Editorial/Rant – Page 42

Posted on May 12, 2009August 15, 2009 by Hannah Nicklin — 5 Comments

Science Fiction Theatre, New Politics?

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.

Posted on March 29, 2009August 15, 2009 by Hannah Nicklin — Leave a comment

State of the Nation

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!