By Elliot Hughes.
We did not expect this reaction.
Standard:Elite started as a Work-in-Progress above a pub as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival. Now it's won an award and exists as an actual physical book that I'm holding in my hand. It's still sort of unbelievable. (Full disclosure: Some artistic licence has been taken. The book in question is in fact only near my hand. I am currently using both hands to type.)
Until this point, all of Hidden Track's shows had been created with a specific space in mind. We've taken audiences through parks, alleys, basements; we even did a show in an old fridge. Now we wanted a show that we could take around, and fit into any space (i.e. a proper show where you get to sit down and watch). Also, I wanted to make a show that was more overtly about class.
Class politics have been a big recurring theme in a lot of what I've done in the past, but with this show I wanted to really bring it to the forefront. However, looking at class in a meaningful way is very difficult without immediately alienating some of your audience. It's a touchy subject, there's a lot of anger there, and it's so easy to make people switch off and shut down the dialogue before you're even started. To break through that, we tried using games.
The basic mechanic - splitting the audience into 'Standard' and 'Elite' members - was something I'd had on the backburner for a while, but hadn't quite managed to make into a workable script yet. We'd made shows with branching narratives before, where the story changed based on audience actions, and we knew that competition was a really effective and simple way of getting audiences to turn on each other while keeping things fun and playful. After a lot of trying things out, eventually something clicked: What if the winners of the games get to decide the outcome of the story?
From this came Standard:Elite. A show where 'Standard' audience members compete to become 'Elites', who in turn get to vote on which direction the story goes.
It was very much an experiment. Putting it together was... complicated. The piece felt over-ambitious, we had to strip a lot back in production, we weren't sure if people would take to it, we had to learn two scripts worth of material to only perform half of it, and we had to rehearse a show entirely dependent on unknown audience interaction without any actual audience to interact with.
We were stressed, tired, and I was utterly terrified of what people would make of it.
Then we got the best reaction of any show we'd ever done.
We then went on to take the full production to the Greater Manchester Fringe, where it found a home in a beautiful space at Nexus Arts Café, as well as performing in Theatre Delicatessen's space in Sheffield. Again, the reaction was overwhelming and totally unexpected (thanks so much to everyone who came out to see it for being so supportive.)
Then came the next shock. The piece had been shortlisted for the WriteForTheStage Prize For New Writing award. This meant it would be judged purely as a script, by a panel of judges who hadn't all seen the show in motion. A working script that was based hugely on unknown audience interaction, that contained entire scenes that might never be performed, and contained stage directions such as 'Improv something here', 'Audience should say yes here, please god.', and 'If the performer was a dancer and this was a different sort of play, there'd be a big dance number here, but it isn't and he isn't so there isn't.'
Somehow the judges saw through that chaos, and were able to see something there. Now, after a few months of re-writes, and some patience and formatting support from Mike Heath, the script exists in a form that my brother has described as 'actually, surprisingly readable'.
It is an honour and a privilege to have received this award and this recognition. As well as the script publication, we are currently working to take Standard:Elite on a more substantial tour in 2017, where we hope to reach even more people who can make our lives hell by breaking the rules, stealing stuff, shouting when they're not supposed to, and unexpectedly abdicating in the middle of a scene.
Thanks to Anoushka Bonwick, Rachel Creamer, Joe Brownbridge and Cael O'Sullivan for getting things this far; thanks to the GM Fringe, WriteForTheStage, and Mike Heath for their support with the publication; and most of all thanks to whoever else I've not thanked yes you, specifically you, thanks so much, a blog can only be so long leave me alone.
Standard:Elite is available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon, published by WriteForTheStage Books.
