Something Other Than Everything

Recorded in September 2017 at the Royal Exchange in Manchester

PLEASE READ THE INFORMATION BELOW BEFORE HAVING A LISTEN.

I started writing this show in the summer of 2016 and worked on it over the following year or so before performing it for most of July 2017 at the Roundhouse in North London.

I spent August of that year removing one lighting cue, rewriting one of the story threads and implementing a few new inclusions, testing them out in Edinburgh at the Paines Plough Roundabout before doing the second (and final) run of the show in September of 2017 at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.

It was staged in the round, with each new thought or section of material being starkly lit from a specific angle and my voice sometimes bouncing around from, i think, twelve, external speakers. There’s a number of narrative threads which steadily emerge and each of those was performed in its own directional flood light. There were also sudden shafts of light, shifts into a blue wash for some bits and snaps into a cold flat light for other bits.

I do have video footage of the show and have started working on putting that together so you’ll get a sense of how it all looked but for now, i’ve done what i can, with this, acoustically, to give you a sense of whats going on.

As with, essentially, every old show i’ve put on here, it contains some bits i wouldnt write now, some opinions i no longer hold and some thoughts which have evolved over the last 8 or 9 years.

However, and this is important:

There is a short section (less than a minute in total) towards the middle of the show (67 minutes in) in which i use a racial slur in the reported speech of some children with whom i attended infant school. I tell you this as a trigger warning, essentially, in case you want to avoid it.

During the London run an opinion piece was published in The Guardian newspaper outlining the writers visceral response to that word’s appearance and questioning the validity of it’s use.

Coincidentally, the writers partner was a friend and classmate of mine at that particular infant school and we had, over the days before that article was published, exchanged some texts discussing that particular joke and it’s function in the show. He had struggled to laugh at it when he saw the show but saw the intention of it’s inclusion and, on balance, didn’t feel it should be removed.

That exchange was the latest in a number of conversations i’d had over the writing of the show, mainly during and after preview shows, with people directly affected by both that specific word and other racist language, to find out how they felt about my use of it in the show.

In making this recording available, eight years later, the world as it now is - i have, of course, considered whether to remove that section but decided against doing so because i do, still, believe it to contextually justified and thematically important.

I did however make some changes to the performance of that specific section between finished the London run and opening in Manchester. When writing the show, i wanted that section to confront the presumably progressive and well intentioned white members of the audience with their (and my) own complicity in the historic use of racist language. So i set out to make that moment as confrontational as possible. Using a sudden harsh lighting change and screeching the word, essentially, like a scary child.

Shamefully, I’d thought at the time that for people of colour in the room, previously abused with the word, my comedically exagerated use of it, in what, felt to me, a safe space would be water off a ducks back.

Obviously, that assumption was then and remains, now embarrasingly thick. Among other things, the article outlined the traumatic and visceral impact of hearing that word. The writer was, in the truest sense, triggered by its use, suffering something like a panic attack and unable to hear much, if any, of what followed. This impact was, obviously, the opposite of my intention and had been, apparently, in large part (although not entirely) due to the sudden, heightened and confrontational nature of that moment.

So i got rid of the lighting changes and softened the delivery, using the language in as conversational and none threatening a tone as possible - as you’ll hear in this recording.

After the publication of the article in the Guardian, i received an email offering me some right of reply in the paper. I could either be interviewed or write a response piece to clarify what i was trying to do in the show but i had no real interest in doing that. I’d found the minor storm of attention quite difficult and felt then, as i do now, that the best explanation of the show, was the show itself.

So now, i’ve put that here.

It’s very long and it’ll best through some headphones or decent speakers.