Review: Collide Theatre's Hamletmachine

Never have I ever seen a performance in an abandoned warehouse. Never, that is, until two weeks ago, when I went over to Ugly Duck on Tanner Street to watch a performance of Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine. The German postmodernist play was produced and directed by a small, up-and-coming theatre company called Collide Theatre, and it's this small, up-and-coming theatre company that introduced me to a completely new way of experiencing theatre.

Perhaps the best way to explain Hamletmachine is that it's weird. Really weird, as you'd expect a postmodernist drama to be. I was initially attracted to the event because it had 'Hamlet' in the title, and Hamlet is my favourite Shakespeare work. Hamletmachine, it turns out, is loosely based on Hamlet, and it does help to have read or watched Hamlet being performed to get a sense of the literary context of the play. But Collide's Hamletmachine is more challenging than Shakespeare's early modern writing. For one thing, it's performed around a warehouse, which means that the audience follows the actors from scene to scene. We are literally following the story; we are almost part of the play. The actors don't quite interact, but neither is the audience wholly invisible. We're shielded by a kind of translucent veil, and our place in the play is deliberately uncertain.

Reading back the script today, it's even clearer how well Emily Louizou, as director, and her creative team have done to adapt such a complex and difficult play for an everyday London audience. As I read the script, I have flashbacks to particular scenes from the warehouse. The first scene, in which we watched a bride glide in slow motion down a path of soil towards her groom, followed by a group carrying an empty coffin, was executed with such precision and skill that it sent shivers down my spine – and I'm not one to use those kind of cliches very often. I'm also reminded of Ophelia in the second part of the play. Actress Ava Pickett is transfixing as she recites Müller's most beautiful passage, “I am Ophelia”. I loved Susan Hoffman and Maximilian Davey's mimed duet at the piano, and Hamlet's declaration, "I want to be a woman", led to a eerily beautiful scene in which the actors pair off and dance, slow at first and then with increasing mania, while the audience looks on as spectators.

For something so complex, and with such a challenging space, Collide has done really well for itself. It's proved that, contrary to conventional theatre groups, it can work in the most difficult of artistic circumstances that leaves the audience feeling curious rather than confused. Their commitment to a different kind of theatre is admirable, as producer Rachel Horowitz tells me that while they're looking to perform the play at other venues, perhaps in Brighton or Edinburgh, “we're not just going to go to a black box theatre and do it. If we find the space and like the space and think the space can tell the story, then we will go for it.” Louizou tells me to watch this space – and I definitely will.

Fashion Forward

Image: YouTube

If you’ve seen any of the looks from the New York City Met Gala this year, it was probably Beyonce’s Givenchy Haute Couture dress, Gigi Hadid in Tommy Hilfiger (accompanied by boyfriend Zayn Malik with a silver-plated arm), or Emma Watson in Calvin Klein. Otherwise, your timelines might have been filled with pictures of Clare Danes’ incredible light-up Cinderella dress by Zac Posen. It’s this dress that gives the biggest hint towards this year’s gala theme, Manus x Machina, which saw hand- and machine-made designs join forces in some of the most innovative couture of recent years.

The gala is the fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. This year, the Institute chose the theme of Manus x Machina to explore the way designers combine manmade and machine-made materials and designs to create haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear. The theme allowed for a unique take on a section of the industry that traditionally uses manual methods to create beautiful, intricately-detailed pieces that are as much works of art as they are fashion pieces. The ‘machine-made’ was a tribute to the extent to which machinery plays a part in society, and increasingly in art, and a challenge to conventional haute couture. The machine by no means takes away from the hand-made garments of tradition: rather, the meticulous design and planning that goes into each mechanic piece is as much a part of the creation of haute couture as any hand-stitched process.

So, how did the designers incorporate the machine into their work? Clare Danes’ dress is perhaps the most obvious example, with LED lights and 30 mini battery packs sewn into the lining of the dress, which was made from a hollow shell of custom-made Gossamer fabric to prevent the dress from becoming too heavy. Posen combined the most fundamental elements of modern technology – electricity and light – to bring a traditional fairy-tale Cinderella dress into the twenty-first century without altering its classical delicacy. Elsewhere, Marchesa designers and co-founders Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig worked with IBM’s cognitive computing system Watson to design a ‘cognitive dress’, worn by model Karolina Kurkova, that changed colour depending on the reaction it gained on social media – a reflection on the emotion and passion hidden behind the technological wall of social media.

Emma Watson’s dress by Calvin Klein and Eco Age was as much about contemporary issues as it was technology. Made from recycled plastic bottles, her look was a demonstration of the crossover between fashion and environmental sustainability – not the most fashionable of phrases – thanks to technology. In a Facebook post, Watson wrote: ‘Plastic is one of the biggest pollutants on the planet. Being able to repurpose this waste and incorporate it into my gown for the ‪#‎MetGala proves the power that creativity, technology and fashion can have by working together.’ The look may not have the visual effect that Clare Danes’ dress did, but its concept was arguably one of the most innovative of the collection – and has valuable practical resonances, too.

Looking further into the Met’s collection – there are plenty of photographs of select pieces online – it’s the use of plastic that stands out. But moving away from the recyclable to the more literally technological, 3D printing was also a major theme. In a video shot by CNN Style for the event, Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge at the Costume Institute, explains: ‘3D printing has the potential to be as revolutionary as the sewing machine.’ Iris van Herpen was at the forefront of this experimental design technique, as with her museum show, ‘Transforming Fashion’, that debuted in Atlanta’s High Museum of Art from November through to May this year. The bone-like structures and intricate designs that result from the combination of such a technological innovation with fashion is an accolade to the ability of fashion to transform and be transformed by technology in turn.

This year’s Met Gala was not merely a collection of metallic, futuristic visual pieces. The thought and innovation that went behind the designs paid homage to the collective awareness of technology as a dominant force in our society – and what better way to do so than by weaving it into fashion? The gala also demonstrated the willingness of designers to engage with social and global issues outside the realms of ‘traditional’ fashion. Fashion can thus never be labelled as shallow when it is willing to address the need for sustainability, or draw attention to the effect of social media on our own psychology. As Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive explained, ‘technology and craft are not at odds, and much like beauty and utility, they go hand in hand. Often the result is more powerful for the combination.’

Originally published on Palatinate Online.

Batman v Superman: Review

Image: YouTube

‘Now, I’m no film critic,’ I messaged Rory, Palatinate’s Film and TV Editor, at one o’clock on Sunday morning, ‘but I just saw Batman v Superman, and it was shit.’

The beginning is promising. A stern-faced Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) looks on as a city is destroyed, blow by blow, by a combination of alien ships and the apparent cannonball that is Superman. It is a necessary and well-done glance back to Man of Steel that feels natural and seamlessly provides Wayne with a back story and a motive for his hatred of Superman. Less necessary, I felt, was the dream-like sequence playing out the death of Wayne’s parents. Assuming that most of us are familiar with Batman’s backstory, the scene adds little to the forward momentum of the plot. The name Martha is obviously significant for the film, but couldn’t the sentence ‘my mother’s name was Martha’, accompanied by sad eyes and clenched teeth, have sufficed? As for the rest of the scene, the bat sequence, and the shot of Wayne rising out of the underground cavern in a whirlwind of bat wings, felt cheap, tacky and overdone. It’s a dream sequence, yes, but I’ve seen such sequences done far better in other films.

The dream sequences are, in fact, a large flaw of the film, as is the excitable use of special effects. I must admit, I didn’t hold much hope. It seems to be a common theme in recent films to go all-out on the special effects and save little for the imagination – with the exception of The Revenant, of course, which I actually quite liked. Batman v Superman fails on this point, as did Man of Steel before it. Both films see a promising plot promptly destroyed by destruction. Director Zack Snyder clearly loves a bit of drama, but the last half an hour or so of Batman v Superman is practically incomprehensible. Buildings, structures, even pieces of ground fly around the scene while the camera fails to keep up, resulting in a flurry of light, movement and sound that confuses the senses rather than indulging them in some high-quality action. I wasn’t entirely sure who dealt each blow throughout the sequence. And don’t get me started on the slow-motion effect, which Snyder seems to favour particularly for any scene that involves Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. For a character that should involve impressive depth and a pending film franchise to follow, she seems to spend a lot of her time standing in uncomfortable combat poses while the camera pans out to the wider action performed by the other characters.

The female characters deeply disappointed me. Amy Adams’s Lois Lane was promising as a fiery reporter, digging deep and asking the awkward questions. Yes, I thought. Here, finally, is a female action character that won’t descend into a damsel-in-distress act by the end. How wrong I was. There is a sudden switch in character somewhere in the film that removes any sense of power and impressiveness that Lane was instilled with, and replaces it with a stereotype. How many times does one woman need to be saved? Irritating, too, was the bathtub scene, necessary only to get a naked woman into the film, a requirement for any action film of late, or ever. If a man jumped into my bathtub with his dirty shoes on, no matter if he bought me flowers, he’d get a punch in the face.

Were there any positives? Yes, of course. Most bad films do have redeeming qualities, and this is no exception. Affleck makes a superb first appearance as a darker, more vengeful Batman: his character makes me excited for the new Batman film that fans are anticipating. The factory scene in which he rescues Superman’s mother from a group of baddies is potentially the greatest Batman sequence of any film, and definitely the most promising of this one. Contrary to Mark Kermode’s harsh review in The Guardian, I actually greatly enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor: creepy, intriguing and slightly unhinged, he makes a great addition to an otherwise disappointing array of flat characters.

Overall, I wasn’t keen. I’d agree with Kermode on a two-star rating. Batman v Superman is a money-orientated blockbuster film that probably appeals visually to children because of its action-packed scenes, but to any fan of either franchise, fails to do justice to what could have been an incredible joining of forces between the two superheroes. It tries to do too much: setting up a new Batman film, a 2017 Wonder Woman film, and a new Lex Luthor character. It seems keen on bankrolling the DC Comics universe for a Justice League film that aims to rival the success of the Avengers franchise. If Snyder’s lack of success in combining Batman and Superman is anything to go by, it seems unlikely that a Justice League film will achieve this aim.

Originally published on Palatinate.

It Still Happens Here

Image: Jade Correa

Would you know where to turn if you experienced sexual violence? I suspect most people wouldn’t. I spend a fair bit of my time talking and writing about sexual violence, and for a long time I wasn’t sure where to go, either – to be honest, I’m still not sure I’m completely certain. And there’s another, more troubling question that links to my first. Would you turn to anyone at all if you experienced sexual violence? Do you trust that your claim would be taken seriously by your college, the University, even the police? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if your answer to any of those questions was no.

It’s these issues, among many others, that It Happens Here Durham is trying to tackle as it works with the University, particularly the Sexual Violence Task Force. We’re a relatively new group, forming with only two members in 2012; we’ve only been a society for a year.  Nevertheless, we have huge aims for Durham. Our three key goals are for the University to have a transparent sexual violence policy, better signposting for those seeking support, and mandatory training for members of staff, particularly those whose jobs require a degree of pastoral care.

The first goal brings us back quite nicely to my original question. It is clear that sexual violence is happening at university at an alarming rate: the most recent NUS report on the subject stated that one in seven female students experience serious sexual or physical assault at some point in their university life. Of those students, a total of 14% report their assault to their institution or the police, with the remaining students not reporting because they felt embarrassed or ashamed, or were worried that they would be blamed. The impression I get at Durham in particular is that the lack of a clear sexual violence policy, or a guide on where to go, might also be a significant issue. With the stigma that already surrounds sexual violence, might it not be discouraging to have no clear idea of who to go to for help?

A clear policy is something that should interest the University and its students alike. As well as providing a better procedure for dealing with victims of sexual violence, it might too offer ways of dealing with the perpetrators. Unfortunately, we live in a country as a whole where it is often the victims who are uprooted from their university halls, or are forced to find a different route to lectures, for fear of meeting their attacker on campus. It should be the responsibility of each university to ensure that both parties remain separated during any investigation of sexual violence, and it should not be up to the complainant to take extra measures to make sure that this is the case.

Policies take a long time to make, and the controversies and the ins and outs surrounding sexual violence makes the process more complicated and time-consuming. But there is still more the university can do in the meantime. It Happens Here’s second goal – to secure better signposting for victims of sexual violence – is perhaps the easiest to achieve. After all, everyone has the Nightline number on the back of their campus cards, and it has its own little section on DUO and the University website. It takes some searching, but mental health resources, too, are quite readily available, with the counselling service in particular being advertised through emails. Why, then, do sexual violence resources not have this same status? Considering the impact it has on students’ wellbeing, their mental health, and their academic performance, surely it is in the University’s best interests to provide a couple of links, maybe even a few phone numbers?

That’s what we’re trying to do at the moment. We’d like to see a section on DUO with the contact details of Rape Crisis and clinics in the local area. Ideally, we’d love to run a poster campaign around the Student Union, the library and other University buildings with details of how to get help. In the meantime, our own website has resources for anyone who needs them, including much-needed details of how to help a friend.

Finally, our third goal is about training. It’s about raising awareness of sexual violence and how to deal with it within the integral structures of the university. We believe that mandatory training should take place for anyone in a position where they might be approached by someone who has experienced sexual violence. This way, it will help reduce the chain of people involved in a single enquiry, ensuring greater privacy for the victim and decreasing the delay. Our opinion is that education on sexual violence should form part of everyone’s initiation into the University, too: after all, we have to complete a plagiarism tutorial and sit through police safety talks, so why shouldn’t sexual violence deserve a slot, too?

There will always be the cries of ‘but I know what consent is! I am not a perpetrator!’ of course; but equally, most Durham students would know what does and doesn’t constitute a fire hazard, and we still sit through fifteen minutes of fire safety talks during Freshers’ Week. If not to teach students something new about sexual violence – although you’ll be surprised to realise how much more there is to learn – then such talks serve to raise awareness of the issue, at least. Consent workshops will never be popular amongst the entire student body – although the ones we have run over the past year have been happily successful – but a talk on what sexual violence is, and how not to be a perpetrator, can hardly set one back in life.

Since I joined It Happens Here, I have realised how much more the University still needs to do for sexual violence. I am proud to have been part of a campaign that has raised awareness over the past few years, following the ever-growing trajectory of wider media coverage and, lately, even gaining traction in our own student publications. It seems that the student body is finally waking up to an issue more dangerous than river safety, more prevalent than muggings in the street. The University should wake up too. If you have experienced sexual violence, or even if you know someone who has, then you already know that Durham is much less safe than it supposes itself to be. I hope that our student campaign, however small it may be, can continue to work with the University and the Sexual Violence Task Force to provide a safer and more reliable space in which to study and live.

For more information on It Happens Here and what we do, please find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@DU_HappensHere) or visit our website: www.ithappensheredurham.wordpress.com

Originally published on Palatinate.

Birmingham dad tells how son survived Brussels terror attacks

A Birmingham man is recovering in hospital tonight after surviving the Metro bomb blasts during the Brussels terror attacks which left at least 31 dead.

European Parliament worker Mark Beamish, 35, was stepping from a carriage at Maelbeek station when the explosives detonated, killing 20 people and injuring 180.

Incredibly, he suffered just minor burns and is one of four Britons now being treated in hospital in the Belgian capital.

The blast came just over an hour after two suicide bomb explosions at Zaventem Airport, which killed 11 and injured 81.

Passengers are evacuated at Maalbeek metro station.

Mark’s father David Beamish confirmed to the Birmingham Mail that his son was among the injured after the attacks by Islamic State terrorists. One Briton remains missing.

Mr Beamish, 66 and from Kings Heath, said: “Mark was stepping off the train when the blast happened but he doesn’t really recall anything about the incident.

“When I talked to him last he was in hospital with his wife and was suffering from superficial injuries like singed eyebrows and hair, but also has burns on his hands, vertigo and dizziness.”

Mr Beamish said Mark currently lives and works in Brussels for his job with the European Parliament, where he had been part of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

The dad added he was ‘quite calm’ knowing his son was in the care of medical professionals.

Bill Etheridge, West Midlands UKIP MEP, was also in Brussels at the time of the explosion and wished Mark well with his recovery.

He said: “I wish him well and hope that the injuries heal soon. I’m sure the trauma of being in the incident will take longer to heal.

“I feel great anger at the terrorists who carried out this barbaric act.”

He added about his own experience, “I was very fortunate as I wasn’t near the actual explosions.

“But it was a very tense atmosphere. We were all phoning friends and colleagues to tell them that we were okay.”

Sylvain Lefevre/Getty ImagesA view of bomb damage as passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after a terrorist attack on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium.A view of bomb damage at airport

The airport suicide bombers have been named as brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui. The third man, seen next to the brothers in CCTV footage, is allegedly the Paris bomb maker Najim Laachraoui.

Ibrahim was revealed to have left a will on a computer in a dustbin n the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek in which he revealed, “if I give myself up I’ll end up in a cell”.

The suspected maker of bombs used during the massacre in Paris last November, he is now being hunted over the central role he is thought to have played in the Belgian capital attacks.

Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels, BelgiumEmergency rescue workers stretcher victim from Metro station

Earlier this week, Belgian prosecutors said that DNA evidence had identified the Belgian national as being one of the accomplices of Abdeslam in the Paris attacks which killed 130 people at sites including the Bataclan Theatre and Stade de France.

Meanwhile, West Midlands Police have said the threat level for the region has not changed and remains severe.

Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale said: “Following this morning’s attacks in Brussels, our thoughts are with those who have been affected.

“The threat level for the West Midlands has not changed; it remains severe.

“We have appropriate police resources already in place at Birmingham Airport to provide a visible reassurance to customers.

“The situation will continue to be reviewed.

“The threat to the UK from international terrorism remains at severe as it has been since August 2014, meaning an attack is highly likely.”

West Midlands authorities have urged the public and businesses to be alert but not alarmed and report anything suspicious to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321.

If you know someone who was in Brussels at the time of the attack or has been affected by the incident please contact the Birmingham Mail on 0121 234 5351.

Originally published in the Birmingham Mail.

10 Ways You Know You're A Durham Student

1.) Anything longer than a five minute walk feels like a ten mile hike.

2.) You use an acronym at least once in every conversation.

3.) You’ve said ‘I don’t even care if I don’t get a first any more’ with the knowledge that you’re definitely lying.

4.) You’ve vowed never to step foot in Klute again, only to be found there dancing to ‘That’s Amore’ at closing time a week later.

5.) You’ve developed thighs of steel from all the hills you have to walk up every day.

6.) You’ve spent the entire day in your room because if you went anywhere else, it’d be too much effort to come back for lunch.

7.) At least half the people you see on the walk to your lecture are wearing stash.

8.) You live in awe of the few people who have completed a full-college bar crawl because you can’t even be bothered to walk up past Collingwood.

9.) You’ve blagged your way through a conversation at a law event just to get to the free food.

10.) You’ve met at least one person who apologises, unprovoked, for being from Hatfield. 

Originally published on Her Campus.

On Hogan-Howe and presumption of belief

I don’t pretend to know a lot about law, about the reporting system, or about the inner workings of the police force. But when I read in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago that the policy of presumption of belief was being challenged, I couldn’t help but be angry.

In the training I’ve had and the talks I’ve attended since becoming part of It Happens Here, one of the most important things people stress is that you should always believe victims of sexual abuse. Because so much abuse gets swept under the carpet, and because ours is a culture of victim blaming and willful ignorance, it is so important to show that you believe what somebody tells you. That act of showing belief could be the catalyst to a victim building the confidence to report their assault, if they wish to, or to seek help. And even if the ‘presumption of belief’ policy is not as strong or as coherent a policy as we might hope it to be (see this link for a better explanation), it is a positive start to a journey towards a more respectful treatment of victims of sexual violence in such professions.

So when I read about Metropolitan police officer Sir Hogan-Howe’s claim in the newspaper, I was initially shocked. The idea went against everything I had been taught since I first started learning about sexual violence. Then I started thinking about the possible thought processes behind the suggestion. Wondering whether this had stemmed from false rape and abuse accusations, I started looking into figures.

I already knew that a very, very small proportion of rape accusations are false. A 2005 Home Office survey claimed that the percentage is 3%, and the numbers don’t appear to have changed much since then. Some sources believe that the number is somewhere closer to 2%. I considered the logic of basing a policy on such a small number, in comparison to the number of potential claimants who might be deterred by a change in policy. To me, the logic just wasn’t there.

Looking further into Home Office reports, I decided to see how many reports went on police record, looking in particular at rape claims. A 2013 Home Office study estimated a three-year average somewhere between 60,000 and 95,000 of people who experience rape every year. Somewhere between 16% and 26% of those estimated rapes end up on police records, or 15,670. Such a low number made me wonder why so few of these crimes were being reported. The report cited that a popular reason was that many victims ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’. That got me thinking. If you’re already unsure of what the police could do to help you in such a situation, would it make things worse to know that the presumption of belief they once held as policy was to be lifted? Is this more or less likely to make potential victims report the crimes? Is this the kind of culture we want to create within the reporting system, in reaction to the very small number of cases that turn out to be false?

Of course, I understand that there are a minority of people who falsely accuse, and that the result of that causes a great deal of pain for many people involved in the process. The fact that this minority receives so much attention from the media, however, means that there is a risk of skewing our policies in their favour. I also fully understand that people want more than just to be believed. Full investigations conducted rigorously and with care are incredibly important not just in a legal sense, but in showing a complainant that their accusation is being taken seriously. However, the presumption of belief is a critical starting point for a culture that legitimises victims rather than silencing them.

I hope that by using statistics, I don’t come across like I’m reducing the topic to numbers. I have experienced the process of deciding whether or not to report rape, and that’s one of the reasons I was so interested in the topic. It just didn’t make sense to me to risk discouraging people from reporting sexual violence by removing the presumption of truth policy for the less than 5% minority of people who falsely accuse. It would be really interesting, for the sake of my own personal curiosity more than anything else, to hear other people’s thoughts on this: it’s a sensitive topic with scope for a myriad of opinions, and I did hope that Hogan-Howe’s suggestion would raise more voices, initiate more discussion, than it has. For me, I can only hope that the policy is not reversed, because for the short time it has been in place it has given me a glimmer of hope that the police force and the judicial system were finally starting to align with what I believe are really important principles in the discussion of sexual violence.

Originally posted on It Happens Here Durham's blog.