Hidden from view inside a south London warehouse, a brand new underground motion might be combating the worldwide blight of misinformation this summer season.
The massive immersive occasion – half theatrical present, half social marketing campaign – is to contain a few of Britain’s main appearing expertise, together with Toby Jones and Meera Syal, and has been put collectively by a theatre firm led by a girl who discovered about misinformation the onerous manner, on the Georgian tv station Imedi.
Liana Patarkatsishvili, the founding father of Sage & Jester productions, nonetheless recollects the second when the unbiased newsroom was taken over on the orders of the federal government of Mikheil Saakashvili. Her experiences have influenced her work on the brand new present, which is because of happen over 9,000 sq metres in an empty constructing in Deptford.
“I nonetheless keep in mind these days clearly,” she advised the Observer. “Earlier than the 2007 crackdown in Georgia, unbiased media confronted vital challenges and mounting stress.”
The debut present, known as Storehouse, is because of run from 4 June till 20 September. The story will happen in a fictional storage facility, the place humanity’s historical past has been archived since 1983, the daybreak of the web.
On this enviornment, a “battle between reality and order” might be waged, “because the highly effective manipulate the reality to their very own ends and demanding pondering is the one efficient weapon”. Syal, who will voice Dolly Ok Guha, one of many imagined radical founders of the motion, stated: “I’m thrilled to be a part of Storehouse. It’s an bold immersive manufacturing that tackles a important subject.”
The three different founders are performed by Jones, whose performances as postmaster Alan Bates within the ITV drama concerning the Publish Workplace scandal received widespread acclaim, the famend actor Kathryn Hunter, lately seen in Netflix’s Black Doves and within the movie Poor Issues, and by rising star Billy Howle from the movie On Chesil Seashore. They may information guests by the warehouse and thru a forged of reside actors.
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Patarkatsishvili is eager to point out that misinformation isn’t just the spreading of deliberate falsehoods. “It’s additionally about creating uncertainty and eroding belief,” she stated. “This tactic has been used globally, from casting doubt within the media to flooding the general public with conflicting narratives. In at present’s consideration economic system, information has been commodified, turning into a product that must be ‘bought’. It turns into paramount to have the ability to discern ‘sellable data’ and false narratives from details and being correctly factually knowledgeable.”
The present will run in tandem with a sequence of public debates, or important conversations, which are being held by the summer season on the opposite facet of London at the Pleasance theatre. The classes, staged in collaboration with Intelligence Squared, might be compered by the journalist Sophia Smith Galer.
The discussions are meant to assist inform or “inoculate” the viewers in opposition to misinformation by exhibiting them the way it can work. “We need to empower people by higher understanding the powers at play. A key level for us is to provide individuals a way of company, as this subject could make us really feel apathetic and disempowered, which finally feeds the issue,” stated Patarkatsishvili, whose late father, often called Badri, based the Imedi radio station and tv station in Georgia.
Debate, she argues, may be a extra standard option to develop important pondering abilities, however theatre will be simpler. “In its personal manner, that is what Storehouse goals to do; immerse audiences in a world the place they resolve what’s true,” she stated. “The artwork of storytelling creates empathy and understanding in ways in which details alone can not. When audiences step inside, they’re not simply watching a narrative – they’re residing it. They’re pressured to grapple with tough questions on reality, energy, and their very own complicity in shaping narratives. Leisure has all the time been a robust software as a result of it humanises summary points and makes them private.”
Patarkatsishvili’s hope is that Storehouse might be “greater than a present – it’s a name to motion”.
“It asks audiences to replicate on their function in at present’s data ecosystem, and challenges them to take accountability for the tales they consider and share.”
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