A first look at this thrilling and vital new work from one of the UK’s most exciting writer-performers, as voted for by audiences at last year’s BABYFLEAREINDEERBAG (“delightfully meta” ★★★★ The Guardian).
Audiences will be invited to feedback on this work-in-progress performance, in development for premiere at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. There will also be a free flowing discussion about infotech, social media and being human in an increasingly atomised and polarised world, using the “Long Table” discussion format developed by performance artist Lois Weaver.
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About the show
Hi. Thanks for making time for whatever this is.
I suppose it’s a theatre show.
Perhaps it’s an interdisciplinary, interactive, mixed-media piece of performance art.
A town hall meeting at the end of the world.
A karaoke booth in a nuclear bunker.
A clear-the-air chat
between you,
me
and the rest of our plane-of-existence-mates.
TURN YOUR F***ING PHONES OFF tells the story of how we got here – you, Maxwell and everyone else. It playfully expounds on the rise of Big Tech, attention-hacking innovations and surveillance capitalism. It recounts Maxwell’s personal struggles with phone addiction, her bid for a life in analogue, and her bizarre chapter countering Kremlin-backed disinformation (cue Bond theme). And it sits you down on a train. The one you take all the time.
Performed in traverse with an immersive technical design by Benji Huntrods, TURN YOUR F***ING PHONES OFF has been dramaturgically supported by a stellar cadre of theatre-makers, including Ursula Martinez, Rachel Mars, Annie Siddons and Nick Cassenbaum.
This production has been commissioned by Waterside Arts, Sale and developed through generous funding from Arts Council England. The project has been supported by The Vaults, Queen Mary University of London and The Front Room, Weston-super-mare.
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About The Long Table
The Long Table, developed by artist and academic Lois Weaver, experiments with the private form of a dinner party as a structure for public debate where anyone has a seat at the table.
The components are simple: a long table, chairs, a paper tablecloth, pens. Participants are welcome to scribble ideas or comments. There is an Etiquette to be observed. There can be silence. There might be awkwardness. There can always be laughter.
Dozens of Long Tables have been held around the world, on topics as diverse as human rights, arts and mental health, housing crises, technology design, as well as other hot topics like equality, democracy, gender and sex!
The Long Table is open-source. Guidelines and a printable ‘Etiquette’ can be found online here.