Digital programme: Ghosts of the Near Future

Rewind to 2021, when a team of four creative collaborators met in a room and gathered around a blank sheet of paper. They looked into an unpredictable future for the world, and began to sketch out thoughts, words and images in response.

Two years on, emma + pj’s Ghosts of the Near Future comes to the Pit after its development through R&D, pilot performances and a spell at Barbican Open Lab. During technical rehearsals, the show’s scenographer, Georgie Hook, and sound designer Patch Middleton reflected on their route here: the processes, the magic of collaboration and what it has meant to ‘design the end of the world’.

How has the show evolved?

Georgie Hook (GH): As co-devisers, Patch and I were in the room from day one, devising alongside Emma and PJ, and bringing the world of the show to life.
Patch Middleton (PM): It’s exciting as a sound designer when the first thing you do in rehearsal is nothing to do with sound but it’s getting a big, blank piece of paper onto which we write exciting words, or it’s throwing ideas together, putting up pictures and generating story ideas and content. Together we were able to develop a real understanding of the world we were creating, ready to jump off into our specific design roles.

GH: I approach design as visual dramaturgy, and that was inherent to this process. We came up with the dramaturgical concepts and did a lot of the world-making together. One of our exercises at the end of each day of R&D was to each write a postcard from the end of the world. Quite quickly we found that we all seemed to be writing from the same world, the same landscapes and invoking similar language, to the point where if you read one aloud you wouldn’t be sure who wrote it.

PM: The postcards were also exploratory: sometimes people would write backwards or in a spiral, or get increasingly smaller or draw things out. That reflected the experimentation for the piece itself. Little bits of the text on those postcards have made it into the show, and into the playtext.

GH: The postcards are an embodiment of the journey of the piece

Take us back to day one of R&D. What was the first provocation?

PM: One was the title: Ghosts of the Near Future. What did that mean? There was the idea of hauntology - being haunted by lost futures. It’s the idea that in the past we were promised one thing in the future, and by the time you get there, we’ve actually got something different. We played with retro elements from the 1950s, Americana, hope for the future when the actual future we’ve got is way less hopeful. And that being a representation of what a ghost in the near future is. We explored the world of the show, which is set in the Nevada desert just outside Las Vegas, and ideas like Vegas as a shoreline where things wash up, the casino which never sleeps, the mirage on the horizon –

GH: – the end of the world as a disappearing act, extinction in its various forms. There was a lot of rich material to work with, which became a way of navigating a story through it.

PM: That was good because I like to be deeply embedded in what the world is and what the characters are going through. For me, it’s always been about alchemy rather than science: play, make mistakes and try wild things that come from understanding the content and then seeing what that makes.

GH: The collaborative approach meant that Patch and I were producing pieces of writing, and Emma and PJ were producing aspects of the design. We all played with objects and materials. Patch would compose a piece of sound and we would do an exercise or write something based on that sound. It was very enmeshed, but also very organic.

How do you corral all of those ideas into a linear experience for an audience?

GH: We created our own vocabulary where we referred to things as ‘shiny’.

PM: Ideas were never ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or given value judgements like that. Stuff that wasn’t quite there was referred to as ‘crispy’, in that it needed to be developed.

GH: It became a tool for filtering out what was and wasn’t working. We had such a strong sense of the dramaturgy that filtering ideas was easier. The strong collaborative foundation we had built helped as we moved into our own areas of design. And we continued to collaborate.

PM: It’s been an exciting process to work like this and create moments of alchemy. Obviously we’ve had the luxury of time. Sometimes the alchemy doesn’t work, but when it does, when that direct group response to a provocation comes together, it is more likely to create a connection with audiences. They become the next member of the group.

What followed R&D?

PM: After a sharing at the end of the initial six weeks, we came to Barbican Open Lab for a week of development time, which was an opportunity to be in a space with all the resources we needed. The second version was an hour long and played at Summerhall at Edinburgh Fringe. This new version for the Barbican is the third, and it’s fuller and longer. The Fringe version allowed us to focus on what we’re really trying to say with the piece, which was really useful for making a longer piece. We built on what was important rather than filling it with exciting ideas that don’t serve the journey.

How did your time at Barbican Open Lab work?

CH: It was a chance to experiment. During the redesign process for this version at the Barbican, I have found myself referring back to videos, ideas and documentation from our time in the Pit for Open Lab. A lot of the ideas need to exist within the theatre space and be explored with the technical elements, and we could see how it would feel with a bank of seats there. It’s rare to be able to devise within the performance space itself.

PM: Often the spaces I work in have sound from the right, sound from the left and sound from a sub, if you’re lucky. Three channels. In the Pit, we are using 14! That really informed my redesign for this version of the show. I’ve gone back to the original sound, split each track into its component parts and I’m sending it into different spaces to create a really 3D immersive sound. Without Open Lab, I wouldn’t have known that was possible. The sound team were always on hand so I’d throw an idea out and ask if we can do it, and they’d say it’s already rigged, we can do it. 95% of this show has ended up featuring sound. The two times we don’t have sound are very specific choices to fall into silence. Otherwise, there’s a bed of sound design throughout, taking us through various genres, various places, various atmospheres. There is a rhythm to the show, with heartbeats, swells and tension.

Each time you come to the end of making a version, do you want to try more things out?

PM: The double-edged sword of having time for world-building is that by the time you get to the end of making a version, you still feel there are a thousand more versions you could do! There are so many images, ideas and pieces of writing.

GH: It’s two years since we started this process. In that time you change as a person and therefore have new perspectives on the show.  Certain lines or moments will land more depending on what place you’re at in your life.

PM: It’s the same thing as having a fixed text. A novel you read as a child might seem different when you read it as an adult. There’s a flexibility within each person as well as the show.

GH: The show is also responding to our changing landscapes, our changing world –

PM: – our fears and hopes, all the big human truths.

What does success look like?

PM: Without being too grandiose, I’d love to blow the audience’s minds. But really the ideas in this piece are massive. One of Emma’s provocations was that thinking about the end of the world is like staring at the sun – you can’t do it too much because it hurts. You have to look around it.

And yet the end of the world is constantly at the back of our minds: increasing disasters from climate change, destabilisation across nations of the world, increasing wealth gaps. More than that, we’ve had 100 years of humanity dealing with its own demise: two world wars, the threat of nuclear annihilation, then more recently the environment. The baton has been passed from generation to generation. The world feels like it could go horribly wrong, so how do you go to the shops to buy milk, have a laugh with your friends or find the joy?

This piece is trying to deal with that in a way that is funny but touching, massive and tiny at the same time. We want to provide the space for the audience to reflect on those things and maybe just stare at the sun for a little bit.

GH: Striking a chord is important. You know that feeling you can have in your solar plexus, when something shifts, or something impacts you that you weren’t aware of, an emotion? I’d like to think that after seeing the show, something might shift for the audience.

PM: It’s the only show I know that contains a giant rabbit costume and ten minutes later a beautiful idea that will make you cry.

Special thanks to those who have supported the development of this piece, including: David Byrne, Will Young, Guy J Sanders, and the teams at New Diorama Theatre and NDT Broadgate; Liz Eddy, Anna Dominian, Leanne Cosby, Mali Siloko, Saxon Mudge, Toni Racklin, and the Barbican theatre and Open Lab teams; Caroline Hall, Lucinda Hamlin and the Barbican production, marketing and stage management teams; Pete Rickards, Ian Taylor, Lewis Champney and the team at eStage; Sam Marshall; Sue Stanley and Gabe Hearst; Jemima Yong, Marie Klimis, Virginie Taylor and Ash Williams; Miriam Attwood, Emma Ainley-Walker and the team at Storytelling PR; Serena Grasso and the team at Methuen Drama; The Maria Björnson Memorial Fund; and The Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation.