What occurs when you haven’t any enemies?

IRISH-Australian actor and Canberra theatre id Christopher Samuel Carroll is at it once more together with his Naked Witness Theatre Firm, this time bearing witness to the rising risks of surveillance in our neighborhood.

Take the poster picture for his new play “I Have No Enemies”, as an example. It’s not actors carrying bizarre make-up simply to be theatrical, however “anti-facial-recognition make-up”.

“Pop it into Google”, Carroll advises, and I do, discovering is that by obstructing your face with over-the-top, borderline nonsensical make-up strategies, chances are you’ll have the ability confuse facial recognition software program.

“The concept for the present was sturdy and clear from the beginning,” Carroll says.

Whereas working for a transcription firm – one of many unusual day-jobs actors all the time discover themselves doing – he discovered himself unexpectedly aware of info maybe he shouldn’t have been.

Usually the work concerned transcribing information of an earthly workaday nature, however all of a sudden one popped up that was extra intimate, which in a seven-minute voicemail that included weird rambling confirmed that the speaker was going by way of an emotional breakdown.

His curiosity piqued, Carroll discovered that he might even piece collectively a profile, Google the speaker’s avenue and home.

Naturally, he noticed the confidentiality settlement, however requested himself: “Who am I as a sub-contractor? I’m no higher than anybody else.”

The title “I Have No Enemies” is a remodeling of the naïve notion that in case you haven’t executed something unsuitable, you’re not value taking a look at. I inform him a number of individuals again within the ’60s who had had ASIO information on them thought they hadn’t executed something a lot, both.

However he’s not a lot speaking about Orwellian surveillance because the hand-in-glove complicity of governments who overlook social media retailers due to the helpful info they collect. “We normalise it each personally and publicly,” he says.

“I’m a horrible show-off,” Carroll says, “however I’m actually fairly reserved and barely put up a lot details about myself – however lately everyone’s on-line.”

That increase the query of context.

“You possibly can say and ship something on-line and whilst you would possibly argue that the counter-effect is homogenisation, as long as we’re underneath fixed surveillance, we’re much less free.”

Theatre, in fact, is about human beings and the central thread of the play is the above talked about voicemail.

“We carried out a thought experiment to see how a lot info we might dig up… the play turned like a form of detective manhunt, with  the joys of crossing boundaries in surveillance because it crosses into actual life.”

The tight value of 4 ensemble solid of 4 actors, together with Carroll, are “other than the thread of searching down this dishevelled man, roughly enjoying variations of ourselves.”

Collectively they intention to arrange a sense of chaos and destruction as they open up a Pandora’s field, whereas native movie firm SilverSun Footage has created digital predictions to boost the reside theatre expertise.

“This isn’t a run-of-the-mill narrative,“ he says. “It’s a play stuffed with humour a few large confronting topic – bringing it all the way down to a human stage.”

“I Have No Enemies,” Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, March 1-11. Panel discuss on surveillance 3pm, March 4. “Listening Again” a associated immersive audio-visual set up by Jasmine Guffond, Gorman Arts Centre, March 2-5.