Guest Blog by Alexander Kelly of Third Angel
What I Heard About The World was was born during a conversation in Jorge Andrade’s flat in Lisbon in 2007. Since we had met in 2004 we’d been talking about our two companies, Third Angel and mala voadora, collaborating on a project. As is often the way, we had had a moment of realisation that this collaboration wasn’t going to happen unless we actually, you know, started it. So Jorge and I met for coffee, each bringing a few ideas to the table. Jorge showed me several newspaper stories that had caught his attention recently. They were the sort of stories we might call “And Finally” stories in the UK – quirky, would-you-believe-it stories.
One was about how you can hire people to turn up at demonstrations for you – make up the numbers – do some shouting. (They won’t commit acts of violence, though – it has to be peaceful protest.) Another was about how the most popular pastime for off-duty US soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan is to play war games – first person simulations set in real wars. Simpler wars, perhaps. And another was about a US military programme providing life-size cardboard cut-outs of servicemen and women to their families when they go abroad. Flat Daddies. Sometimes the kids get so attached to their cardboard dads that they refuse to speak to their real ones when they phone up from abroad.
It was immediately noticeable to me that the thing these stories had in common was that they were of fakes: replacements, stand-ins, substitutions. This seemed to connect with what I was bringing to the conversation, which was maps and mapping. We talked about how a map is a fake, or a stand-in.
Then we began collecting – through research, conversation, on the internet: asking people for true stories of the inauthentic used in the everyday. This research process produced a sister project, Story Map, a 12 hour durational story-exchanging performance, which we ran at West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Transform season back in June. The story collecting process is one of retelling and renaming the stories, and by drawing an icon for each one, as a means of cataloguing them.
But our research also involved conversations with the geographers behind the brilliant Worldmapper.org, who explained their ethos to us: to help you see people in other countries as yourself in another place.
What I Heard About The World is a theatre piece with two songs, one original, one karaoke. The show premiered at Sheffield Theatres in October 2010, performed nearly entirely in English, before being reworked to tour in Portugal, performed half in Portuguese, half in English. As I write this we are about to rework the “Portuguese version” of the show to be performed in English again at Northern Ballet in Leeds. Some of the stories we’ve gathered recently may well find their way into this third version of the show.
We’re still collecting stories, too. If you have something for us, then visit our website or use use the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld on Twitter. Or come along to see the show and talk to us afterwards.
WHAT I HEARD ABOUT THE WORLD by Third Angel & mala voadora
5 & 6 October 2011, 7.30pm
(post show discussion on 5th)
Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre
At Northern Ballet, Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7PA
Box office: 0113 220 8008
www.northernballet.com/boxoffice