Image: MOOT MOOT, image by Laurie Brown

Ivor MacAskill is a live artist and theatre maker who creates original works for both children and adults. With Rosana Cade and Yas Clarke he is creating a new theatre show, MOOT MOOT for The Yard, running from 30 Oct - 13 Nov 2018. Cade and MacAskill are also queer-performance art band, Double Pussy Clit F*ck. Ivor writes for Run Riot about MOOT MOOT and the ideas behind its creation.

We’re told it’s a post-truth world, full of fake news and liberal snowflakes; that it’s all us and them; that opinion trumps facts (if you’ll pardon the pun); that everything is up for debate. We’re told that we’re caught in echo chambers, ghettoised in our political opinions, rarely tuning into alternative points of view. We find ourselves struggling to come to terms with world events when we discover that whole swathes of the population just don’t think like us. Fun times! Let’s make a show about it!

Rosana Cade and I are currently making that show, MOOT MOOT, which originally had a working title of The Good and Evil Project and began as an exploration of historic and contemporary ideas of morality. We were interested in how some pretty subjective and archaic ideas still affect our modern lives and how they are capitalised on to manipulate us. For example I definitely feel overly virtuous when I recycle, while at the other end of the scale we can all see how modern politics are played out as battles of good vs evil with little space for complexity or ambiguity.

Image: Cade and MacAskill as Double Pussy Clit F*ck, by Liz Seddon

In early stages of developing the show we had a lot of fun taking on the roles of baddies and goodies, riffing on morals, naughtiness, creation stories, and epic movies. At one point I was all set for creating a queer version of Pinocchio as the perfect tale of weird morals (it’s been shelved for the moment but watch this space…). But now the show is less about big extremes and more about a search for connection beyond the polarisation in our world today. And if that all sounds like worthy, serious, lefty navel-gazing, don’t worry because it’s quite funny and even a bit moving.

In MOOT MOOT we take on the roles of doppelgänger radio hosts Barry and Barry, batting banter back and forth in a surreal phone-in talk show. We dress alike in matching outfits and moustaches, a weird drag look that we’ve been cultivating over the past few years for fun and as part of our performance art band, Double Pussy Clit F*ck. For us, dressing identically is a strange, queer homo-eroticism - I love you so much I want to be you and I love myself so much that I want to have sex with someone who is me. It’s also about mirroring other people, about the idea of individual identity vs group mentality. Sometimes it’s about the commodification, branding and mass-reproduction of once anarchic identities or ideas.

Image: Cade and MacAskill as Double Pussy Clit F*ck, by Liz Seddon

In this show, the two men we play host a radio show, transmitting their voices out into the ether, seeking connection through listeners’ calls, but receiving nothing. They look the same and talk the same, finishing and endlessly repeating each others sentences to bolster their own existence in a way so habitual it renders the speech meaningless. And this speaks to the feedback loops we find ourselves in when we try to engage with the world, but find ourselves caught in a bubble created by algorithms and confirmation bias.

As we explore and critique these feedback loops, we’re also trying to give ourselves a little break from our liberal-guilt by looking at the positives of spending time with people who think similarly to us. The internet obviously offers a bewildering barrage of content; a constantly replenished stream of information, opinion, bile, kitten videos etc. But like the stream of water in a theme park log flume ride, you need to filter it before you drink it. There’s definitely a survival element to being signposted to articles and ideas that you’re already interested in, even if we can see the limits and dangers of not engaging with different ideas.

An aspect of Rosana’s and my work, both together and separately, is exploring, creating and celebrating safe queer spaces. Sometimes these are seen as exclusionary, or contributing to a victim culture. But as queers ourselves, we know the value and necessity of places where you can feel safe, encouraged, accepted and understood on your own terms, something that is not always easy to find.

The piece also responds to how current reality happens in both physical and virtual spaces. Liberal lefty artists like ourselves are accused of being out of touch with real people (often by those completely detached from regular life). But being ‘in touch’ sometimes demands an overwhelming awareness of and responsibility for the injustices and evils of the entire planet. As we try to work out how to be good people (isn’t that what most people bar fictional baddies are trying to do?) we are like radios sticking our antenna into the ether and what we tune into tells us who we are, even if we can do nothing practical to help.

Image: Cade and MacAskill as Double Pussy Clit F*ck

In MOOT MOOT, Barry and Barry know the value of opinion and as hosts they know that discussion fills time, keeping the dreaded dead air at bay. They encourage debate - the kind of debate we see in the comment feeds below articles, in the trolling twitter scrolls, and on radio and tv where the privileged few can discuss current traumas as abstract ideas. The moot point is one that is up for debate, but it can also be one that is purely academic, something to chew over without the need for practical action. In some ways, that’s what a show can be, an abstracted space to mull over ideas - that’s why it can be easy to attack theatre (and other art-forms) as out of touch and impractical. But a theatre space is also filled with real bodies that can take action beyond that space and arguably spending some time thinking about things and feeling things is a useful way to prepare for action.

As artists and as people in the “real world” we want to understand the nuances of the bubble/echo chamber phenomenon so that we can engage in, but also know the limits of our influences. We’re treading a line between finding the support of a positive community to relate to, and burying our heads in a scrolling sandpit of sameness that feels like connection, but somehow avoids it. Our bubbles can offer safety and certainty in complicated times, but when do they need bursting so we can connect to those with different and difficult opinions?

MOOT MOOT is co-commissioned by Fierce Festival, The Marlborough Theatre and The Yard Theatre. Supported using public funds by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

eilidhmacaskill.com

Rosana Cade & Ivor MacAskill
Moot Moot
at the Yard Theatre
30 Oct - 13 Nov 2018