How late is this blog post? Somewhere in the region of ‘epically’, or if you like, ‘roughly a month’. I shall continue to use this as an excuse, and in fact, as the fracture clinic doctor told me it won’t really be totally all right (not his exact words) until this time next year, I shall be continuing to use it to excuse tardiness in all hand/arm related things for many more months to come.

The good news, however, is that the cast is off, and after catching up with my life, work, writing, passing my first year PhD progress panel, and getting over all the related hangovers, I return to you, Lo, with tantalising tales of my exploits at the Hide & Seek Weekender at the National Theatre!

The Hide and Seek Weekender ran from Friday the 9^th to Sunday the 11^th of July, and was hosted by the National, in a variety of foyer and outside spaces (I didn’t see any work in the performance spaces, though that doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t any, as there was an awful lot going on). I attended the Sunday, but you can see and download the full program here. I didn’t get much of an opportunity to take photos or videos as I was still be-casted at that point, but I used my MIND CAMERA instead. Here are some of the games, sights and sounds it captured:

The big focus of the Sunday seemed to be on the Delhi Games section, most of which I stuck with throughout the day as it wasn’t too precarious-movement-heavy. Also it was a new interesting dimension on the pervasive gaming that I’ve so far done – rather than just reclaiming physical or tech space, the Delhi Games also played across cultural boundaries. These games variously used skype, facebook, and text messages to collaborate on different playful experiences with two groups of artists and players, one in Delhi, and the other in London. Here are the ones I participated in:

Noah’s International Lark (I can’t find info on who this one was by). This was a simple but effective getting-to-know-you type game played over Skype. Two teams made up of both India and Britain-based participants had a limited amount of time to work out several ‘things in common’ shared by the team members. Each ‘thing in common’ had to include participants from both countries, and was scored (eventually) by how rare it was. The ‘rarity’ score was then multiplied by the number of people in the group who shared the ‘thing in common’. The other rule was that everyone in the group needed to be in at least one of the ‘things in common’ groupings. Sound complicated? It wasn’t. Example: We found that 5 people across both countries had met a prime minister or ex-prime minister. This was considered 4-points worth of rare (5 being most rare) so the points scored there were 20. You see? We discovered things like at least 3 people had physically stopped an aeroplane taking off, that 4 people had been arrested, that every single one of us had sent an embarrassing text to the wrong person.

Unknown. The next game I played I can’t seem to find the name of in the programme. Seems like my MIND CAMERA is a bit rubbish. Anyway, this game used webcams, facebook, and our bodies, nothing else. We were handed 5 Indian proverbs, just as a Delhi team were handed 5 English ones. We had a webcam and limited amount of time to bodily illustrate (with as many photos as we wished) each proverb (e.g. ‘what does the monkey know of the taste of ginger’) and upload it to a dedicated facebook album. We then looked through the facebook albums they’d created for us, trying to guess what they’d illustrated. Fun, interesting cultural insights.

Team Hutong (By Coney (here Mel Cook, with Hey Fan, Annette Mees and Tassos Stevens)) As per the programme notes:

“A rectangle is drawn on a map in London. The same rectangle is drawn on a map in Delhi. Teams are matched across countries, and set off together on a real-time transcontinental journey of discovery.”

This game was largely played over text, we were handed a map, some glue, some string, and a transparent umbrella, and sent off into the wider world along the path the map directed us. Along the journey we were asked to spot certain things; uniforms, dogs, babies, and text them to the team in Delhi at certain points on the map. We received a similar count, and each spotted thing translated into various things we had to collect; flowers, words, sweets. There were other tasks, at one point we had to buy some food, and text a description of it without using its name; at another point we were to recall a memory that where we were provoked, and then find something that represented the memory we received in exchange. All of the things we found were stuck or tied to our umbrella. Eventually we returned to a skype chat where we shared our umbrellas and revealed the mysteries (like, for example, the astonishing number of uniforms they had spotted, over 50!).

One of the few images I was able to grab, our umbrella about half way around the Team Hutong route.

Sangre Y Patatas By Coney (here Tassos Stevens with Peter Law) I didn’t actually participate in, as it mainly involved bumping into people on purpose (though at least my death throes would have been realistically painfully voiced). The game consisted of several Patatas (potatoes) and one monster, Sangre (blood), all of whom had their eyes closed. The rules were very simple, you stumbled around in the dark, and when you met someone, you held them and greeted them with your name. If you met a Patatas, you carried merrily on your way, but if you met the Sangre, you met a horrible death with accompanying excruciating death throes. Players who were knocked out moved to the edges and formed a whispering circle to alert players still ‘in’ of the boundaries. There were also hanging bells and scrunchy objects on the floor as aural landmarks which could alert others to your presence.

After the first trial, the players were divided into teams, and smaller versions took place with other teams forming whispering walls. ‘winning’ people were the best deaths, the last Patatas standing, and the quickest Sangre to wipe out all their Patatas. Then a grand finale happened with the cream of the screaming bloody potato crop. This game was hilarious to watch, and drew quite an audience. As I wasn’t able to actually take part, here’s a quote from @MeganFVaughan, one of the friends who I went with, on what participating was like:

“You feel pretty vulnerable to begin with, so when someone nearby falls down it’s tough not to scream yourself.  Maybe I’m just highly strung.  On the other side of things, when I bumped into someone and they weren’t the killer, I was so relieved that my natural reaction was to start giggling, like when you get off a rollercoaster and your body’s so glad its not dead that adrenalin sends you hysterical.  It’s nice that group games like this can be reclaimed for adults.  I’ve not taken part in anything even remotely like it since I was about 12, and I think all licensed venues should have designated Sangres Y Patatas areas from now on.”

And a quick video of a version of the game, played with similar ‘sound hazards’ (crisps and bells)

Sangre Y Patatas – live from Papa Sangre on Vimeo.

The Sangre Y Patatas game is also a seed for a 3-D “video game with no video” that’s currently being developed, and that I’m (possibly extremely) enthusiastic about. For more on that follow @PapaSangre on Twitter, and check out the blog/site at http://www.papasangre.com/ you can listen to a vimeo trailer (make sure you’re wearing headphones) here.

So what did it all feel like?

As an experience the Delhi games were all really uplifting, funny, and while they highlighted in essence how similar we all are, they also gave us a taste of a different culture, and how that culture shapes us, our environment, our language and our daily lives. The games were shaped by a pleasant recognition, directly in Noah’s International Lark, and slowly games like the proverb game. As we were trying to translate Hindi to English to bodies – we also found ourselves searching for the English equivalent – which we almost always found, because (as the game highlighted) the playful images we use in folklore and childhood stories often have universal lessons behind them. The Hutong (the word means a narrow Chinese street or alley – the history/relevance of them is well work a quick wiki-read) was my favourite one; we traversed our two cities, collecting the shrapnel of our environments, creating a ragtag emblem of our trans-national journeys, and then we arrived back to eagerly discuss our trophies and experiences, of which we were all oddly proud.

The simplicity of Sangre Y Patatas is a brilliant lesson in game design, the slight twisting of the language made the action alien enough from games you played as a kid to not make you feel childish, and the fact that you were placed in the dark, that you changed the sense with which you usually perceived the world with, transformed the game-space effortlessly.

Finally, as I said in a tweet shortly following the event, I have never felt so much like I belonged in the National as I did in those few short hours. Events like the Weekender, and like the Forest Fringe’s Microfest, play an incredibly important part in reclaiming sanctioned ‘art space’ as well as street space for new playful experiences. By inhabiting and re-revealing this national institution in an unusual way, it meant you were able to own the space, with others, as part of a genuine community; not just as an audience made up of single units. Hide&Seek’s Weekender was all about unity.

Last night I finally got to see some of the work coming out of Andy Field’s Forest Fringe. The microfestival at BAC was a vibrant and buzzing combination of short experiences, fuller scripted pieces, sound work, music, installations and intimate performances. Some of the pieces were more ‘finished’, whilst others just setting out on their first period of R&D. The whole event fitted into the nooks and crannies of the BAC building, and filled the spaces in between with live music and discoveries aplenty – one highlight being the items of clothing dotted around, inviting you to take them in exchange for you’re an item of your own, and it story. Like any good festival, there was more than you could see in one night, and each attendee built their own experience.

Pieces I encountered included Search Party’s Growing Old With You, in its early stages of an R&D process investigating how our society is changing with its aging population. The issue was approached on a micro-level in a one to one experience that exposed the performer’s approach to their aging, before asking you to exchange your own story for a small birthday cake. Though this was the ‘newest’ work that I experienced, it was also the one that affected me in the rawest manner. I’m definitely going to be looking to hear about what it grows into.

Mamoru Iriguchi did the best sideways step in heels I’ve seen a man in a dress do, as he held your hand in the dark, asking you to investigate the house you share during a power cut, illuminated only by a head torch (projector affixed to a helmet, projecting a rich animation, which moved with you.)

Tania El Khoury’s Fuzzy asked an audience of up to 5 to act as her and her (absent) partner’s therapist. The piece felt like it was erring on an interesting clash of cultures as seen through the relationship of a Lebanese woman and a man from the Midlands. Though the performance perhaps felt like it was playing to a larger crowd, how we adjust to more intimate performance styles (does a more expressionist approach alienate in a useful or destructive way in intimate performance?) is definitely something that bears investigation.

Charlotte Jarvis’ video installation All American Hero wafted the smell of cold Chinese takeaway and stale popcorn towards you as you slumped on a sofa, watching the video diaries of the world’s first All American Hero. Something between X Factor and the Million Dollar Man, it felt all too plausible.

Throughout the night, I dipped in and out of the Travelling Sounds Library (pictured), which featured the work of Blast Theory, Unlimited Theatre, Duncan Speakman (and more). The library invited you to settle onto a sofa, open up a book, and discover an mp3 player and headphones containing a selection of several phonic experiences lasting from 2-40 minutes. Kaleidoscope by Abigail Conway was a particular highlight for me, a piece that asked if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

Finally, I investigated the Waiting Room, where you were able to peruse the emails that scored the process of putting the festival together. Stressed, funny, and often personal, this view into the ‘back channel’ of the event gave the whole evening the feeling of ‘opening up’ rather than ‘presenting’, which fitted perfectly with the fringe ethic.

You may have spotted a brief rant by me on Twitter the other day (1, 2, 3) in response to this article on the effect of the internet and other digital technology on theatre audiences. The article itself is balanced, reasoned, and puts forward a point I very much agree with:

… ultimately, we should avoid looking at the net as either intrinsically good or bad. Rather, we should see it as a tool, and like all tools, it is only as good as the person or people using it. (source)

The piece was responding to criticism of how the “constant feedback demanded by interactive technology can, in effect, become like a “giant focus group” that challenges “the autonomy of the artist”.” (ibid) and that “these digital and virtual connections, [… are] not particularly human.” (ibid) by which the artist being quoted means not of interest or destructive to theatre/artists.

There is a misconception, I believe, that technology is driving us apart. In fact (and as I put more thoroughly in the paper I recently delivered at the recent TaPRA postgrad symposium) I believe we are living in an era that is coming to be defined by the removal of the interface. Of the removal of the sanctioning of knowledge and of the mediatisation of our relationship with the information and entertainment we consume.

Likewise with 100% of 6-10 year olds gaming (Source (PDF)), and as a nation our spending 30% more on video games than on the consumption of film, we are also now a generation of people becoming much more used to being closer more embedded in its stories. This is political as well as social, adverts and didactic politics are also able to embed themselves in the player or person at the centre of these stories, and less perceptively so, so we also need tools to allow us to interrogate that embeddedness. Theatre, is a powerfully political form, it embodies the question what if. The question that has been so evolutionarily important to us, and the question which is the basis of all politics. For theatre to preserve it’s political power/relevance (see The Player as Poltical for more) I believe it needs to be wading into Technoculture, examining how it is changing the way we live, and who we are.

After all, how is anyone who wishes to make theatre about people who live now able to do so without acknowledging that way that we are mediated and the ways that we communicate are integral to the way we live? If Michiko Kakutani is able to admit that his audiences have changed, perhaps he should consider who it is that we make our art for, about.

Acknowledging technology in your art doesn’t have to mean using it. It can, and powerfully so, but it can also be about understanding living in technoculture, about how you open up your processes, how you market your work, the processes by which you make it, and the way you approach the telling of it.

Let me introduce you to the future. We’ve always had it. It’s always been perceived to be degrading us somehow. By all means sign off on your own obsolescence, but know this: to investigate our digital technoculture is necessary. To discount its cultural relevance is at best ignorant, at worst, dangerous.

It’s time to stop having this conversation about if it’s right that theatre should embrace digital technology/technoculture, and instead start looking about how it’s being done. If you are scared of it, if you believe it is degrading how we live, that is exactly why you should be examining it.

Blog posts like this are just as guilty of continuing this conversation. So this will be the last I write on the matter for a while – of course it’s always necessary to reexamine your assumptions – but for the next few posts I do RE the arts, I’m going to stop talking about how and why the arts and tech should/can work together, and instead talk about the tools and ways they’re being used. If we should be looking at digital technology “as a tool, and like all tools, it is only as good as the person or people using it” (source) it’s time for me to stop blogging about why, and start looking at who and how.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/04/what-if/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/03/the-player-as-political/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/03/the-player-as-political/#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:39:27 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1436

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The player-as-protagonist form borrows from the actor of theatre and the avatar of online worlds, but removes the interface, allowing the user to play with aspects of the double and the void in the self. Allowing us to interrogate our selves as constructs, the player-as-protagonist format brings us back to a truer sense of self and reality, through their present absence.

Absences – of meaning, participation, reality, and identity – can constitute useful tactics in the struggle to unmask the social and economic relations of contemporary capitalist society. (Plant 1992, 181)

Though these pervasive games and interactive performances often involve recorded or other technology, which can disengage you, this is countered by the danger of placing you as the avatar in the world-constituting process. These kinds of performances represent:

An embracing of the total impossibility of getting away from the world around us. So much theatre strives to make the stage into an almost sanctified other place […] A space for coolness and distance and clarity. For conveying social messages and great untainted truths. But I don’t think you can hold back the weight of the world. It comes flooding in regardless. [interactive theatre/art] doesn’t just understand that, it relies on it. It swims in reality. (Field, In the World Not About the World 2010)

However it is important to note that one very integral aspect of the political power of theatre is in danger of being lost to immersion.

The major objection against immersion is the alleged incompatibility of the experience with the exercise of critical faculties. (Ryan 2001, 10)

Branding, politics, media and art are all exhibiting a shift towards the immersive, personal – or hyperlocal. A radical or uncritical shift towards the hyperlocal could be incredibly dangerous. If you forward politics only on an individual basis or understanding you lose a sense of the bigger ‘better good’. You lose the politics of community, the politics that acknowledges that in some aspects we are all alike, and should all have equal footing, privilege and rights. How far is the hyperlocal different from a proactive version of NIMBYism? 

Likewise we need to acknowledge the dangers posed to people’s sense of self and belief, by work that so directly involves audiences. We no longer rely on a set, actors, a whole audience to maintain the suspension of disbelief, but one person on whom the whole of their narrative rests. Although we are more and more used to traversing different worlds and identities in virtual and real spaces, we also need to acknowledge that these conceptions of the ‘self’ are still very rigid. There’s something to be said for easing people away from hegemonic visions of identity, encouraging fluidity, but we should also acknowledge that to assume a fluid transition, assumes identity is a blank slate, sculpted, opted. Does this also apply to people who aren’t white, CIS-gered, hetero, able bodied, middle class, developed-world men? What about the majority cast as an ongoing ‘Other’ – to whom identity is more important, or more integral, people who are defined by their difference? Identity is dangerous when it is thoughtlessly fragmented or assaulted.

However within this danger lies a new political power. When the arts immerse people in narrative we are asking them to augment their bodily identity, an action much more powerful and dangerous than its equivalent in a virtual space.

Our bodies are where we experience the intersection of our individuality and the cultural sphere. (Hillis 1999, 172)

There’s something of using our physical bodies to explore aspects of digital, political and mediatised embeddedness which is incredibly important – which seeks to reconcile our lived body with our virtual selves (mediated or performed). This produces a kind of ‘mixed’ or augmented reality that requires a gentler and more playful set of performative tactics to support participants and preserve a connection to community and critical faculties.

These tactics are best exemplified by the work of people and companies such as Duncan Speakman, Coney, and Blast Theory. These works are often locative and site-specific, they are rooted – allowing for the safety of the participant, and for a connection to the ‘bigger picture’. Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke and Duncan Speakman’s Always Something Somewhere Else are self-created and generative pieces of work that use GPS units

[…] to discover fragments of other people’s audio recordings, [creating] a space in which digital tracking equipment can do more than just map our place within a geographical grid. It can remake our relationship to the rich network of memories and thoughts and people that truly make up the city we inhabit.  (Field, Playing Games 2010)

The most effective of this work also uses the more traditional TIE ideas of role-play to explore issues of morality and community on a narrative/micro level, whilst the bodily presence and physical engagement acknowledges the macro/societal. In a recent series of blogs for the British Council, Andy Field describes how work such as Coney’s Small Town Anywhere and Blast Theory’s Day of the Figurines allow us to engage with

[…] a society at a point of fracture and collapse. We engage not by watching but by playing – by becoming one small fragment of this disintegrating world. (Ibid)

This is a profoundly political act, indeed, as Field goes on to say:

Politics is as much about form as it is about content. It is a way of doing things. Interpersonal relationships, the structure of our communities, our reading of and relationship to the place we inhabit. How we understand our being in the world. What [interactive arts] allow us is an opportunity to explore and experiment with how we do things. In displacing or undermining our usual, unconsidered way of relating to the people and things around us, they generate a vital context for reflection and experimentation. (Ibid)

These works deftly combine the intense and culturally relevant player-as-protagonist format with a political power that respects the weight of the immersive experience. The tactics are playful, but this does not mean they are trivial. By writing its stories on the bodies of its participants performance is able to hand people the critical tools to interrogate our culture of embeddness. We are able to locate the battleground of the ‘interior body of the material subject’ and the player-as-protagonist can become the player-as-political.

Works Cited.

BBC. “Digital Play, Digital Lifestyles.” BBC Creative Research and Development. Alice Taylor & Dr Adrian Woolard. December 2005.

http://open.bbc.co.uk/newmediaresearch/files/BBC_UK_Games_Research_2005.pdf (accessed March 18, 2010).

Causey, Matthew. Theatre and Performance in a Digital Culture, from simulation to Embeddedness. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.

Field, Andy. In the World Not About the World. Febuary 25, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/in-the-world-not-about-the-world/ (accessed March 16, 2010).

Field, Andy. Interactivity. Febuary 10, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/interactivity/ (accessed March 16, 2010)

Field, Andy, Playing Games. February 20, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/playing-games/ (accessed March 16, 2010).

Haydon, Andrew. The year in theatre: trends of 2009. December 30, 2009.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/dec/30/theatre-trends-2009 (accessed January 1, 2010).

Hillis, Ken. Digital Sensations, Space, Identity, and embodiment in virtual reality (. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Plant, Sadie. The Most Radical Gesture, the Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge, 1992.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality, Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. . Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Proposal for a 10 minute paper at

DEALING WITH THE DIGITAL

TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium

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

The Player as Political.

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

Hannah Nicklin

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

I have been thinking a lot over the past few days about the new narrative strategies emerging in the digital age- moving on from why and what they are, and what has provoked them (pretty much everything that I put into my two speeches at Notts Trent and Leeds Met in January) and instead considering the implications for us as a society, in their being our main way of consuming stories.

Stories are a massive part of how we learn and grow as a species. They allow us to try out other eventualities, other roles, understand the feelings of others, and our own place in the world. Stories are intricately linked to play, and playing (whether actually, or theatrically) is a recognised learning technique for both adults and children. (See the massive success of TIE in schools, prisons, and deprived areas, as well as the ways that children learn about their world). Likewise play – the ability to try and test for no reason other than the fun of it – is vital to creative thinking, whether in business and tech (where it’s called ‘innovation’) or in the humanities and social sciences, play, and narrative, is at the very basis of our evolutionary and inventive potential.

There is largely considered to be a point when we ‘grow out of’ playing. It is in evidence, in teasing, between friends, but proper immersive narrative experiences are thenceforth ring-fenced. There are areas where they are ‘ok’, and they include theatrical spaces, board games, TV, music, video game, radio, film, books. The arts, in short.

The film/television experience is inarguably passive when compared with the play that we experience as children, and with the ‘old’ narrative strategies of books (and to a certain extent radio – though ‘old’ perhaps not) where we are placed, if not in the position of another, at least in a world-constituting position of one type or another. We build worlds of the books we read with our imaginations, likewise theatre is necessarily world-constituting, the tension of live-ness with narrative, reality with suspension of disbelief, is an inherently world-constituting process – and a collective one at that.

Film and television are passive forms of narrative consumption, they are involving, largely individual, and can pretend to be interactive (the arbitrary decision of whether someone stays or goes is not world constituting) and are no less a form for that, but in terms of play, in terms of one key aspect of play – there’s something missing. Empathy. The process of placing yourself at the centre of creating a narrative – constituting a world – seeing it through anthers’ eyes is largely missing (though of course there are exceptions to this). I’m not arguing that film and television is bad art, but I do believe that to subsist on a diet of only filmic narrative will provoke illness.

Fewer and fewer of my contemporaries are choosing to read books, few play board games or go to the theatre, the two main trends in narrative consumption are the falling arc of the TV/filmic experience, and the growing video game experience.

Last year the biggest Amazon.co.uk seller was COD:MW2, outselling both Twilight and Harry Potter films (source). We spent more last year on video games than we did on both going to the cinema and buying DVDs, and in a 2005 survey done by the BBC 59% of people aged 6-65 played video games (48% were female),100% of 6-10year olds did. (source – pdf)

“With gaming you’re involved and in control. With other things you just have to sit back and watch. I’ve been gaming for most of my life.” Callum – 10 years old (source – pdf)

Do video games represent a move back to world-constituting processes? To player-as-protagonist? To some degree they do, but in the same way as film presents a fully formed other universe that you watch, (commercial) video games largely produces fully formed other universes that you traverse.

Here’s a meaty question – is the build-your-own character ethic of RPGs a new, fuller expression and exploration of our selves, or is it a more dangerous form of escapism, are we losing the link back to reality?

I have argued that the narrative strategies present in Pervasive Gaming – playful, theatrical experiences which take video game, film and tech ethics and apply them to performative, immersive, player-as-protagonist experiences – combat this escapism. I think that to some degree taking these digital ethics into a live context brings our world constituting back into context – in context to our selves. But what about the collective experience? That is something theatre and collaborative play alone represent – single person experiences, narratives that play out through headphones and that put you at the centre of the story are all very good, but they are individual. Where, now, is the collective?

I am concerned about my generation. Probably just as people always have been. I am concerned that the people I know see narrative as an escape, not a way to learn about the world, others. A whole generation torn away from a concept of society, who never knew it. Thatcher started it, and New Labour stamped out the remnants. Then the way that we used to make contact with the world and those around us – the arts that we used to re-see it – are similarly subsumed, first by a passive format, and then by an individualist one that pretends to activity.

It is empathy, the seeing the world through others’ eyes, that we need now. Love. Optimism.

“”Those who talk about revolution and class struggle, without understanding what is subversive about love and positive in the refusal of constraints […] such people have corpses in their mouths.”” – Raoul Vaneigem

“Optimism is a political act. […] Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another. Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in Western popular culture, but, in reality, cynicism in average people is the attitude exactly most likely to conform to the desires of the powerful – cynicism is obedience.” Source

The best, most creative, most active, most proactive and political people I know, are filled with love for the world, not hatred. If there is anger it comes out of disappointment, the kind of anger you’d have if your child stayed out late without your permission, the kind of anger that says ‘do you not see how much it hurts to love you?’

I fight for what I love in art as well as society. I know this tires some people. But I hope it is not me that they are tired with, that rather they are tired of the establishment that tells them there’s nothing worth loving that much.

Why is this relevant?

Because I believe art is still the way out of it, the way to the collective. I’m not arguing that film/video games are bad ways of consuming narrative – but that we need a balanced diet. There are projects like Duncan Speakman‘s Always Something Somewhere Else, that use GPS enabled locative narratives to locate you within one world, but the subject matter to connect you to the other side of the world, too. Practitioners like Andy Field, who are work with collective cultural memory, and collaborative creative theatrical environs. But this connective narrative trend is so far gentle. There are more complicated ethics involved when you put the weight of narrative on one participant, rather than a passive viewer, or a collective audience. When we place people directly into new roles, when we are so used to not playing, being fluid, you need to take care not to shatter people’s identities/worlds. I have been concerned that these single player narrative trends bring us further away from the sense of ourselves as a whole with others, our selves in other contexts, that they are essentially escapist. This would mean we are losing the political potential I think is central to the theatrical experience. But perhaps we just have to be gentle, move slowly. Play. Investigate.

We need to see that we have the ability to change things, make big choices, imagine different outcomes and bring them to fruition. I believe live in a world now where individualism is the main threat we face (I can’t have an affect, therefore I can’t stop bad things happening, and the bad things I do don’t count). I’d rather fight, love, and over come it, than not try in case we fail. Which is where I think I want to take my approach to this pervasive narrative trend in art. Because at the very least we need to be in it. Asking big questions of it.

Blog posts are thin on the ground at the moment – a combination of Christmas frivolities, PhD work culminating into a body of writing for January, 2 play redrafts, and my being asked (and thus needing to prep) to talk to students at Leeds Met and Nottingham Trent about arts, tech, and audience participation in the New Year.  So here’s some media to tide you over:

These Audioboos make up the full 30 minutes of the reading of my piece Eismas – currently being redrafted. Track 01 is where you want to start.

I also grabbed some video from that evening which I’m sure I’ll get round to editing soon. Sure…

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/12/eismas-reading/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/11/your-death-in-the-future/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/11/your-death-in-the-future/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:00:20 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1195 We are currently 6 days into the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence. This activism aims to raise awareness and mobilise action against all forms of violence against women (VAW).

There is an excellent campaign being run as part of this called ‘Take Back the Tech‘ – which is all about empowering women online, looking at safety, privacy, tech literacy, and using online tools to promote activism that opposes VAW.

I am very passionate about us recovering both the history of women in tech, and in women participating the building as well as the consuming of the new worlds we’re building.

I have written an article for the forthcoming issue of Subtext magazine on what I term the ‘Digital Ceiling’. To paraphrase a section from that:

A large part of the history of feminist struggle has been the fight for participation in the public sphere; for the vote, for a say in politics, economic rights, for a voice, and worth in the public arena. Web 2.0 and new online tools are creating a new public space – in such a fast moving medium, we cannot afford to be left behind. Women have also been erased from a male authored history; The first computer programming language was named Ada, after the founder of modern computing; Ada Lovelace. Women played a key role in code-breaking at Bletchley Park during WWII, in 1942 the ENIAC (the first general-purpose electronic computer) was programmed by six women, and Grace Hopper led the development of one of the first modern programming languages, COBOL. Women are the majority of online users, and consumers of tech. But we are disgustingly under-represented in the tech industries, and that needs to change.

(The rest of that article can be read in the Autumn/Winter issue of Subtext, (coming soon)). Tech is also proving to be an invaluable activist tool, from trafigura, to the Iran election, the online world is uncovering and proliferating activists’ content like never before. We need to be in this.

Why else am I writing this blog? Because these 16 days of action are also about VAW. VAW is an incontrovertible fact, I’m not going to offer further evidence on that, but I do have a reading of the first draft of a play this Thursday, a piece called Eismas, as part of the ‘Littlepalooza!‘ festival, at the Crypt Gallery near St. Pancras:

Image reproduced with permission from Scary Little Girl Productions

“Feel the quick of the modern city fall away as you descend into the crypts below St Pancras Parish Church.  Discover some of the best new writers of contemporary gothic in this evening festival among the ancient graves and catacombs.  Music, theatre and story telling combine to make this a thrilling presentation of young blood amongst the oldest of bones.”

Eismas is a play about the violence done by monetising human beings. My Littlepalooza! piece is a half hour rehearsed reading from the second act and is being billed as:

A startling piece of spec-fic theatre, that imagines a future Europe in which a single child policy has shocking repercussions on the female population.

The piece will be read at 6.15pm and tickets to see it are only £3. Please do come and support both the Littlepalooza! festival (click the link for the full evening price, and other days’ events) and my piece in development. I would love any feedback on the play, and the massive twist that you may or may not gather from the first half hour. If you need more persuading, here’s a monologue from it – don’t worry there are no spoilers (read by me though, the actress has a much better accent!)

It would be brilliant to see people at the event on Thursday (though don’t look out for red hair any more, it’s much darker now!) and if you do make it, please come and chat to me after the reading, I’d love to hear what you think (good or bad) before I go into a massive redraft over Christmas.

And finally, do click below for more info and actions on Take Back the Tech:

Pass it on.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/11/your-death-in-the-future/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/05/science-fiction-theatre-new-politics/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/05/science-fiction-theatre-new-politics/#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 11:12:00 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=75

Yep, apologies again, I do have a very good excuse that was the worst migraine I’ve ever had, with proper visual disturbances and everything, and then (just recovered in time) I went to Manchester, and had a really brilliant weekend of just what I needed: friends, rock music, drink, video games and laughter. I feel almost happy! Plus only 12 MORE DAYS in Wolverhampton! YAY! So yes, that’s the reason for the gap in posts. But fear not loyal reader, this one will hopefully make up for it, for it is a rambling MONSTER.

OK, so while also doing shorter updates about what I’m up to and where I’m going with things, I did mention maybe doing more editorial-style blog entry every now and then. A bit of a chunkier look into my ideas on… things. Not sure what things exactly, but I suppose that it will probably be either theatre/arts or politics/feminism, these being the main forces that drive me. So yes, here’s a tentative first stab at one of these!

SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE

Yep, I’m on about that again. The reason I want to talk about my ideas for Science Fiction, or ‘Speculative’ Fiction on stage (aside from the fact it has formed the main body of my playwriting so far) is the very intriguing and quizzical reactions I have had to my writing so far. I should preface this with saying that by no means am I a fully-fledged playwright – I am still ‘emerging’ (‘young’ playwright is no longer PC –ageist, you see) and will hopefully always be learning – as thus I’m sure some of the reactions to my writing may be to just that – the actual writing, and not the choice of genre, but some of it definitely isn’t, some of it is a direct recoil from ‘genre’(in the pejorative sense).

I will discuss these reactions a little later, but first I want to try and explain the use do I think porting these genres to the stage will have, why I think they are exciting, important and useful.

In my mind this kind of theatre has the potential to form a new kind of political theatre. I’ll begin with a quote from the (sadly, recently late) great Augusto Boal

Theatre is a weapon. A very efficient weapon […] for this reason the ruling classes try to take hold of theatre and utilise it as a tool for domination […] but the theatre can also be a weapon of the liberation. For that, it is necessary to change appropriate theatrical forms. Change is imperative.

p. ix, Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed (New Edition). London: Pluto Press, 2000.

Politics and the majority of theatre, in my opinion, have at their hearts the same driving force. A belief in the individual and collective voice. A belief that experience informs belief which in application can produce change for the better. Change is the aim of political theatre (what theatre doesn’t pertain to either a personal or public politic is another question entirely). To initiate change in ideas and ideals, as Boal suggests, theatrical forms must always be in flux, they cannot stagnate because it is at that point you begin to accept, rather than question. I do not mean change from week to week, but I’m talking in terms of movements. Has theatre really had a movement since In-Yer-Face 90s theatre? I think theatre must continually be re-appropriated for new worlds and generations because theatre has the power to open our eyes, for us to see our many selves- it has a power beyond all other art forms; because of story.

When we are young we tell stories through play, it’s how we learn, how we explore our world, our roles within it, but somehow people seem to think that eventually, they become too grown up for stories. That is why we miss the new coercive narratives, the stories and roles that rest within the covers of magazines, flicker on our screens and are emblazoned on the side of buildings. These stories bombard us every day, and tell us who and how we should be. We need new stories, stories to challenge and rival these. We need to key into something that has more truth, more life; this is why I believe in stories played out in the theatre.

When you watch theatre, when you believe in it, you invest in it a part of your life; you credit it with a small but important part of yourself. A play is built of a hundred little volunteered hours, it is a rift in the space time continuum, a coming together of a hundred hours into one. This is why theatre can make you gasp; make the breath catch in your lungs for the life that you see onstage, because it is, in a small and immense way, a part of you. For some, theatre is a first taste of a collective experience.

Has theatre really had a movement since In-Yer-Face 90s theatre? My experience of theatre is unfortunately one severely limited by funds, and founded on a university course which rarely looked at post 2000 work, so call me on it if you have a better answer, but I think the time is ripe for a new theatre, a theatre that draws in a new generation bereft by context. There are adults now who have not known a world without the internet, for whom political extremes have been replaced by apparently middle ground hogging-expense abusing-privately educated white men that known as much about us as we about them. This is not my opinion, but it is the opinion of many of my contemporaries, most of whom have never voted. Apathy, to me, seems to be the aim of a lazy, right wing media who would find things a lot easier if they could just produce lifestyle magazines. I understand why in all of the difficult suffering and wars, injustices which don’t fit into an easy ‘good or bad’ conflict people just want to shut themselves off to it. I understand this because I know how much each horrible piece of pain that the media and the internet delivers me, hurts. It hurts because I am only one person. It hurts because one person can change everything; it hurts because I don’t have the space to help everyone. So you disconnect. History is everywhere for this generation, constantly in the making. But the wars happen elsewhere, we see things on our screens, and for all of it, the horror is never really a part of our lives. I believe that we need a way of helping people see again, and to do that we must make people feel uneasy, unsafe, wobbly. It is not history, but the future that we need now, in order that this generation might see themselves here, and nowhere else, here with the ability to participate. I believe in the future. I believe that new theatrical forms are sorely needed for the continuing relevancy and power of theatre.

Theatre must constantly be in flux, we must find new forms, new ways of playing with stories because we can undo the pain of the modern world, we can begin to learn again. Theatre is not a reflection of life, but rather a reflection of what it could be- it is the art of possibility.

Theatre must reflect new worlds.

And this is where I believe science/speculative fiction theatre can come in.

There are a few examples of this happening in theatre, they are growing, I saw Zero by Theatre Absolute half a year ago – set in an anonymous future where series of internment camps criss-cross the world, Far Away by Caryl Churchill, if you ask me, is a spectacular, breathtaking piece of dystopian fiction, and Steve Water’s Contingency Plan double bill about a climate change is set in the near future, and currently getting rave reviews at The Bush. I really believe that where we are now, in the late ‘noughties’, on a wave that is beginning to swell, moving towards a tipping point – I feel this in the new wave of feminism, I feel it in the new questions being raised about the sustainability of the particular form of capitalism we have heretofore subscribed, I feel that it must happen in politics, and I feel that it is happening to stories now too. People in a world of web 2.0 and constant connectivity, laugh, love and communicate in entirely new ways. Is theatre currently fitted out to portray these new ways of being? To work with new ideas of identity and gender, or to harness the wonderfully widespread and democratising power of technology? I believe that all these big new question marks are making the world shift, and that theatre is also beginning to find its current skin too restrictive.

In my work I portray possible futures, in Being Someone Else I try to look at love, loss, and identity in the gaming world, in the radio play Bird Woman I loosely borrow from a 70s feminist fable to touch upon the feeling of being a young girl, and in Eismas I imagine a world where a single child policy has been enforced throughout Europe. I use these elements of SF, Spec-fic and fantasy with political intent- particularly in my most recent piece Eismas, I have used SF as a kind of distancing device – a cerebral as opposed to emotional distance – in order that an audience can relax, think ‘oh but this isn’t about me, it’s just a story’ but then I also hope that they would care about the central characters that they follow the journey of the piece and see how we could get there- and because they felt the pain of the world, see that they want for us not to be there, see this world in the light of what it might become. See that we have a chance, now, to change it.

This is not a new idea. From Victorian ghost stories (A Christmas Carol!) to feminist and socialist science fiction, to fairy stories, all of these have aimed to mould people’s feelings in the same way. Is it coercive? I suppose it is. But no more, I think, than any piece of storytelling.

So, back to why I am talking about why I write within the bounds of SF. I have had some very interesting experiences over the past year so, of a very odd resistance to SF on stage. Both of the external moderators on the masters I did at Birmingham commented that they did not like SF on my reader reports. One said that should and would not colour his report on my piece, the other accused the play of ‘wanting to be a Hollywood film’ and called me ‘a writer with very little experience of, or perhaps interest in, the material realities of making theatre’. Likewise at the recent workshopped reading of Eismas the question was asked: ‘wouldn’t this be better as a film?’ This produced a reasonably heated discussion, in which my director expressed the following (heavily paraphrased) sentiment: ‘this is not about the genre, this is about the content. Theatre, to me, is about people and politics: having something to say. This is not a play set in a big special effect driven world, this is a play about two people, and their relationship.’ Eismas shows the public sphere through the pain it exerts on the private. If you ask me, that is the stuff for theatre. This discussion was made doubly strange by the fact that two of the other plays were historical ones, one of which made allusions to vampirism, and the other was about psychics in Edwardian times! But I suppose that was exactly the reaction that I need isn’t it? The other half of the room really connected with the political content of the piece, and it’s that unease, that unease which is key to my political intent.

My mum (as ever) puts it succinctly when she says ‘it’s just snobbery, people forget, don’t they, that all stories are fiction’ all of the universes are invented, why not play with that? Why not use that edge to try and provoke the feeling that the future is invented. We decide what we want it to be.

Change is imperative. Theatrical forms must always be in flux. Theatre has the power to open our eyes, for us to see our many selves, to see ourselves anew. Let’s write about the future. Let’s talk about now. Let’s learn about being human again. Let’s participate.

Thanks for reading.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/05/science-fiction-theatre-new-politics/feed/ 4 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/03/state-of-the-nation/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/03/state-of-the-nation/#comments Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:55:00 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=64

Let’s not break tradition, do let me begin by apologising for gaps between posts. I am beginning to wonder whether a few sentences every other day, and a big, more formal, essay style blog once a month might be a better way to go. That way I could keep up to date, and also choose a big issue I want to address. I just feel a growing guilt the longer I leave between posts, which is why, after very little sleep (combination of trying to get a train from anywhere in Lincolnshire, to anywhere else, and British Summer Time). So yes. I am very tired. I am also still a little hungover. I stayed the night at a friends’ in Loughborough, and when I’m not the one pouring I loose track quite easily. I don’t often do that kind of thing so felt a little embarrassed at the workshop today. Don’t think I lagged too much, just worried that I looked hungover.

The workshop was a TWP and Derby Writes event on State of the Nation plays. Very, very interesting. Lots of different approaches, we talked about top down (David Hare, David Edgar) SotN plays, which address the politicians, and the public face of the state, and bottom up plays (Look Back in Anger, A Raisin in the Sun) which address the people who live in the state, and the private face of a state. There was a lot of basic form/character/subtext work, which is always essential. And also a lot of debate, which I really do love. It was brilliant to be able to get stuck in, and really eke out how I feel and what I want from a SotNP. My first reaction (one of the first questions we were asked) to ‘what is a SotNP?’ was ‘irrelevant in it’s current form, as written by white, middle class (straight?) 70s agitprop men’. Pretty damning, I know, but do forgive me, it was a gut reaction question, and that is how I feel without my academic hat on. (IE I completely acknowledge their contribution and relevance to the state of the 70s and 80s, I just think that the private face of discrimination is what needs dealing with now, rather than policy on its own.). There were also some interesting points made a la every play being essentially a state of the contemporary nation play. Which it is. I agree with that, I think (and said) that the definition of a SotNP comes, instead, when a playwright addresses that play to the state/nation/world/eternal human condition (the latter added to accept Beckett into the fold). And then, if we are using a ‘bottom up’ approach, there are several ways of addressing the macrocosmic scale – such as a character (The Inspector in An Inspector Calls, Trovimov (sp?) in The Cherry Orchard) metaphor and imagery (much of the speech in Anouilh’s Antigone, in the language of fear in Far Away) and in themes (the American Dream in The Death of a Salesman, eternity in Endgame).

It did make me wonder where my (ostensibly political, and definitely addressing themselves to the state/world) plays fit in. The two main pieces I am currently work on are both pieces of speculative theatre – one imagines a virtual world so popular that the founder of it is worried that it is stopping people’s participation in real life (it basically asks a confusing question about the nature of reality) – and the second play imagines the effect of a single child policy on the UK, through a romance between a man and a whore, trafficked to the UK for a higher demand in (now legal) sex workers, and a black market trade in healthy male babies. I hope that they’re slightly less melodramatic than they sound when I write them down. In essence the first is about blurred reality, and the second is a love story. (New question, are all plays a love story?). So yes, lots from the workshop to apply to those ideas, particularly the use of format in exposition (talking about politics in a seduction was one good example). The workshop was run by Noël Greig and Philip Osment who were lovely, very open, very interested in our ideas, and very supportive throughout. They are both also legends in their own right to me as part of

Gay Sweatshop, who along with Monstrous Regiment and Women’s Theatre Group stood up (and rightly so) to the WASP(plus male, middle class and straight) agitprop left of the 70s and said ‘fair enough, revolution, we’re up for that, but how about include us too?’. There is often a problem in the left, or indeed of any radical political movement, of a ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality. ‘if you’re not a banana, then you must be an orange’. That kind of thing, I found plenty of that in my research into the Nationalist movement in Egypt which ends up going further back into the worst of the conservative Islamist principles and seriously rescinding women’s rights (NB, principles considered ‘tradition’ and not actually taken from the Koran itself), and in the Nationalist movement of the 1916 Easter uprising in Ireland – women were told that if they were Sinn Fein, they could not align themselves with the suffragettes, because an emancipated Irishwoman, under British rule, was still not free. Am I babbling? Probably, it’s quite late. But basically the workshop was really great, many thanks for TWP, and particularly Bianca, for organising and subsidising it.

And now I thought I would just choose a few extracts from the great deal of writing I did over the couple of days, a sort of flavour for the creative work. Do bear in mind it is all completely unedited stuff, just speed writing most of it, so allow for clumsiness!

Enjoy:

The State of the Nation play… Is dry and past it in its current form and concerns as written by 70s agitprop white middle class men.

The State… Is much maligned and generally demonised and as grey a place you’d ever get making black and white decisions.

The Individual… Is the smallest unit of potential.

Powerlessness is… Being in love.
Power is… Being loved.

“I fainted the first time I fell in love. I fainted. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It was scary. I was at work in a factory, up a step ladder trying to find a replacement plastic part in a box. I dropped my list. Felt dizzy. I got down in time but I fainted. Powerlessness is being alone. Is the fear that underscores being in love. It hurts. It’s scary. And before then I’d never known – never understood any of it. But what would I do – what would I say to myself, then, as me now? Nothing. I’d say nothing. I wouldn’t even show my face. I’d stand and look though. Watch myself, dizzy, walking across the dusty factory floor to get a sip of water. And I think I’d know that it had to happen. I’d watch it confusing me, scaring me, knowing that all the hurt and tears had to happen so that I could realise the power of being loved, and the powerlessness of loving someone.”

A speech as head of state that had to include several unconnected words (Black, Winter, Alaska, Fire, English, Children, Dignity, God, Milk, Soup, Teeth, Bone, Dreaming, Mother, Eyes, Love, Nothing, Children, Pain, Justice, Song, Dog, Father)

“It would be wrong of me to stand here in front of you and not admit that there are dark days ahead of us. Black clouds gathering over previous governments are beginning to blot out the sun. I know there is a lot of fear. Nor will I diminish the fact that you feel that, however I will say that we will face the economic trials of today with dignity and consideration. Too long we have taken and taken, come to expect, neglected the environment, neglect our selves. But we will get through this Winter, Spring will come again. ‘Green shoots’ is what the economists say.

The media takes pleasure in the so-called failures of the state. I will say this now, in front of cameras and microphones and reporters: They must not be allowed to become the new god of our times, pulling strings and dictating a warped moral philosophy. Trying to affect the soup of prejudice and manipulated headlines that bubbles away each day has become the main job of politicians. This should not be so. I do not dismiss the media, but feel that their calls for accountability should be applied to them too.

We are a strong nation, teeth and bone and sinew. We are also small. And have made ourselves strong through dreaming of a bigger world, driven by the fire – and I do say fire- of the workers of this nation; the nurses, teachers and health workers that care for us.

The environment is also a keen and ongoing concern. The recent pipeline exploration in Alaska has highlighted a decision that we all, mothers sons and daughters need to make about our future. Will we look our children in the eyes and tell them that we would rather choose lifestyle over their future?”

An Issue piece in the style of Antigone rebelling against her brother (top down):
NB. I wrote this in response to a combination of guidelines that were issued to senior management at Lincolnshire County Council and to female employees of the Bank of England

A: I think you know why you’re here
B: I know you think you do
A: Now come on, we just wanted to instill equal rules for everyone
B: I know you think you did
A: We have. And your childish attempt to ridicule what were carefully considered, tested and-
B: I objected. I lodged an official objection.
A: And it was officially considered and – look, do you not agree that some certain standards of dress should be adhered to in the Bank of England?
B: I do
A: You would expect a certain standard of attire from a male colleague, yes? A suit, a tie, smart shoes?
B: Certainly
A: So why do you feel the need to undermine -
B: I am not undermining.
A: I don’t understand why we have a problem, a week ago you wore make-up, a week ago you had smart shoes and-
B: I wore heels you mean
A: Look-
B: No you look. Last week I was not required to wear make-up. Last week I was not required to wear at least a 2 inch but no more than a 3 inch heel
A: There are male guidelines too
B: ‘women should not show their midriff’. how about all the fat bellies that you can see peeking out from under badly fitted shirts?
A: This went to peer review
B: Most of our peers are men! Look. I don’t object to reasonable standards of office dress. What I do object to is cynical excuses for men to comment on womens’ appearance. Whether or not I wear make-up, heels, or ‘bangles’ is not a reflection of how well I do my job. this is my body. That you feel you have the right to suggest not decorating it in the ‘right’ manner renders it inappropriate is not OK.
A: I see. You’re a Feminist are you?
B: I am a human being. Not a doll.
A: I see that nothing is going to come of my approaching you in a reasonable way.
B: No. not a tack I have ever seen you try.

And finally, a piece developed from notes written on idle conversation with an added ‘world stage’ political context. (Subtext and bottom up).

A: It’s a lovely cottage isn’t it
B: Yes, lovely
A: lovely
(Pause)
I love that red- that red brickwork – you know, industrial
B: I prefer Roman personally
A: What?
B: Roman architecture. I prefer Roman architecture.
A: Ah yes, but your house is cream – like cream stone isn’t it
B: (absentmindedly) It was, yeas. Cream.
(Beat)
I’ve always liked copper on a building.
A: Copper?
B: Copper – like that over there.
A: Goes green doesn’t it?
(Pause)
That’s a very yellow car.
(Nothing)
Very yellow.
(Pause)
B: Very yellow
A: Pardon?
B: Nothing.
(Pause)
A: I used to have a metro. A metro in this soft yellow. Soft yellow it was.
B: Soft? Like that?
A: No, no, much softer than that
B: Like the colour of that crane?
A: No, not like that.
B: Or that building – that building with the orange sign there
A: No it wasn’t orange.
B: I mean the building – the colour of the building.
(Pause)
A: No.
(Pause)
It was a good car. A good little metro. You’ve always had your Minis though haven’t you? Never have just one Mini, Mini drivers. How’s the gold one?
B: What?
A: The gold Mini
B: Had to sell it.
(Pause)
A: It’s strange seeing that – the crane and scaffolding. You see that a lot these days. They never seem to be actually building. Just put the scaffolding up and-
B: Because they’ve run out of money.
A: Sorry?
B: It’s because they’ve run out of money
(Silence)
A: Oh. Right.
(Pause)
Right.
(Pause)
B: Empty half built buildings. Broken against the sky.

There you go, all done! Too tired to read this back for typos, apologise if there are any/many. I will post again soon with details of academic things hopefully, my thoughts on my PhD proposal etc. Thanks for reading!

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2009/03/state-of-the-nation/feed/ 0