When The Stranger asked me at the end of the year what my biggest regret of 2011 was, I said:
I regret that due to limited resources, we had to mothball NewsWrights United prior to the Occupy movement blowing up, because I would have really liked to cover that in a living newspaper. Adjacent to that is my regret that none of the big houses in Seattle (or small, for that matter) saw fit to include making topical theatre, based on events happening right here right now, as part of their regular programming this year.
Well, shade my regret mitigated by the news from across the pond that my former playwriting student German Munoz has organized a living newspaper about the Occupy movement called The Occupied Times. After spending a month researching and visiting the Occupy sites in London, emerging playwrights will present a night of short plays in the format of a living newspaper. They will act as reporters and cast a critical eye on the Occupy movement, its supporters and detractors, all under the Arcola Tent.
And color me even more vividly gratified when I saw that the project gave Seattle a shout-out in their press release: “This project was inspired by It’s not in the P-I: A living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper presented in Seattle in 2009 as a response to the closing of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper by Newswrights United.”
Not surprisingly, The Occupied Times seems to be garnering the same sort of media excitement that the two living newspapers NewsWrights United produced in 2009 and 2011. The London Evening Standard ran a preview of the piece and quoted my friend German thusly:
We want the show to explore sides of the movement that have not been heard. We’re hoping to reach people of all ages who feel they’ve made up their minds about the Occupy movement. People who either think of the protesters as a bunch of lazy hippies who don’t want to get a job, or see them as martyrs fighting the good fight against a system that is unbearably corrupt. Of course neither of these are completely true, and we want to show audiences our responses as artists and help them make up their own minds.
I heartily encourage my friends in London to check out this fresh, locally grown theatre inspired in the crucible of the right here and the right now. Here’s the show info:
Six Degrees Productions presents . . .
The Occupied Times: A living newspaper
about the Occupy movementVenue: Arcola Tent, 2-8 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL
Date: Sunday 19 February, 2012
Time: 3:00pm and 7:00pm
Ticket prices: £12 (£10)
Venue Box Office: 020 7503 1646 or http://www.arcolatheatre.com
For all enquiries and ticket requests, please contact: German Munoz of Six Degrees Productions on 07854 231 085 or g@germanmunoz.com
And as for my friends in Seattle, do you ever wonder why the Big Houses haven’t picked up such a wildly popular and media magnetizing idea? Well, in fairness, maybe they will now that it is being done in London, one of the two officially approved cities for sourcing new plays.
