Was invited by my friend Sarah Solemani, a writer and actor, to collaborate on a 20 minute play for Nabokov Theatre Company's Present : Tense at Southwark Playhouse.
4 artists who work for theatre had to respond to the same news story, 'Innocent teenagers' DNA stored for 6 years'
My first thought was a collection of texts or a book that lists everything about an individual, nothing left out.
I was interested in the idea that DNA can say everything about me, but my next move is up to me, it can be counter-intuitive, surprising, it is unknown, I can turn against myself.
I thought about the information we offer voluntarily online. Or is it information? My first list was a snapshot from Twitter, the most recent 20 posts to include the word 'I'.
I presented each post with the prefix 'I know that you...' I tried some additional 'writing through' but Sarah was most interested in the original list and asked me to write 5 more, one about bank details, one about location, one about online history, one about phonecalls.
We discussed the structure of the play and the differences between our two practices, and decided that four lists should be read at the beginning, then the drama that follows contextualises the lists as objects in the play, before the final two lists are read. We were interested in the movement between motive-driven drama and language-driven lists.
Because we had conceived this idea of a group versus an individual I rephrased the Twitter list to 'We know that you...' I then presented the most recent 20 items on my bank statement as a list, divided my journey home that night into twenty statements relating to location and movement and listed the last 20 phonecalls missed, received and attempted on my mobile phone. All of these presented me with choices to make (words, phrasing) in their presentation.
Because of the DNA theme I wanted an anatomical list and decided the best idea would be to concentrate on a comparitively small area of the body, so I described my left thumb in 20 phrases.
Reading Sarah's script for the middle section helped me determine the order of the lists and influenced the final list. I knew we wanted a list to do with online history but now I decided to use the last line of Sarah's dialogue as an online search term. This is from an email to Sarah:
If the internet searches is the last thing read out I think I have to be careful about it. I'd quite like this list to take us 'outside the frame of the drama',back outside (as in the beginning). What do you think about the first in this list being a google search for the last line spoken in the 'drama'?
I performed several pathways arising from this internet search, using my intuition but making choices based on language appearing in search results, cutting and pasting this language to set new searches. In the end I became interested with the search function in a user-generated site of colours.
I sent a text to Becky saying that having the lists in a play was like having a painting in a play and poses the question 'Is the painting real?' I think the way we framed the play made the question 'what are these lists' as central as the question 'what is through the door' that was at the heart of Sarah's writing. Rather than coming together in some way, these two questions relating to our respective motive-driven and language-driven practices sit side by side (By this distinction I do not mean to suggest that Sarah's writing isn't conscious of language use, only that its language is the 'heard' aspect of 'motive' whereas language in the lists seems more 'self-serving'). When contextualised by drama / read by actors / staged by a director / located in a theatre space, were the lists real? The question, just like 'What was behind the door', hangs in the air...
Thank you to all the actors, director Adam, Sarah, Nabokov Theatre Company, the other three production teams and Southwark Playhouse.
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