Blog – Page 3 – Hannah Nicklin

For 6 days over the past 3 weeks I’ve been working with Applied Theatre undergrads at the UEL Stratford Campus on a piece of story collection-driven participative art making (that’s a mouthful, I know, but my work with them encompassed participative practices in performance and games, hence; art). I worked with them to devise a series of questions they had about living in and around Stratford, to build their ability to coax stories out of unconfident strangers, to design and build a space we put in Newham Library, and to go out in and around the library asking people to talk to us about how they feel about where they live. With those collected stories I and each of the students have 4 days to make a piece of participative art using those stories as a starting point. This is my offering. A 1-day first iteration of a storytelling game for two people.

A Different Postcode.

Duration: 15-45 minutes
Players: 2
Age rating: 12A – some adult themes.
Equipment: 2 character decks, consisting of 1 Character Card, 20 Action Cards and 20 Story Cards, your imaginations, these instructions.

It’s also possible to play with 2 decks of 52 cards, Jokers discarded, and all J, Q, K discarded apart from the J, Q, K of CLUBS. You will need to print these instructions, and the character cards, and to have a copy of the translator.

About

A Different Postcode is a game about rising living costs, insecure employment, social cleansing, and living somewhere “necessary but tough”. While the characters are fictional, their names, details and the content of the game is all drawn from conversations with strangers in the street around Stratford City, and in Newham Public Library. The name is drawn from a phrase used by several people to describe the effect of the Olympics on the area: “it’s another postcode over there”. There was a new postcode, E20, invented for the Olympic Park and new housing developments, E15, Stratford City, is increasingly being affected by rising house prices and living costs. “In 50 years time” people told me “there will just be rich people living here”.

You can download the full instructions and character cards here:

A Different Postcode (PDF)

And for playing with regular cards, you can access the translator here.

I’m going to be making simple decks out of sticky labels and blank playing cards. If you want to do that too let me know and I’ll send the templates.

This is from Brixton where the local people are currently fighting to save the arches. Where at the weekend a young man old boy dressed all in black smashed the window of a Foxtons. I condone this action. This post was written following seeing Carmen Disruption.

The train tracks are singing

The train tracks are singing to me
I have never heard them sing like this

I put my headphones in
I put my head phones in with nothing playing which is the closest I get to this city
I leave the theatre and
I put my headphones in with nothing playing and the streets look like they’re lit by par cans and fresnels
An old man whose beard furrows into his hat sings as he passes me and it sounds French or Italian.
A sign in a shop window lettered like ‘keep calm’ reads ‘love is only mad-‘ but I can’t read the rest of the message
Petals of blossom filter down through the air like sunlight and confetti

I have my headphones in with nothing playing and I listen to the city. This city that never feels like a place I would be, I feel small and successful. A man sat on the floor with a tin in front of him reads a book through gloveless fingers

The eyes of a young man or old boy linger on me, brown eyes and corn rows I glance behind me and he turns and follows.

He’s following me along the street, I see it in the reflection of the Wetherspoons and another young man old boy glances at me then talks to the friend and I hear him say ‘she had headphones in’ as I walk on

It is only at Warren Street I realise they probably wanted me to buy them some beer at Budgens.

I wonder if I would have done,
I feel bad for feeling threatened by them. I feel like If I hadn’t have been wearing headphones and they had asked I wouldn’t have known what to do and probably would have done something terrible like make them promise that they’d do something to make up for getting drunk tonight, like call their grandmothers, or read a book I could recommend them.

Or go to the theatre. I could buy them a ticket to go see the play I just saw. I would explain to them who Kate Tempest is and how I feel now like I did after I saw her raise her voice with poetry of broken hearts and broken people like myths and heroes. ‘It’s mostly about mobile phones, and cities’, I would say, ‘and how capitalism is on the floor, bleeding and we are black, black, black with its blood’.

And they would let me buy them the beer and give me fake email addresses to send the ticket references to.

It takes me to Pimlico to finish the thought of what I would do about a thing that never happened.
I’ve been trying to remember who described contemporary technology in the city as cultivating a new ‘alone together’.
I think it was maybe Graeme Miller, but if it wasn’t, if I start by looking there, I think that’s the way I’ll remember where to find it

I think “I’ll look it up on my phone when I get to Brixton”.