SCENE 1
PERFORMER and OPERATOR play a computer game like āCall of Dutyā as audience enters. The game is projected onto the small screen. Background texture is on the gauze. PERFORMER presses āpauseā on his controller and the video pauses. PERFORMER turns to face the audience and then picks up his phone.
PERFORMER via WhatsApp (each paragraph reprints a message):
āHi.ā
āThanks for coming.ā
āDonāt worry, Iāll be talking to you soon.ā
āIām sure youāve used something like this before. WhatsApp, or Facebook messenger maybe. Maybe to organise a stag or a hen do. A birthday party or.
A holiday or something. Itās a really useful tool. You can broadcast to loads of people at once. And. Even though this is less relivant to planning your Auntyās 50th.ā
āFFSā
āRELEVANTā
āIt uses peer 2 peer encryption. So unless someoneās phone is hacked, the only people who can read our messages are us in this room. Which is why some governments donāt like it. Anyway.ā
āFor some of this show Iāll talk to you via this, so please leave your phone on. And if you notice someone without access to a phone, maybe share your screen with them.ā
PERFORMER talks directly to the audience, using the following bullet points as a guide:
ā¢ I love instant messaging
I love instant messaging to be honest. Especially when itās encrypted.
ā¢ It puts you in constant touch with people
I have mates, especially cultural types; artists, academics and journalists, who I am in constant touch with on stuff like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Some of them Iāve never met in the flesh, but they feel closer to me than some people I āknowā know.
ā¢ You can upend stereotypes
They keep me up to date on global politics and because a lot of us are of Asian or Muslim origin and these channels are private, we can have a certain kind of banter about stereotypes of us, the jihadi, drug dealer, pimp, sex offender stereotypes. And we can make up our own to throw back.
Send memes
Performer to audience via WhatsApp:
ā¢ There are funny and cute memes too
And thereās those cute memes too, stuff like Doge and Lolcatz, which you know you shouldnāt laugh at but you always do.
Performer sends some examples of memes via WhatsApp:
ā¢ What the show is about
This show isnāt about instant messaging and my love of memes. That would probably be much more entertaining for me than it would be for you. Itās about men, the internet and politics.
Some of the show will happen on WhatsApp. And some of it Iāll tell you through this screen, because it needs a certain kind of distance.
SCENE 2
PERFORMER is mediated digitally in some way, perhaps through Skype connection.
PERFORMER: Itās the distance that connects you to a voice you donāt trust in the middle
of the night. You followed the chain of links and now you find yourself alone with me.
This story starts in a cell. This is the story of how the Westās colonial nightmares of Islam came to be seen on a million digital screens. Itās a vision made vision made flesh.
This cell could be anywhere, but it isnāt. From the uniforms on the prison guards, the heat, and the way the inmates speak Arabic, we know that this is a cell in Egypt. 1957.
A thin man shakes. On the edge of the desert he lives a rhythm. Hunger. No sleep. Little Water. Work. Interrogation. Torture. His large, sad eyes seem even bigger, and his naturally fat cheeks hang. One percussive thud and the door to his cell is opened. The acrid midday sun cuts the room in two. Three men enter. Methodically and medically they cut his prison clothes away and smear his body in animal fat. Outside the door, thereās barking, growling. The door is closed and dogs let off their leash. The man loses consciousness around the time he suffers his third heart attack.
In that baking hot cell, in that pain and tortured train of semi-conscious thought, Seyyed Qutb, the intellectual father of modern jihadism, has a series of visions that bring together the past twenty years of his thought. As his heart arrests, he sees a world dividing and the cosmic choosing of sides. The battles between early Muslims and the Arab aristocracy are not something in the past but battles that eternally return, more bloody and catastrophic every time. There is only one small group of believers and they are his followers. Everyone else is a slave of ignorance and a servant of darkness. This is a vision of truth, and love, freedom and utopia that can only be reached by climbing a mountain of corpses.
SCENE 3
PERFORMER speaks directly to the audience, using the following bullet points as a guide:
ā¢ But this is my story too
But this is my story too.
Projections from digital screens fill the space; YouTube videos, news footage, images that speak to the stereotypes of Muslims.
A story that plays out every day. Like every other Muslim in this country, I see a news story that makes me the subject of a narrative I donāt recognise, a conversation about me that Iām not part of.
ā¢ Social media is where everybody has a voice
Social media is where everyone gets a voice, so letās do this next bit on WhatsApp.
ā¢ WhatsApp quiz
PERFORMER interacts with the audience via WhatsApp, asking the audience questions and waiting for replies, for example:
How many Muslims live in this country?
Any guesses?
How many have joined ISIS?
ā¢ The answers
There are around 3 million Muslims in this country and only 300 have joined ISIS. Thatās less than one one thousandth of one percent.
ā¢ Conversations
We can have a conversation on WhatsApp that we couldnāt have anywhere else.
ā¢ You can speak without cutting each other off
We can speak together without cutting each other off.
ā¢ Itās anonymous / democratic / right or wrong
Everyone is sort of anonymous, so you can just say what you want. It doesnāt matter if youāre wrong, you can get your views out. Itās democratic. Your opinions are disconnected from your identity.
ā¢ Not individual / anyone can talk, anything can be said
Youāre not an individual, youāre a group.
It doesnāt matter how good looking you are, how clever you are, or how expensive your shoes are. Itās a p...