An empty stage, only sound is heard, people talking, slightly panicked. The sound cuts in and out through static. Someone is trying to destroy the signal. Music, voice, white noise. The signal is gone. They’ve destroyed the signal.
It is 5 years after the G.O.D’s demise. Only two men survive to tell the tale. Armed with recordings, sound files, screens and a camera, they piece the puzzle together in front of your eyes in complete silence to tell the story. The past speaks the words of the present.
The two artists create a performance from destruction, with music, sound effects and stage composition. The words and videos knit together until we loop back to the end.
Taking inspiration from The Bullet and the Bass Trombone (which shows one man using music and sound files to tell the story of how his orchestra were separated) and Longwave (a show which looks at two men silently communicating to each other in a small room as each goes in and outside, doing sciencey things and putting hazmat suits on and stuff as the events unfurl)
I’d highly suggest reading the descriptions I’ve linked to.
Starting from nothing, using what they have to create art out of destruction.
A man stands, staring at a camera for an uncomfortably long time. He is not visible; we only witness his actions through the screen.
After a while, he speaks, he is suppressing anger.
ONE. Always watching. Never falter, never fail. Your obedient eye watches me day in and day out. Why? In case I do something you don’t approve of? What happens then?
Pause.
You’ve watched me grow. You’ve seen my life. My life on tape. You can fast forward through the boring bits and replay the treasures. You can delete my life like it is nothing, like my life meant nothing. Is that what you did to him?
Pause
You don’t let us talk about it when people disappear, but I have to. You took him away and deleted his existence from everything. All because he questioned you? The G.O.D doesn’t approve and that means they deserve to be deleted. Why?
Pause
You should have taken me instead.
Pause
He was my brother.
Pause
Silence. Again, silence. Every day, silence. This omnipresent being without a single thing to say. But you’re still here. Watching.
Pause
Take me instead.
Pause
I said… take… me… instead.
Pause, then screaming.
TAKE ME!
ONE squares up to camera, nose to lens, before backing off and sitting down.
Pause.
I have a message for the G.O.D… You can take away my friends, my family, my life, but you will never take away my sanity. You can try. You can lock me away with nobody to talk to. You can ignore me. You can never respond. But I will always be myself and you will not take that away from me.
Pause. He moves to a box and pulls it out, a gun, some tape. The G.O.D know.
You won’t change me. No matter what you try to do to me. You’ve taken everything I love away, and I assume… I’m next.
No.
He takes the tape and covers the camera lens with it. Now we only hear his voice and sound.
I want you to know; this won’t last. You won’t last. The truth will come out and the people will rebel. You can’t expect the world to accept this level of intrusion. You can’t do that. People’s private lives are what make them human. What you see isn’t human, it’s fake. It’s constructed. It’s a play.
All the world’s a stage, as it were. But this… this is a peek behind the curtain.
ONE. They’re in my mind. Words. Phrases. Ideas. Flying through my brain at a million miles an hour. I didn’t invite them, they broke in. Flicking through my memories and filling it with lies like a marker pen in a children’s coloring book. I know things they don’t know.
‘Tell them,’ one says. ‘It’s not good to keep secrets,’ says another. I can’t tell, I won’t tell. The demons in my mind will not win me over.
Demons, that’s what I’ve called them; the voices of Satan crawling around giving me orders as though I’m a soldier of the underworld. Asking me to think things, tell things… do things.
In a world where nobody’s life is private it makes sense they can see into my mind as easily as a living room. You would have thought the thick bone of my skull would be enough to block them out but no. They’ve learned. Not that they can control me just by my mind alone though… no. The human will power is too strong. So I’ve stopped eating… drinking. The drugs that could subdue me to their power will not… cannot enter me. They will not drug me.
The overpowering static that blocks out the world is deafening. I can hear them now. A gospel. Holy Words. ‘Penetrating’ they’re saying, telling me of God. In days of old he was a force of good. Now he is just power. Controlling power. ‘The light of god, the understanding of God.’ Stop! stop it. Get out of my mind. Stop telling me I’m insane.
‘When you die, there will be nothing left of you except the God man, the God woman, the heavenly man, the heavenly woman, the heavenly child. There will be a song of jubilee waiting for your kin! There will be nothing except your God.’
‘This is all a dream, a dream in the gaps.’ they said. They won.
So in my “dystopian future”… (I say ‘mine’, I mean some stuff I think would work. I don’t believe this is what should happen in the future) the people would live in a place called “Sector 3”, think hunger games with the districts. but you have the sectors as like circles out from the centre. Sector three is the furthest out, “Sector 2” is next in.. more of that later, and “Sector 1”, where the G.O.D are based in the centre of the circle. As you can see, the G.O.D logo represents the sectors.
Anyway – RULES.
1 – Camera / Audio recording in every home. They don’t always watch, or listen, but they very well might be. In fact, using advanced Siri technology, G.O.D is alerted when you say ‘trigger words’; Rebellion, Ally, Fight, Freedom, e.t.c…
2 – Government controlled media. Tv, radio and film are all produced and made by G.O.D.
The usual form of entertainment are either songs of praise, reality television, or public broadcasting of punishment.
3 – Government controlled school curriculum. Schools are only taught things that can benefit G.O.D. Any creative arts subjects would not remain. You would have specific classes in jobs that need doing in the society. Building, Morality Control (Police) training, being a correct citizen.
4 – Daily mandatory viewings. At a certain time every day the world will stop and watch the television. It will give you the updates of what is important in the world, the “news”, and lead the society in unified song/sermon.
5 – Controlled food / water rations. Not that it stopped a black market, underground. G.O.D. “cares” for it’s citizens by providing water, bread and fish to each household daily. However, underground markets selling wine, other food, drugs, and so on have started up. Out of sight of cameras and out of sight of Morality Control. If an underground market is found, all stall owners are punished, and the market set on fire.
Punishment. Depending on the crime; Public Lashings, food rations removed for a certain time period, community service, solitary confinement, public death penalty, or the mysterious “Sector 2”.
Nobody knows what happens in “Sector 2”, only that when you go, there is no coming back. Legend tells that you are conditioned to become a slave to G.O.D in the “chapel”, forever to be a slave to their power, but the truth is, nobody knows. You must not talk about “Sector 2”, you must not ask about “Sector 2”. Punishment for anyone who disobeys.
Set Design.
Playing with the idea of restricted views, and overpowering visual imagery. The stage consists of two barbed wire fences, which you will be able to see through, obviously. Can also serve as a ‘Jail’ scene front. Two moving tall flats at the back. Can serve as door, and also used to conceal and reveal large projector screen at back centre. A slow reveal of “G.O.D” watching would be nice. Or a slow reveal of a member of the “morality control” stood holding a gun. Two projector screens at either side of the stage, encompassing the audience. and finally the catwalk – used for public punishment, may that be shooting, beating, so on… putting the punishment in the heart of the audience as the rest of the community watch from behind the barbed wires.
