“But otherwise I think the only way that you can have a big impact if by changing people’s views, by actually getting hold of their heart and squeezing it and saying; look at this. And I think as you say, it’s having the story that triggers the emotion in the individual, which then says ‘yeah, that’s not right, we need to change this’. Because you won’t get, there’s too many pressures on people, and I think this is where capitalism wins through most of the time; there’s too many pressures on people to stand out, to stand up, to say ‘no’, and I think by doing what you’re doing in terms of the stories, you know okay you can only get some people but that can make a big difference, than, you know, you as an individual amongst 200-300,000 people making a lot of noise down the street.”

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/11/my-dad-and-stories/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/10/other-projects/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/10/other-projects/#comments Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:08:17 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=2468 Deep in the middle of Umbrella Project goings on at the moment (small reflections and links to follow) but just wanted to post about a couple of very exciting things I’m doing (almost straight) after (gulp).

The first is my first more traditional performance piece in a good few years. A small work in progress for an audience of 8-10 (due to venue size, I’m sure it will scale eventually) at the Flanagan Collective’s ‘Little Festival of Everything’. #Littlefest (all donation based ticketing) will be taking over the Fauconberg Arms in Coxwold, North Yorks, and a lot of the villagers’ homes, too, and filling the pub and surrounds with around 100 pieces of art&performance. Ace. I’ll be joining people like Rash Dash, Belt Up, Pilot, Chris Thorpe and loads others to present a piece I’ll be working in for about 4 days prior. A Conversation with my Father.

Here’s the copy (I suck at copy)

An early work in progress born out of a conversation between an ex-policeman and his protestor daughter. A conversation about fear, grey areas, them and us, duty, and standing up to protect what you think matters. An intimate piece for a small audience at a very early stage of development, please come, watch, and offer feedback.

It’s on 6 times over 2 days, and will probably involve video or projection of some kind. Maybe just sound. I’m not sure. I’m filming a conversation with my father on the 7^th, and basically working something up from there. Hopefully it’s going to be pretty interesting, and is kind of addressed at both sides of the fence, protestors and non protesting public/police officers. More of a question about the fence in the first place, really. WATCH THIS SPACE. And come to Yorkshire for the weekend to see it.

The other super exciting and slightly unnerving (that’s how I like my life) thing I’m doing is a collaboration with the BRILLIANT Nikki Pugh. Who is the person who’s going to teach me to hack and solder properly. One of these days. You may or may not have noted that we’ve been working on a Splacist manifesto – well MADE have invited Nikki to lead (I think I’m helping) a workshop on the manifesto, and commissioned us both to work on our first practice-as-response to it, which is free to come and see/do (though ticketed, head here for more info)

Copy wot I did not write, and is therefore far superior:

Who are the Splacists? Will introduce the context for, and development of, the Splacist manifesto as well as reporting findings from the What are the Splacists? activities conducted earlier in the day. There will also be an opportunity to experience work developed in collaboration between artists Nikki Pugh and Hannah Nicklin. This work has been commissioned by MADE as part of Learning Spaces Living Places 2 and represents the first in direct response to the manifesto. The evening event is your chance to experience it first-hand and be a part of it.

Splacism is a contemporary mode of practice proposed by Paul Conneally. A new set of ideologies defined by Hannah Nicklin and Nikki Pugh. A hop, skip and a jump away from phsychogeography and the works of the situationist international. Think space, place and splice. Developed empirically by whoever’s interested.

Both really exciting things to lead up to Christmas, which I fear may have to be the point at which things settle down a bit and I spend 7 months or so actually finishing my PhD. Hm.

An image of Third Angel’s Pills for Modern Living installation at Edgelands.

I find that I only really want to comment on a couple of the shows that I saw on day four and five, so I have decided to make a C-C-C-OMBO post. Followed by some very short reflections on Edgelands and Hitch.

Day the fourth

(g)host city - St. Antony’s by Kieran Hurley

(g)host city is an invisible festival without a venue. Or, rather, the city is the venue. A selection of audio pieces curated by Laura Cameron Lewis that you can download all of (7.99) or just  the ones you want to do (I downloaded Kieran’s from Bandcamp for £2). St. Antony’s plays out like you’ve found a phone fallen between some rocks in Holyrood Park. As if you picked it up and listened to the first voicemail by mistake and then slowly not been able to stop. I wonder if you could put the piece on a phone just like that? Be sent the location to a lost phone. Pick it up, listen. A small piece for a big place, this is one of my favourite experiences from the fringe. Not just for Kieran’s lovely ear for the idiosyncrasies of dialogue, or the gripping unfolding of increasingly tragic messages that are fated to never reach their receiver, but because Holyrood park, and Edinburgh, is fucking beautiful place. I enjoyed a moment of being embedded rather than transported in it.

2401 Objects - Analogue

Apart from the slightly disconcerting resemblance of one of the actors to a younger Hugh Laurie, I found plenty to enjoy in Analogue’s story of ‘the world’s most famous amnesiac patient’. It felt a lot more drama-y that Lecture Notes on a Death scene, and I don’t think it always benefited from that. (I’m very easily bored of ‘actor voice’, these days). But a really affecting story, told in quite a visually strong way; I liked very much the way the screen moved and wiped away scenes, like the dropping away of memories. I wanted the piece to be smaller though. It felt too big, the sense was of the wide world of scientific enquiry, when I think it should have been closer, more ‘in the head’ of Henry. The most powerful moment was the tying of it down to our bodies – the moment you’re asked to place your hands on your head. I felt like after acknowledging the audience so much at the beginning, it was strange to move into more conventional 4th wall stuff. A really interesting piece that I think could afford to be more tied down.

Day the fifth

The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley - Chris Goode.

Not sure where to start on this one. THERE WAS JUST TOO MUCH LOVELINESS. Chris is a master of theatrical storytelling, his gentle, open and warm manner fill the Baby Grand and a simple 3 chair set (with associated teenage paraphernalia) becomes the scene of a devastating fire, the threshold of a school’s changing rooms, the back seat of a car, the formica tables of a poor Spud-u-Like imitation. A story about a superhero and a sidekick. A story about a family divided by an empty room. A story about a shrinking trumpet. A story about young love, and running. A story about ‘feeling just like you look’. Go and see it. Don’t let me spoil any more with my clumsy words.

You Wouldn’t Know Him He Lives in Texas – Look Left Look Right and Hidden Room Theatre

Immersive! Site Specific! Interactive! Digital Technology! In Show Tweeting! Live Streamed Every Night! And yet it still managed to be endearing and uncontrived. Loved this. It wasn’t about big or deep things, probably won’t stay with me for that long afterwards, and my judgement was likely somewhat coloured by the fact that there were Pringles and free wine, but it was a brilliant piece of brightly-coloured techno-melodrama. I just made that word up. But it fits. A simple and easily identifiable story, the opportunity to ask your own questions of the characters, and, again, a relief to be out of uncomfortable chairs in darkened venues. I got to go on a Skype date with a bald Texan, waved a giant inflatable Scottish hand, ate some Haribo, and left grinning.

Day the sixth

Edgelands and Hitch.

Edgleands – convened/curated/organised/whatever the right word is by me and Andy Field

Absolutely delighted with how this event went. Such a wealth of great minds and conversation in the room with amazing contributions from provocateurs, performers, tech people and live bloggers. Too many people to thank here (and they’re all credited elsewhere), head over to the link to find out more. I was mostly taking photos and HD video with a shiny camera for most of the day, so am sad to have not been a closer part of the conversations, but you can read the live blog (with tweets and transcripts of the conversations) over here, listen to the 4 sets of provocations here, and see all of the photos here. Videos will emerge as fast as I can edit them and upload them. Bear in mind I have about 64GB of footage and a PhD deadline on the 26th and come to a best estimate on that. Any volunteers for help with subtitling videos once there up would be very welcome. It’s not hard, and I can link you to all of the relevant in-browser tools. Each video will be around 3 minutes, comment if you’re interested in helping out.

Things to improve on: 1) make it more local. Only about 6 people from Scotland in the room. Probably should have advertised it in the Forest Cafe, etc. 2) get more people on board to help get stuff online, 3 wasn’t quite enough, 4 might do it. 3) diversity audit of contributors: 18 male, 13 female, 1 self-described disabled, 2 BME. Not good enough. Our original programming had m/f numbers pretty much equal but last minute changes made the pool of people we could get to contribute much smaller. Still, will try harder next time. 4) do it on a week day, the online conversation was a lot less than I thought it might be, and wonder if that’s because far fewer people seem to be online/on twitter on Sundays.

Hitch by Kieran Hurley

I can’t possibly have a critical opinion on this piece, and I don’t want to. Left me crying for about half an hour afterwards, and bursting into fresh tears unexpectedly for a few hours more. A simple story told in an open and incredibly engaging way, as Kieran recounts his impromptu journey hitchhiking from Scotland to Italy, for the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila. I’ve been to quite a few protests since my first 3 years ago, almost always on my own, so I recognised a lot of his journey. And I suppose I hadn’t realised that anyone else feels that… afraid, and hopeful, exhilarated, breathless, and by turns potent, impotent; together, and alone. I thought it was just me. And I suppose I thought somewhere that I was a bad protestor, that I didn’t care enough to not be scared. And I cried. I cried from the accidental Patti Smith gig onwards. I cried for all of the fire in us that the world constantly pours water on. I cried for the love of everyone who tries. And I think I cried so much because after watching it I didn’t feel so alone; even if I still feel all of the other things, suddenly realising I wasn’t on my own made me feel how alone I had really felt. But now it’s gone. Kieran’s piece begins with his ‘thank you’s. I’d like to add my own: thanks.

And now, today is Day the Seventh. And I am Going Home.

I drew the diagram in skitch, which isn’t designed for drawing things, really. But shhhh.

So, what about it? Money where our mouths are and all that, how about the government and ACE work together a ‘greening the arts’ fund that ‘tops up’ from the cost of a cheaper non-green option, to cover the extra which allows a company to make green decisions?

OK it’s more complicated than that, and would go together with educating companies on greener solutions, maybe setting up [as Hilary of T.A. suggested) a resources sharing database (‘we’re touring to Glasgow and could take <X commonly held theatre-y items> with us, but I can see that <y company> has <x> available 50 weeks of every year, so maybe we don’t have to), that even extends to LPG touring vans. And also consider more efficient touring methods, venue lighting/heating methods… But really, we need to pull our fingers out, right?

/file under, unfinished thoughts.

This is a very quick post on thoughts bubbling around my mind following the amazing #thepassion last weekend – a three day secular reconstructed tale of the Passion, told by over 2000 performers/participants, that wove its way through the community and spaces of Port Talbot in Wales. I didn’t set out to – I didn’t even know about it before that weekend, but it seeped into my twitter feed not through agressive ‘amplification’ driven by any kind of ‘strategy’ (scare quotes ‘r’ us), but by the sheer force of people desperate to share. Desperate to share what, by all reports, was a life-changing and affirming piece of theatre. People tweeting, or posting on the Guardian’s review of it talked about the healing of a community, the putting to rest of bad dreams and memories, that it was ‘spectacular’, ‘breath-taking’, that it re-connected them with ‘the awe of humanity’ (comments here).

Truly radical theatre, I might term it.

If I had the time, this would be a proper blog post. As it is, it’s the fragments, images, quotes, ideas, that might have gone into something I could have spent some thought on. Maybe I’ll come back and fill in the gaps at some point.

“We live at a time when people increasingly express the feeling that the world outside our windows is a dangerous and fragmented place. Once upon a time people walked through the city and it gave them a chance to name places and make contact with each other. [...] humans need to mark their lives against real space and other people. When they cease to walk, the real spaces become less plausible then than the centralized reality of the media and are increasingly witnessed as a passing blur from a car window.” – Graeme Miller quoted in a piece by Carl Lavery on Linked

three hands, all helping him
(image posted with the kind permission of @angsy)

“Playfulness, disruption, gifts left for strangers, the sharing of visions, intelligent flash-mobbing, provocations at the tipping points of cities, making a scene so the city performs itself, misguided tours, wireless on-line technology – combining phone, movie, digital design, camera, editing desk and ipod – sending routes, signs and stories in waves across spreading networks of uncontrollable walking, maps of atmospheres and basins of attraction, and festivals celebrating the reflections in windows and the glints in pedestrians’ eyes – [...] extraordinary changes will begin with disruptions in the ordinary.” – A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture Wrights and Sites

It was a triumph of optimism. And make no mistake,

“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.” Excerpt from this post by Alex Steffen

And finally, the images, the ideas, resonated with the image linked below, of a moment in the Stokescroft ‘riot’ – where a collection of community-minded squatters in Bristol were extremely heavy-handedly evicted. An amazing photo.

This photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathantaphouse/5643052154/in/photostream/

(not reproduced here because it’s not CC)

Devoted and Disgruntled Report – Theatre and Video Games

Devoted and Disgruntled Report – STS

Image from the artsagainstcuts blog

“We live within networks of messages, signs, information, and knowledge which produce our experience of ourselves, society, and all that we consider real. And, as power produces its subjects, so it gives birth to antagonists and the forms of resistance with which it is irreducibly implicated.” p.119 Sadie Plant The Most Radical Gesture

I haven’t spoken much about the protests against the cuts on here, I have been at a few, which you will have seen if you follow me on Twitter or Audioboo. But I haven’t felt like I’ve quite been able to marshall my thoughts to communicate them to you. But I have been there; I have seen people beaten to the ground, I have see the police charge on me, I have thankfully thus far avoided being kettled due to a combination of being dressed smart, luck, and sense of when people are suddenly pelting in the opposite direction. I have walked dazed bleeding people to taxis with directions and a tenner to the nearest hospital because (apparently) Police medics are only technically there to look after police. I have seen cold, frightened young people, stand together with parents, with older people, with disabled people, and be driven back like animals, penned, and deprived of food, toilets, water, liberty. And I have seen those people burn things to keep warm, seen hands raised and voices cry ‘don’t push us back, we’ve nowhere else to go’. I have seen angry angry people, some of whom aren’t even old enough to vote, raise the only voice they know will be heard; in violent action. And then I see what the media sees, because kettling is such a brilliant way to make sure all the photographers and the protesters are in the same place. So they smash a window, poke a princess. Violence is decried, the protesters dismissed. Despite the fact that that violence was not against humans, but symbols of the blind privilege of the ruling elite.

And I believe in parliament, I do believe that the majority of people there are there because they want to fight for the world which they think is best, and that the best way they can do so in small, measured wades through sticky, muggy, heavy beaurocracy. But I also believe that the mainstream media has hamstrung our politicians and society to the point that only the thickest skins make it. And thick skins get used to not hearing things in order to exist. So they don’t hear the cries of the people trapped just metres from their workplace.

“[the kettle] is also a media strategy which seeks to concentrate the spectacle of violent protest into a defined space precisely for the media. Thus the physical terrain of the kettled site is marshalled to produce violent spectacle for media consumption. It is a type of siege that lets the police appear under attack. The kettle thus needs to be understood as a form of media strategy deployed by the police to delegitimize protests and re-symbolize legitimate protest as unlawful ‘riot’. The kettle attempts to cast opposition protests as such as radical, violent and in need of police repression, whose brutality is legitimated by this same spectacle of student violence that the kettle aims to facilitate.” Rory Rowan on the brilliant Critical Legal Thinking

And I also believe that the mainstream media has made us believe that politicians are not people, and politics is complicated; and made politicians believe that people don’t understand politics, and just aren’t interested.

I believe democracy is better altered, than burned to the ground. But I also believe neither will happen unless the media are forced to sing from our song sheets. I believe that the suffragettes and civil rights movement in the US show that civil disobedience and violence against property have their place in protest.

‘We hypothesise, then, the coming of an era which replaces the bearers of truth (divided unions, political groups with their identifying signs and their banners) with intelligence and shrewdness,’ […] ‘This era will be based on the social possibilities of falsehood, on the technological possibilities resulting from the destruction of rules, on the free exchange of products, simulation, the game, the nonsense, argument, the dream, music.” (written in Italy in the late 70’s) p.130 Sadie Plant The Most Radical Gesture

It’s the spectacle that separates us from our society, and it’s the spectacle that needs to burn, burn in the face of our anger, despair, loss, injury, ecstasy and oblivion.

don’t push us back, we’ve nowhere else to go

And while the bickering and spite bubbling out of the Netroots conference descends past valid points and into two sides of people refusing to listen, while the left of Westminister tries with the best intentions to form the version of their beliefs most palatable to the press, there are people out there taking action.

Tonight 100 students stormed a lecture by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt at a lecture he was delivering at LSE with shouts of ‘we are everywhere’, and people attending the lecture urged him to address them and ‘the concerns we share’ afterwards (paraphrasing).

The people of Tower Hamlets have occupied Mulberry Place in protest against council cuts.

And this Friday a dance protest will be held outside the Bank of England. Called on facebook ‘Dance Against the Deficit Lies’ the suggestion is that they would like to be:

“part of something so playful with purpose, that any aggression whatsoever (police kettles or the few protesters who throw stuff) will simply look preposterous.” (from the facebook event)

And I have hope. I am a hopeful person. These actions may not yet shake George Osborne from his sleep at night, they may not even make the news. But they are people standing up, resisting the kettle, resisting the spectacle, and saying ‘I am here to represent my own views’; each action a small end of the once-remove.

This post began in my head as a post about the interesting sparks of methods and ideas that a situationist might have recognised in the student marches. Not to say that any student may necessarily have heard of them or their part of the student uprising of May ’68. But the situationists, too, saw the spectacle, recognised ways to defeat it – the reclamation of city space, the reforming of the spectacle’s own words against itself.

Many people at the education protests will have seen the Book Bloc (pictured), which has faced the batons with wit, détournement and practicality.

Books became shields. They were the opposite of a work of art – or at least the work of art as the spectacle has conceived it.

“Just as everything which appears in opposition to the spectacle can be brought within it, so everything which appears within spectacular society can be reclaimed by the consciousness which seeks to subvert it.” P.32 Sadie Plant The Most Radical Gesture

I don’t mean that the situationists offer us any kind of template. But they recognised the tool we have in our ingenuity, our creativity. That with which this world was made, can unmake it.

And to the people bickering online now: stop it. To people complaining that Labour have somehow co-opted your suffering: stop it. To people sitting back feeling powerless: stop it.

The situationists made a point of “rejecting the ‘black-and-white simplification of the class struggle’ [… suggesting instead that] Revolutionary struggles become ‘molecular’; configurations of desires rather than solidarities between people or social groups.” p.124 ibid

The voices raised tonight in places where they should not have risen. The people sat in buildings in which they should not be sitting. The people dancing on Friday in space not designed for dancing. These are people rejecting the vision of our society that was built in their name, but not for them.

It’s time to take to the streets, it’s time to dance and bleed and cry and shout, to take the spectacle of politics, of the media, of left vs. lefter, protestors vs. police, and to turn it inside out.

Empty rhetoric? Rhetoric, certainly, this blog post it an unfinished story, why not go outside and fill it up?

Graffiti, poster, knit banners, make sculptures, dance, perform in the streets, mashup.

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?]