The CV-19 impact

This is the first of a series of pieces about the current situation. Coming up: May 18 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: production and reproduction’, May 21 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: popular resistance’

What strikes me is the way in which the CV-19 virus has laid bare things that previously were invisible.  It is as if the virus – or its impact on us in all our manifestations, as individuals, as social groups, as organisms – has led to lucidity.  The CV-19 impact is elucidation, all elements and processes are seen more clearly; they reveal their inner structure as if in an X-ray.  But this X-ray is of a unique sort because the CV-19 impact permits the visibility of the inner and outer aspects of reality simultaneously.  It has had the effect of affording us a view that is at once macrocosmically distanced and at the same time meticulously close and interior.  The ‘stopping’ of normal activity has enabled a perspective that is at once cross sectional and topographical.  It reminds me of the quality of perception gained in theatre art by the use of ‘Verfremdungseffeckt’ as it is described by Brecht or the gnoseological outcomes in Boal’s work of the use of analogical induction in the confrontation of reality by its image.  The CV-19 is like a searingly enlightening freeze-frame.  All elements tend to show their essence under the impact of its gaze.  Our society becomes more like itself.  We become more like ourselves.

I have become more isolated not epidemiologically (that as well) but more separated from those I live amongst.  The already existing view that I have of the political elites, the prevailing values, beliefs, interests and the common sense of my society have become more unacceptable and somehow unbearable.  More unbearable because their ignorance and insentience appears to me to be more socially dangerous.  They are consonant with a dreadful lack of sense, a kind of lumbering folly, delusional grossness.  I think I have a sharper sense than most of the need for this regime’s displacement because I even identify their forms of kindness as menacing.  The CV-19 impact has made me even more extremely opposed to what I consider their stupidity and made me even more convinced that it is necessary for life that they should be removed from power.  I’m not just talking about the odious creeps who are their political servants, the Tories, but the awful monarchy, the millitarists, the corporate flunkeys, the visionary leaders, the charismatic managers, the ludicrous factotums, the whole apparatus.  And this is because the CV-19 impact has revealed even more certainly what bungling, murderous oafs they are.

Of course this at the same time reveals me to be a grumpy irate outraged ageing know-all who will not accept anybody’s opinion if they don’t share my prejudices.

The CV-19 impact has revealed our existence as a species like never before, it has shown us our extinction, it has warned us that our relationship to ecosystems will continue to produce these impacts, it has shown us that our little corner of the globe is molten with kindness and human generosity all of which, as with all public goods, is predated on by an omnivorous greedy oligarchic elite, that the syrup of collusion in which we are stuck is made up of structures that seem to be prehistoric and can never be changed; our isolation itself is somehow embodied in this cursed island kingdom, this throne of idiocy, clearly not a fortress against infection, ‘bound in with shame with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds’.  Shame yes, shame. 

Of course I cannot expect people to agree with me.  What I am saying is disagreeable.  It may even be destructive of the vestiges of solidarity that hoodwink people into humble submission and like a disappearing twinkle lighten their penumbral stupor.  We are symbolically back in the ‘Great War’ trenches where my grandfather served, where we shiver at the danger posed by the enemy but quake with fear at the awful officers who are in command.  There is no comfort in this for me.  Letting off steam is good for locomotives. 

I am aware of the need for optimism and looking on the bright side, of appreciating all the wonderful people showing solidarity and kindness through the mutual aid movements and in the voluntary, dedicated, and professionally engaged cohorts of the health, care and educational sectors.  Of course there may be an enhancement of the general opinion people have of them and the status they gain may be regenerative.  

Unless we advance our knowing and wake up and look at what our rulers are doing, they will be ground back down into the position of skivvies for the brutal marketeers of trickle down.

What people said about the online readings of SOMEBODY ELSE and THE FIELD

SOMEBODY ELSE 

by Jonathan Chadwick

online reading presented on Thursday 17th April 2020

with Ruth Lass and Laura Lake Adebisi

Alice is a refugee. She has been badly brutalised. She and Margarette, who has spent her working life as an actor, are living together as a part of a scheme called ONE TO ONE.  The scheme ‘matches’ refugee women with women who have volunteered to take mentoring roles.  The apartment they live in is on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Unable at first to speak and move, Alice eventually proves that she can help Margarette perhaps more than Margarette can help her.

‘Wonderful play, astonishing performances, a new medium for these new times – a deep bow to you all’

‘a complex, lyrical and profound play and..a very moving and profound performance’

‘Thank you so much for such a powerful play! The bird and the angel, you were fantastic! Bravo!

‘It had great emotional truth and each actor zoomed in at us, as if we were the other character.  The intimacy of that was extraordinarily right for this time of lockdown’

‘I was with you in that house by the Mediterranean.  I swam, I was a fish, an actress, a daughter, a woman.  It was magic. Your two voices mixed and were so close and so far away”

THE FIELD 

by Jonathan Chadwick

online reading presented Thursday 23rd April 2020

with

Amed Hashimi, Mikhail Sen, Ruth Lass, Laila Alj, Laura Lake Adebisi, Annie Firbank and Lloyd Trott

Three people, two of whom are theoretical physicists working at a hadron collider, arrive in a field and decide to buy the adjacent house and have a child. Elsewhere a young woman, distraught at the death of her sister, plants a tree and meets a singer. Rebellion, floods and financial collapse precipitate a social revolution.

‘It was a great reading.  I liked the mood, the pace and the anticipation of it’

‘An intense experience. I was completely drawn in.’

‘I like the mix of revolution and counter-revolution, culture and counter-culture’

‘Marvellous actors!’

‘All this weaving between different sciences and questioning about what it is to be, and all these diverse temporalities, these various loves, these different perceptions of existence, constitute a poetic and disturbing work’.

‘We are awed and so impressed by your extraordinary capacity to weave together so many threads in one play and by the actors’ skill in pulling it all off and handling such a rich and complex text with such aplomb and all of you for managing that on zoom! Deepest admiration and gratitude to the whole amazing crew’

The Field – online reading Thursday 23rd April 7.30pm/8.10pm start

THE FIELD 

a play by Jonathan Chadwick

Three people, two of whom are theoretical physicists working at a hadron collider, arrive in a field and decide to buy the adjacent house and have a child. Elsewhere a young woman, distraught at the death of her sister, plants a tree and meets a singer. Rebellion, floods and financial collapse precipitate a social revolution.

with

Amed Hashimi, Mikhail Sen, Ruth Lass, Laila Alj, Laura Lake Adebisi, Annie Firbank and Lloyd Trott

online reading Thursday 23rd April 2020 from 7.30pm* for 8.10pm start (UK time)

*Participants can arrive from 7.30pm and get to know how we are using the zoom technology. If they wish, they can then take part in ‘public applause for health workers’ at 8pm (for UK residents) and then be ready to start the online reading at 8.10pm

If you want to attend this online reading on Thursday 23rd April at 7.30pm/8.10pm please click on the zoom invitation below at that time and enter the password.

Your microphone will be muted when you arrive in the space. We ask you to turn your video off and select Gallery View and ‘hide all non-video participants’. There will be a discussion afterwards.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/8239997145?pwd=YjR5OE10VDVwN2xqZm1PUCtIZzRGdz09

Meeting ID: 823 999 7145

Password: 034675

Further information: info@aztheatre.org.uk

www.aztheatre.org.uk

Somebody Else – online reading

SOMEBODY ELSE

a play by Jonathan Chadwick

online reading

Thursday 16th April 2020 at 7.30pm

with

Laura Lake Adebisi

Ruth Lass

Alice is a refugee. She has been badly brutalised. She and Margarette, who has spent her working life as an actor, are living together as a part of a scheme called ONE TO ONE.  The scheme ‘matches’ refugee women with women who have volunteered to take mentoring roles.  The apartment they live in is on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Unable at first to speak and move, Alice eventually proves that she can help Margarette perhaps more than Margarette can help her.  

If you want to attend this online reading on Thursday 16th April at 7.30pm please click on the zoom invitation below at that time.

We ask people who attend to have their microphones on mute and their video turned off during the reading.  There will be a discussion afterwards.

Jonathan Chadwick is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: SOMEBODY ELSE online reading

Time: Apr 16, 2020 07:30 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/8239997145?pwd=YjR5OE10VDVwN2xqZm1PUCtIZzRGdz09

Meeting ID: 823 999 7145

Password: 034675

This online reading is one of two.  We are exploring the use of zoom as a medium for dramatic work.  Watch out for the online reading of THE FIELD by Jonathan Chadwick on Thursday 23rd April at 7.30

Questions and follow up: info@aztheatre.org.uk

www.aztheatre.org.uk

Welcome

Lest we forget – latest blog

Read more about MOVE ME

Jonathan Chadwick’s latest play, THE RUINS, more information at the end of the Plays and other writing section

DECEPTION AND DELUSION is the latest blog

EXCLUSION PROCESSES is the one before

POLITICS IS FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO POLITICIANS is the blog before that.

PLEASE DON’T MAKE US GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN is the one before.

THINKING ABOUT THE STATE is a blog piece about the need in our current situation in the UK in the Autumn of 2022 to reflect on the state

 

Here is a recent video interview hosted by Connor Hayes from Peace in Kurdistan The Art of Politics and the Politics of Art

Here is a podcast he did for World of Wisdom on ‘Theatre and Transformation

‘Theatre as a Space of Transformation’ is a talk he did for Ecodemia.

All the blog pieces about Coronavirus, CV-19 Impacts, are in the blog section. If you want to read the first in the series from May 2020. CLICK HERE.

If you want to read just the last six pieces I have published in 2021 CLICK HERE

All of Jonathan Chadwick’s recent plays are described and listed in ‘plays and other writing‘. Any comments or enquiries go to ‘contact’