[Photo credit: Bert and Nasi in ONE. Photo by Joe Twigg]

When asked to guest blog for Run Riot, the guidelines I was given were:

Entice, seduce, inspire, inform.

I’m not massively confident I can achieve all four of these but…

I’m gonna give it one hell of a go.

My name is Nasi, I am one half of Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas.

1. ENTICE

The thing this blog is supposed to be about is a show that Bert and I have made called ONE.

ONE is our third show and it’s a response to the political climate we find ourselves in; right now, in this country and in THE WORLD.

Now look, i know what you’re thinking ok? I know the phrase “current political climate” is about as big a turn off as you can get nowadays. But you know that guttural scream of “NO” you got in your head when you read the last paragraph? We get that too. Big time. I even just re-read it and got it again.

What’s my point? Ok. It’s coming.

2. SEDUCE

Gee, are you an angel? Because you must have fallen from heaven and hit me on the head because I’ve got a headache right now and I think I’ve got a concussion of LOVE.

3. INSPIRE

My point is we’re all tired. My point is we’ve all seen the pink bald guy on Question Time talking about how incompetent politicians are. My point is we all have a friend who has decided to vote Lib Dem. My point is we’ve all seen someone we went to school with post a problematic meme on facebook. Some of you reading this might agree with the angry man on the TV debate or might be considering voting Lib Dem for the first time in the next election or might have started reading stuff online that’s making you think twice about the things you used to believe. People here and everywhere are divided and are living in different realities and it has become super difficult for us to engage with each other about it.

Bert and I made ONE because we wanted to provide a space for people to sit with this fact of separate realities. A space where we can laugh and cry and get angry about separate realities, but also a space to think about the possibility of new, more empathetic realities.

4. INFORM

I’m not sure I have anything that informative to share. But I do have a video that Bert and I found interesting when we started making this show.

It’s from an episode of Question Time, back in 2014 - a conversation about immigration flares up in Barking. It starts from about 2:25.



It’s quite a difficult watch, the anti-immigrant sentiment in the video, a real rude-awakening to the society we live in.   

But, putting that aside, the thing we found interesting was how everybody just seemed to miss each other. The debate gets so immediately heated, from all angles, that although they’re looking at each other and talking, nothing is being communicated. The man in the audiences gets up and leaves, opinion un-changed, the liberal man on the panel go homes at the end of the show, scratching his head at what he could have done differently.  

Probably the context of this debate doesn’t help. How it plays out in such a public, performative manner. But in a nutshell, the video felt like a perfect microcosm of the problems that those on the liberal and left side of politics need to find an answer for.

ONE doesn’t have all the answers. But its 60 minutes where we can be together to think about what they might be.

I am on a ladder. Bert asked me to come down. I say no.

That’s where we begin.

ONE
by Bertrand Lesca & Nasi Voutsas
30 Sep - 19 Oct
at BAC
Tickets and info: www.bac.org.uk