Canberrans are invited to go underground into the deep dark depths of the digital world of surveillance and data, when I Have No Enemies, presented by Bare Witness Theatre Co., comes to Gorman Arts Centre next month, 1-11 March.
Technology has opened the world with too many advantages and conveniences to list, however, we rarely stop and consider how the constant posting into the void has affected the way we live. The play delves into the systems we aren’t in control of, and how they track, surveil and alter our behaviour and sense of identity.
“It’s with full acknowledgement that we’re lazy about passwords, and we don’t know anything really about encryption and really, just by making this show, we’re probably on a whole lot of government watch lists,” says Christopher Samuel Carroll, artistic director of Bare Witness Theatre Company and director of I Have No Enemies.
Developed by Carroll and three other performing artists and writers, Rachel Pengilly, Ash Hamilton and Brendan Kelly, the play came together through improvisation, workshops, and a touch of traditional theatre writing. Carroll says the process left them with an organic, surprising, and potentially chaotic play they are excited to share with audiences.
“It’s probably the most hilarious show you’ll ever find about surveillance and data collection. I’ll go out on a limb and say that,” he smiles.
The seed for the play was planted when Carroll was working a side gig at a transcription company. One voicemail message had him relistening as he tried to record all the bizarre and personal details the man was sharing, leaving the director wondering why he was being told this information.
“I’m a sort of subcontractor for a subcontractor for this company that pays me peanuts. There’s no accountability, and it kind of tapped into those underlying anxieties that I have myself,” he admits.
Carroll says while he and the other actors are playing characters, they are also heightened versions of themselves. Events are drawn from true experiences; then, he says, in the way the internet does, lines between true and fake news become blurred quite fast.
Kelly represents the type that shutdowns paranoia, downplaying things, perhaps to his own detriment. Hamilton is the glue that holds the group together, a fun and upbeat gamer obsessed with a phone game called Tortoise Run, while Pengilly is a tech whizz who has developed her own encrypted, closed system, fire wall-protected automated assistant that works in the dark web.
Like Carroll, his character is more cautious about the power technology can have for surveillance, sharing his experience of getting his first phone as a teen. While most kids his age would have been thrilled to get their first taste of freedom in the Nokia 3210, he was horrified.
“I just felt like this was a violation, they just got it for me so they could keep tabs on me, they could call me and I refused to use it or turn it on,” he says.
Quickly he discovered that he could call girls without having to do it over the communal landline and gave in to the convenience of technology. While paranoid, he’s also lazy and doesn’t want to revert to the days of trying to read a map. Falling into the system like many of us do, the system that is explored in the I Have No Enemies.
The play was originally meant to hit the stage last year but an unfortunate string of Covid cases saw it postponed. But Carroll says it wasn’t all bad, giving them more time to work on the show and incorporate some more technical elements. With the help of SilverSun Pictures, audiences will be immersed in the digital world, with glimpses of what is going on with the crew and maybe a game or two of Tortoise Run.
Bare Witness Theatre Co. presents I Have No Enemies,at Gorman Arts Centre, Braddon, 1-11 March; ainslieandgorman.com.au
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