I’m there as a passionate loud-mouth and blogger before I am an academic, but I do feel like the dialogue needs to move on from ‘you should be using/interested in tech’, ‘but it’s scary/time consuming/too hard/not monetarily justifiable’. Perhaps a focus on the harder times that are upcoming with regards to the Tory-Lib Dem arts cuts. I’ll have a think about that. And if you think I have a particular clear message that I’ve hitherto missed, do let me know, very welcome!

Merry Bank Holiday Weekend. And if any of you are off to the Rough Beats Festival next weekend, find me and say ‘hi’. I may even say ‘hi’ back.

image shared on flickr via a creative commons license on by SarahMcGowen

Act One.

Over the past week and for 5 in total, several people in the Twittersphere will be playing a part in one of the greatest love stories in the English language. Such Tweet Sorrow is Romeo and Juliet told in 140 character installments. The piece is 24/7, and includes audioboos, yfrog pics, youtube videos and an awful, awful lot of tweeting.

There are several really interesting aspects to this bold experiment, which is a collaboration between the RSC and a multi-media company called Mudlark. The project is 4ip funded, the basic story line (transposed into a modern setting) is plotted and then the plotted occurrences are handed over to the actors daily, who then improvise their reported actions.

People who follow the characters on Twitter can see the conversations happening in real time, and are often asked to contribute, aid decisions, lend reactions. This interaction is producing some intriguing results, some people playing along, and others determined to break what’s left of the ‘4^th wall’. The project even has its own ‘fanboy’ playing with the story, to which the official @such_tweet account have been alerting people to (and blocked, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish).  The idea of a piece of performance infiltrating your daily feeds is a fascinating one, and the interactive aspect also invites its audience to be performers. When you interact with the characters you are interacting with them as a character yourself – a version of your self, one who pretends that these characters are real.

However despite the interesting questions the work is raising, truth is I’m feeling incredibly let down by the #suchtweet experiment. It is entirely right that it exists, and that people should explore these new forms, but aspects of the characterisation, logistical errors, as well continual formal misconceptions are really beginning to grate. The question is, how and when is it appropriate to raise these criticisms. During? Or after the event has finished?

I disagree with this idea – a film is a finished product, performances grow. A traditional theatrical experience is usually a closed down one, this ongoing project is describe as interactive. Surely this should go for the criticism as well?

Another pertinent question, certainly, is how to deliver criticism. Due to the amount of interaction invited, do you talk directly to the performers, in character? Suggest that the way they’re delivering their information is heavy handed (TMI!) or their characterization offensive (#uploadthatload case in point.). As it is a project largely delivered through Twitter that was my first reaction. I’m not sure it was the right one. It’s hard to phrase ‘I think your characterisation represents unfair assumptions about teenage boys’. Best I managed was “have some respect.” My next reaction was to tweet about my dissatisfaction publicly, engage with (what is ostensibly) other audience members. Some suggested waiting to see how it worked out, though most of my followers that responded (by no means a bunch necessarily representative of the rest of Twitter) shared my concerns. Mixed sample:

However, after a character RT’d some of my ‘in character’ criticisms (attracting attention outside of the context I had given) I feel like I should set out exactly what I think. So here I am, outside of Twitter, long form. Let’s dance.

Act Two.

I want to make myself clear, I certainly don’t think that this performance experiment is in any way sullying the name of Shakespeare, or that it is in any trivial way attempting to engage dramatically with the tech or (as it’s often misrepresented) ‘youth’ community. I think it’s an excellent concept. The problem is all in the execution.

Gender.

The level of gender stereotyping that has been occurring in #suchtweet has been painful to behold. The boys tweet pictures of girls breasts, make fun of the ‘ginger mingers’ they pull by accident, and generally fight and swear. The female characters moan, cry, and go shopping to relieve their tension. I was pointed by the official @such_tweet feed to consider Shakespeare’s own gender characterization. I have two answers to that 1) when you transpose a story to a modern setting, it makes sense that characterisation should follow 2) Shakespeare’s characters were much more interesting and nuanced than are currently being played out. I also think it’s entirely possible to be nuanced individual in a reduced, 140 character format  – everyone else on twitter manages it.

Age.

This is a small one, but important, I think, and plays a part in the previous problem. I came across this quote from the actress playing Juliet which sums up the problem:

“I’m nearly 20 so I would normally type in quite a sophisticated way, but a 15-year-old today will use a lot of text speak.” (Source)

So she’s 19. 4 years seems more the younger you are. I’m 25. But I have a brother and sister at 13 and 11. I also remember being 15, me and most of the people I knew made a concerted effort to avoid text speak, we felt like it was an adult stereotype of our lives (though perhaps didn’t articulate it like that), these days texts can be as long as you like, much more used are internet acronyms and emoticons. Also, young people do not feel more simply, they just sometimes don’t have the tools with which to articulate it – that’s why I find the broad brushstrokes of Mercutio and Romeo’s carousing so insulting. I know some teen boys do it, I know some that don’t, but they sure as hell wouldn’t tweet about so much of it. They’re not that foolish.

Story

This is a minor qualm, but really? A car crash? That was the best modern analogue for warring families that you could find? At one of my friend’s schools the Muslim and Hindu kids had a horrible ongoing vendetta which ended in a stabbing. My brother’s girlfriend had to keep him a secret for a long while because he wasn’t Chinese. And while I’m pretty sure that though my mum wouldn’t disown me if I fell in love with a Tory, it’d be pretty hard for her to fathom. Perhaps ignore that last one, but the previous feel much more relevant, and there’s so much less EXPLAINING to do.

Form.

This is the big one, despite the new form, the fundamental point is the old playwright’s adage: show don’t tell. These characters should not be offering us the dialogue as it happens, but snapshots of a much bigger picture – the interactive part is piecing it together. What the performances so far represent is a fundamental misunderstanding of the potential of the form. A recent example of this is that last night (Saturday) Tybalt and Romeo had a fight. 3 characters told us this.

How to make this performance and not reported literature? Show, don’t tell. Plenty of kids record fights and put them on Youtube, heck they probably livestream them now. A twitvid taken by Mercutio of Romeo and Tybalt fighting amongst chaos in a pub would have been thrilling. Also, dramatic.

Another example: the way the characters actually use the tweets. This is the advice I give to all of the theatre companies I work with on social media in practice or process: make it interesting. Saying “I am so angry” isn’t interesting or interactive; linking to angry music you’re playing, is. Saying “my eyes are so red from crying” is not interesting, but asking people if cucumbers on the eyes bring down puffiness because you don’t want your dad to know, is. Don’t tell me your brother was just arrested on the telly, show me a fuzzy twitpic of it.

Characters are tweeting things that it is unrealistic to tweet just to get the information out there. Twitter is a public space, would you announce your problems to everyone in a pub? No. But your sadness or anger might seep through, become apparent.

Perhaps not everyone on twitter is interesting, but this is not real life, this is art embedded in real life, it should still be artful.*

*Never talk to me about Live Art.

Finally,

Language

If you can’t fit it into a tweet without taking out all of the spaces and using c’s and u’s find another way of saying it. Or blog it, live journal, audioboo, twitpic, video. The skill of Twitter is learning how to make pertinent points in short bursts. We can’t always succeed at that, but that’s the fullest expression of it.

I think that #suchtweet is a bold experiment, but all involved seem to be working on the misconception that a smaller form requires broader brushstrokes, that they have to squeeze everything in, that there’s no room for nuance. Is this because of the 140 character form? Would you consider a haiku fundamentally less expressive than a longer poem? What about iambic pentameter? Shakespeare’s nuance was in his language, #suchtweet needs to find it in its form. The actors are working hard in unexplored territory, I completely respect that, but I consider that a greater reason to offer criticism, not a lesser. I also acknowledge that perhaps this experiment is not aimed at me, theatre academic, playwright, blogger. Maybe it’s aimed at people who don’t use these forms, but are growing up living them. And that (of course) the piece could get much better.

Do you think I’m being too harsh? Do you think that I should have waited until the end to critique? Do you think I should review each week? I’d be interested to know what you think.

Epilogue.

How would I have done this? Much more mean-ly. I would have cast the piece from existing and well established Twitter and socmed users, secretly, and then let the story play out without announcing it, to have people we previously thought of as ‘real’, fight, fall in love, die… Imagine finding their blog suspended? A tweet from family announcing that they had died? Playing with the boundaries of the real is dangerous, but an investigation of these online spaces – how they pretend to liveness and truth – and of how we all reconstruct ourselves, play a part, an analogue of our self on them each day? Now that’s interesting.

For my week two post on Such Tweet Sorrow, click here.

Here’s a short cut of some of the footage I took of the rehearsals of Awake last Friday. If your device/phone doesn’t like Vimeo check out the Youtubes. For more information on Awake and Word:Play 3 (including how to buy tickets!) check out http://bit.ly/WordPlay3.