THE HOURS BEFORE WE WAKE // Tremolo Theatre

Judging by the extreme rarity of mobile phones, tablets, or even laptops on stage, the theatre world has barely caught up with the technological realities of the present, let alone the future. Tremolo Theatre’s The Hours Before I Wake doesn’t step too dramatically beyond the realities of the world we live in. But its commitment to representing a social media-rich, technologically-dense world makes it feel unusual - a sci-fi satire that’s close to home.

The biggest innovation in this dystopian future is that dreams are both monetised, and controlled. Individual consumers can select what they want to dream about, and take a pill to ensure that they can enact their fantasy painlessly during their sleeping hours. For Ian, the show’s protagonist, this fantasy revolves around becoming a superhero who rescues his office crush Janice from burning buildings. It’s childish stuff. But then, Ian is a huge pampered baby, cocooned from the harsh realities of the world by a soothing robot voice who helps guide him through his hours away from work - and reports any untoward behaviour straight back to his superiors.

Theorists have written about the dangers of a ‘frictionless’ world, where sharing on social media becomes constant and thoughtless -- leading to a situation where governments are able to gather a huge amount of individuals with minimum efforts. And companies are quick to take advantage of these new opportunities, too. Business are already able to track everything from their employees' movements to their facial expressions to their menstrual cycles.

The psychological effects of this dependency are less understood. Recent research has associated social media use (specifically, comparison-type behaviours) with onset of depressive symptoms. The Hours Before We Wake predicts a comfortable acceptance of constant sharing that's facilitated by soothing drugs [rather like Aldous Huxley's conception of the drug Soma in Brave New World]. 

This young company have devised a pretty dispiriting future, one that's a logical extension of a rapidly evolving corporate culture. But as its protagonist Ian is inspired to rebel against his tightly-controlled environment, it demonstrates how easy algorithms can be subverted by, as well as built from, human behaviour at its most individual.

- AS

The Hours Before We Wake was on at the Edinburgh Fringe from 5-28 August http://www.thehoursbeforewewake.com/

How frictionless sharing undermines individual privacy http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-frictionless-sharing-could-undermine-your-legal-right-to-privacy/254277/

Surveillance in the workplace http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/corporate-surveillance-activists/406201/

Impact of social media on mental health https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/social-media-and-young-peoples-mental-health

THE ME // Sun Apparatus Theatre Company

On Saturday the 27th of August 2016, it was confirmed that Mbah Gotho was the oldest person in the world, after he produced documentation that proved he was born on the 31st of December 1870. When Gotho was born (145 years ago) Ulysses S. Grant was the President of the United States, Italy was being unified, and Charles Dickens had just died. Indonesia, the country of his birth, was a Dutch colony. He would have been 74 when World War 2 ended, and is still living now.
 
The ME is about ageing, and the quest for longevity. It’s about the very human desire to resist death and the value of the one life you’ll get to lead before it’s snuffed out. Its protagonists are chasing immortality and the promise of experiencing the span of history Gotho has. It’s a gentle satire of wellness and pseudo-science, of new-age fixation and hollow self-improvement. Melody, the insufferable character at the centre of the story abuses her maid Lita as she joylessly swigs kombucha, seaweed health drinks or whatever else, before an absurd sequence of events introduces her to an unhinged researcher of how-to-cheat-death. This scientist of dubious ethics makes vague references to planarian worms, a sci-fi trope found in everything from Star Trek to Swamp Thing to denote unknowable potential for regeneration. Her crazed experiments are vaguely reminiscent of Serge Voronoff’s monkey-testicle grafts, the Russian scientist whose placebo experiments later inspired the vicious revolutionary critique of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. Like many other plays, films and books, The ME suggests a denial of mortality is the dark underside of medical science.
 
The world will change and leave us behind. By the time death comes it might be greeted without fear, as the world we find ourselves in has changed beyond all recognition. A long life is not the same as a good one, as the characters in The ME discover. Who knows how the world will develop as we age? Might it end, or continue to change? During the still continuing life of Mbah Gotho the telephone went from a new invention to a ubiquitous tool. He was alive before the first petrol engine was created. None of us know how long we have, or what we might see.

- Lewis Church

The ME ran at ZOO until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/me

The Sun Apparatus Theatre Company: http://www.thesunapparatus.com
 
Oldest Person in the World - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/worlds-oldest-person-man-mbah-gotho-indonesia-145-years-old-a7213191.html
 
Planarian Worms: https://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/research/planaria/story_planaria.pdf
 
Regrowing Heads and Keeping Memories: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/16/decapitated-worms-regrow-heads-keep-old-memories/
 
Serge Voronoff: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-true-story-of-dr-voronoffs-plan-to-use-monkey-testicles-to-make-us-immortal
 
What the World Might Look Like in 100 Years: http://www.realclearlife.com/2016/09/01/this-is-what-the-world-might-look-like-in-100-years/

MAKING MONSTERS // The Golden Fire Theatre Company

The sexism that Mary Shelley experienced while trying to write literary classic Frankenstein is unfortunately still an immediate and modern concern as literary award shortlists continue to be male dominated. Making Monsters does its best to explore the feminist context surrounding the creation of this psychologically gripping, and essentially modern landmark text.

As the performance starts we are transported to Geneva, where sycophants gather around literary giant and romantic Victorian wide boy Lord Byron. Mary Shelly, Claire Clairmont and Percy Bysshe Shelley along with Byron himself convinced themselves to interrupt the boredom they will compete in a literary challenge: to conceive a horror story.

The male characters are larger than life as Mary and Claire are instantly sidelined; a reflection of the recent discussion surrounding male dominated contemporary literally criticism and awards. Dismissed and belittled by Byron, Mary is not to be banished and slowly she cultivates her ghastly narrative.

Mary’s mother was Mary Woolstonecraft, the writer of A Vindication on the Rights of Woman and references to her writing act as a stepping stone to connect the themes to contemporary feminist discourse. While assessing Claire's stitching, Mary mumbles about body parts and voltage, forehead creased, considering the fear of the promethean monstrosity her mind is creating - born of dangerous knowledge and symbolic of secretive scientific endeavor. Instead of the female anatomy being created from Adam's spare rib, it is Mary, a woman, creating this twisted masculine form. News of the first human head transplant being performed in Russia this year and the ethical minefield this kind of surgery inspires, suggest Mary Shelly might be the mother of modern medical ethics.

Mary Shelly’s writing was a primal manifestation of Fuck the Patriarchy. Manarchists and brocialists -  Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, the sexist radicals of their day -  just couldn’t compete.

- Lucy Orr

Making Monsters ran at 17.05 at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/making-monsters

Sexism in publishing: 'My novel wasn’t the problem, it was me, Catherine': https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/06/catherine-nichols-female-author-male-pseudonym

The Deep Rooted Sexism In Literary Awards: https://thinkprogress.org/the-deep-rooted-sexism-in-literary-awards-9b4f49c7f9e3#.14cmjvy9p

Publishing and Prejudice: 5 Female Writers Weigh in on Sexism in the Literary World: http://brooklynbased.com/blog/2013/11/15/publishing-and-prejudice-5-female-writers-weigh-in-on-sexism-in-the-literary-world/

The Ethics of Organ Transplantation: A Brief History: http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2012/03/mhst1-1203.html

A year after face transplant, man says he is 'feeling great' – video: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/aug/24/face-transplant-patrick-hardison-video