ISSUE 66: THEATRE AND OUTER SPACE

Issue: Theatre and Outer Space

Convener(s): Fionn Gill

Participants: Sarah Chew, Bill Banks-Jones, Ellan Parry, Mia Flodquest, Sarah Grange, Chris Graby, James, Tom


Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

- Fionn is making a show about space and wants to hear what other people think about outer space, and making theatre about outer space. He is fascinated by its vastness and how we get so wrapped up in our daily lives yet we are in comparison so insignificant.
- Space has no edges, infinity, humans can’t fathom it.
- James climbed to space on a ladder at the Edinburgh Fringe last year. We all gave him a lot of respect.
- Someone’s dad has cycled a lot and he wonders if that distance might be enough to reach Mars for example – he cycled 3 times around the world.
- The Space Industry is the biggest and fastest growing industry in the world.
- The Mian’s predicted for 2012 that the poles will change round and this will cause huge natural disasters and most civilizations. Or humanity will reach a higher plane of spirituality.
- Q – are there many space shows out there (The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union, by David Greig- beautiful play set both down here and up there…) . One guy used a flyer saucer in a show.
- ‘Sci-Fi Theatre’ where is it? Lets make some.
- Someone wrote a domestic drama set in a space station.
- Someone did a one man show about ‘Astrophysics and String’ theory using cardboard and bits of paper – DIY.
- Apparently there used to be a ‘Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool’
- Q - Is Sci-Fi Theatre Inherently retro? Because space and space travel feels so in the past. The Apollo series. And you can only make space stuff using poor theatre techniques – the cardboard and bits of string technique.
- NO! people says. You can do Space effectively in theatre – that’s why its theatre!!
- Twins can be used to do space travel. Beem me up Scotty sort of thing.
- A group in NYC do things like a repeated argument in Startbucks, or in a crowded space everyone goes slow-mo.
- How do we get to another planet that might have life? Real thing is to send an embryo frozen and unfreeze when nearly there and robots will bring them up.
- Someone said in Kenya in the country side it is truly black and the stars and very bright. Then she feels aware of her place in the universe.
- ‘Makes me think, Fuck it. Nothing is important on earth when you realize that’
- Working with the Scale of the earth in the universe as an interesting idea.
- There is a scale model in England of the solar system. The earth is in London and some planets are in Manchester.
- The deep ocean is more unknown to humanity than space
- In space it feels like you falling all of the time and it is an umpleasant feeling. Ansuman Bisswaz has done it. He is a musician..
- Tom from Barometric Theatre is making a show about space and wanting to get into space.
- If you have a creative mind you will not be picked as an astronaut because you will immediately start to think about the higher being when you see the earth as a whole and go mad.
- Most astraunauts become gardeners when the come back to earth – a reconnection with earth, the groung, nature again.
- Amber’s gardening point:

- There is an inherent reference to past and future when you take a rocket into space.
- The voyager is someone’s favourite space craft. It has a record in it of music from earth and drawings of humans beings that are outlines.
- ‘Pale Blue dot’ is a good book.
- Getting to another planet is impossible. When and if we get there humanity will have changed so much that it will be worthless.
- Space give existentialist angst.
- Space as everyday now. There is no space heros any more. Its commercial. Space tourism now happening.
- Having a similar experience on a mountain as being in space – seeing the coveture of the earth, putting things into perspective.
- Pilon photographs. Google satalitte video.
- Joseph Titinger – Balloon trip to space and dive off. Takes 4 mins to fall back to earth.
- If the sun where to end we’re die in 4 mins. It takes 4 mins for the sun’s rays top travel to us.
- Failure as a theme of making work about space. Trying to get there but failing.
- There is a cultural difference in understanding space. The Japenese understand it in a very different way to the west.
- We can’t understand space in our terms. So the feelings that it produces is what we try to communicate in theatre about space. Like the Stan’s Café rice piece.
- Phillip Glass made something about Space
- So has Robert Lepage
- Lots of Shakespeare references to space