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“Kill All Humans” – Robots and Ethics

By Jessica Osborne

We all remember our first. Mine was called Robby, I met him on Altair IV, he was my very first robot. I say he was mine, I’ve never owned a toy of Robby (he’s a vintage collector’s item, I have expensive tastes but no money) and I never saw him outside any kind of screen. And to be honest, I wasn’t fascinated by him either. I grew up with my dad periodically making us watch Forbidden Planet every couple of weeks, hailing it as the best SF movie of all time. Robby was basically family.

robbie1And not once did we, as a family question his place in the film, or what his place would be in wider society. For those who don’t know me, I recently got very into robots. I wrote a short script on robots being used in long-distance relationships and began doing a lot of research into robots. A fellow student set up a ‘Robots Discussion Group’ for a few nerdy students to meet and talk robots in Fountains every other Wednesday. And of course, we ended up getting into the moral and ethical complications of robots during our first meeting.

Two ethical conundrums came up that I really want to talk about, they’re probably the two most common arguments against robots and AI of any kind, but I like them.

  • If a Google car is driving along and has to hit either a young child or an elderly woman how can we programme it to choose who to hit?
  • And if we create a realistic SexBot with personality, should it be able to withhold consent?

google carSo first of all the Google car: How exactly do we as human drivers decide who to swerve to kill. Ignoring the fact that this Google car really should have breaks, does it matter which choice the car or programmer makes if both are wrong? Most people say the car should kill the old lady, let the child live, but then the same old problems came up: what if the kid grows up to destroy humanity/cure cancer? What if the old woman is the Queen/a former Nazi? Either way, there are too many issues and too much knowledge that could change the feelings to the outcome of the accident. Should robots make accidents? Can they eradicate accidents if the people programming them can’t?

I know I’m just throwing out a bunch of questions and not really giving any answers, but how cool is this to think about? We need to create a cold, calculating AI that has no problem killing people, but it also has to decide to kill the right people and do so ethically. This is wild.

But onto the next problem: Consent. And to me I don’t think this is really a problem. It came up in the discussion that consent for a robot is a falsehood as they’ll have been programmed to give or withhold consent. But that raises the question of why would we allow what is essentially an object to ask for consent. We don’t give sex toys the option of consent, so why give it to robots? The purpose of a sex robot is really that you can’t be turned down. But then of course how does encouraging this kind of behaviour amongst humans? If we teach people that you don’t ask consent of robots, does that bleed over into not asking a real human for consent? Is this just further objectifying sexual partners rather than a healthy outlet for sexual frustrations?

cyborgI think the only way to really create any tangible answers to these questions is to just do it, we can’t understand something that hasn’t really happened, right? At this point it’s all just guesswork, and it is usually guesswork and fear mongering that holds back progress and I think that’s the real issue here.

The next Robot vs Humans Discussion Group meeting will be on Wednesday 22nd February at 3pm in HG013. Check out the Facebook Group for more information.

 

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Stay Human

by Nicoletta Peddis

On the 24th of June 2016 I woke up early to read the results of the referendum. I stared astonished at my laptop screen. I felt like I wanted to cry, but shock prevailed over everything else. I could not believe that the majority of people had preferred division over unity.

I am what Mr. Nigel Farage would describe as an “economic migrant”. I moved to the UK from Italy in 2008, after studying Politics and International Relation for three years, to find a job and to learn English. But more than anything else what led me to leave family, friends and sunshine behind was the excitement and the curiosity to experience life in a different country, to enjoy the beauty of communicating in a foreign language, the wonders of embracing different cultures, religions, cuisines, languages and everything multifaceted that this world has to offer us. I think of myself as a “cultural migrant”, as a person that enjoys freedom of movement and makes the most of the amazing opportunities it offers. The Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci wrote that “history teaches but it has no disciples” and I believe it is the perfect description of our times, of the way in which we have forgotten the mortal perils that lie in politically manipulating hate and fear to create division.

More and more often since the Brexit vote people I know or people I meet ask me, “what are you going to do now?” I still do not know what I will have to do in practical terms or if my legal status will change, and if so when. But I am sure that I will not change my nature, I will not give up hope, I will not stay silent. Over the last six months what has saddened and worried me the most about Brexit it is not that I will have to apply for a certificate of permanent residence that will basically state the rights that I already hold, but rather the ways in which people’s fears and hate have been opportunistically used. I was bitter and angry for days when a customer at work refused to be served by me because he did “not feel comfortable with foreigners”, and when another one complained because there was “not a British cashier in the whole store”. I controlled my reactions, and I decided that I did not want to answer fear with fear. It was time to put the anger to one side and make good use of my experience as a literature student.

 

brexit

I will not forget what studying literature at York St John is teaching me: that my opinion counts, and that my voice can be heard, and that hearing multiple and different voices is the most enriching feeling a human being could ever experience. I have always loved literature, but when I was younger I failed to see its potential. I did Politics at University because I believed that was the only way I could play a part in changing the world. Over ten years later, I married my love for literature with the knowledge that it is the strongest weapon of all. The ways in which literature enables us to understand the ways in which the world can be described, criticized, analyzed is not only stimulating for my mind but it also what gives me hope and strength and the will to live in a world where love, compassion and solidarity are stronger than fear and hate.

Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian solidarity worker and activist who lost his life in Palestine in 2011, wrote these words that I have taken as my own since the first time I read them: “We must remain human, even in the most difficult time. Because, despite everything, there must always be humanity within us. We have to bring it to others.” So, to answer to everybody who asked me what I was going to do after Brexit: I will stay human and I will speak up for humanity, and I will try to bring humanity to others.

 

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REVIEW – The Unsilent Library: Adventures in New Who

An exciting batch of ten essays published by the Science Fiction Foundation explore how a 50-year-old show can be a contemporary hit.

Doctor Who is a hugely popular program that unlike the TARDIS is as big on the outside as it is on the inside. With over 50 years of cultural significance, thirteen canonical iterations of its titular character, along with a great many more iconic companions, gadgets and monsters, the show has barreled along through time and space spurred on by its own evolution. Unfortunately, the show disappeared from the airwaves in 1989, before finally being resurrected on 26 March 2005. This was the day “Rose” would be transmitted on BBC One, the first full episode of Doctor Who in over 15 years and one which would launch the program into unprecedented success with audiences both old and new.

Head writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies brought the program back with renewed contemporary relevance in social, political, linguistic and technological terms. With the show regenerating right alongside the real world, a batch of essays from 2010 titled The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the new Doctor Who mindfully explores the updated aspects of the 2005 revival in intricate detail. Edited by Simon Bradshaw, Graham Sleight, and Tony Keen, the collection of essays unpacks how to construct a timeless universe that is never wholly apart from planet Earth.

Image result for The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the new Doctor Who

The first chapter to note is Graham Sleight’s ‘The Big Picture Show: Russell T. Davies’s writing for Doctor Who’, which analyses the base point of the programs 2005 resurrection. Sleight breaks down Davies’ writing of the series to four key elements: depth, pace, scale and Davies’ aptitude for science fiction. According to Sleight, all four of these elements function together immediately in 2005’s ‘Rose’ for a defining mislead: a shot of the vastness of space, only for the view to be turned to Earth and then centred on the Tylers’ morose council flat. Using this as a jumping off point, Sleight digs for the real world within the fictional world, delivering nuanced analysis that somehow explains the frequently impossible universe of new Who. Every fiction is pin pointed to something real. There is also a stellar comparison between the writing of Davies and current Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, a comparison that could cause a whole new Time War between fans of the program.

Skipping ahead, the brilliant third chapter in the collection comes from Una McCormack, titled ‘He’s Not the Messiah: undermining political and religious authority in New Doctor Who‘. McCormack’s central thesis is that, “Russell T. Davies […] demonstrates deep skepticism towards Utopian projects aimed at human perfectibility, whether eternal life […] or citizenship of the (purportedly) rationally governed state”. The pitch is a solid foundation to a thought-provoking essay, exploring the natural limitations of the human race and its constructs. After all, The Doctor is often found fighting administration and bids for immortality, such as in 2007’s ‘Gridlock’ and  ‘The Lazarus Experiment’. The list of episodes goes on and on: the Doctor appears and discovers an ideology or construct that opposes his values, and then swiftly dismantles it. It is a recurring motif of Doctor Who that is applicable to today’s society, what with the orange Who-like monster now leading America. McCormack also applies a Foucauldian reading to Davies’ Doctor Who, charting an analytical course that is fascinating to read and adds a whole new dimension to the program. Consequently, Chapter 3 offers some really vivid ideas to explore that live and breathe on their own and adamantly apply to today’s world.

Catherine Coker’s chapter 6 titled ‘Does The Doctor Dance? Heterosexuality, Omnisexuality, and Spontaneous Generation in the Whoniverse’ is a vital addition to the collection. Coker contends that 2005’s ‘The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances’ are together, the first real doses of omnisexuality within the Whoniverse. Coker contends that from here “Davies presents a true sexual spectrum through its characters both major and minor”, a thesis that puts Doctor Who in a unique position. The essay does well to highlight this significant fact, in that science fiction usually handles sexuality as a brief obstacle instead of an ever-present norm, an “awkward ‘issue of the week'” as opposed to a normality of society. As Coker brilliantly notes in this chapter, Whovians have a lot to be proud of in their show, by the fact that Davies rejects this model and “instead chooses to address the group as part of the regular viewership of the show by allowing the LGBT population in his universe to exist and thrive”. Following this important set up are considerations of John Barrowman’s Captain Jack being an ‘Omnisexual Superhero’ as well as an intricate exploration of The Doctor’s lack of sexuality. The Doctor and Rose shippers have a lot of good material to gauge on here…

 

Image result for creative doctor who posters

Ultimately, the TARDIS is always connected to earth, and you won’t watch Doctor Who the same way again after reading this collection explaining why. The full contents of the riveting collection, as well as how to purchase, are listed below:

The SF Foundation is now offering The Unsilent Library at the discount rate of £1 (plus p&p). Purchasers should contact sjbradshaw@mac.com to order.

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Lit events for York LGBT History month

York LGBT History Month 2017 runs from 31 January to 28 February, and is packed full of great events. With support from the School of Humanities, Philosophy and Theology, and the YorkYSJ Staff  LGBT Network, we’re running two events:

6 February, Eagle and Child Pub, 12.30pm

Dr Adam Stock (lecturer in English Literature) and Dr Kimberly Campanello (lecturer in Creative Writing) are hosting “Lunch Poems”.

Taking its name from gay New York poet Frank O’Hara’s celebrated collection ‘Lunch Poems’ (1964), Kimberly and Adam will host a lunch time discussion and reading group of poetry on LGBT themes, over lunch. Poems will be circulated in advance to ticket holders, but you do not need any previous experience or knowledge of poetry to take part in the discussion. Tickets are free, but do NOT include food.

Please register here to receive the poetry pack and menu in advance of the event.

13 February, Fountains Lecture Theatre, 6pm.

Kimberly and Adam host a film screening:

Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger

Trailer – “Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger” from sam feder on Vimeo.

 

Meet Auntie Kate.

Trailblazing performance artist-theorist-activist Kate Bornstein takes us on a mind-bending quest through her world dismantling gender and seeking answers to the age-old question: What makes life worth living?

An award-winning documentary by director Sam Feder

 Click here to register for free tickets

Free refreshments for all ticket holders!

 

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Postgraduate study fair 2017: Wednesday 22 February

All good things come to an end some day, even undergraduate study. Around this time of year, a certain anxiety begins to nag at the minds of many third years: what to do with life after university.

If you’re keen to continue into postgraduate education, or you’re not sure what you want to do but you’d like to explore all of the options available to you come along to the Postgraduate Study Fair 2017.

The informal, drop in event will take place on Wednesday 22nd February 4 – 7pm and its open to current students and the wider public. The venue for the event is Quad South Hall / Foyer and surrounding break out rooms.

Campus tours by student ambassadors will be available throughout the evening, as will members of admissions, support and finance teams for attendants who may have these types of questions.

 

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Sleeping with Robots

Having previously written on Wall-E and sexuality for my assignment in the Contemporary Literature module last year, I had prepared myself for the barren wasteland of relevant research that would greet me in writing my Imaginary Worlds research proposal on AI and sex. After a quick Google, I discovered I had miscalculated the world’s interest in sex and robots massively. It turns out just about everyone is either terrified, or terrifyingly horny.

Science Fiction is populated with “sexy” robots we think little of. But why can we acceptably be sexually attracted to robots? Usually, because their metal scaffolding is hidden beneath the flesh of a pretty celebrity. See Michael Fassbender (Prometheus) or Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines). In video games AIs are often presented in sexualised human forms, too. Need proof? Ask Cortana to show you other Cortana. You know, the pretty one from the Halo games. Trust me, she looks slightly more explicit than your laptop mic.

Cortana, from the Halo games franchise

 

I find the sexualisation of AIs a bit uncomfortable, despite their fictionality. This is mainly because it is difficult to tell whether the desire to have sex with an AI is repugnant, or is as meaningless as buying certain products from Anne Summers.

realdoll ai prototype
Realdoll AI Prototype (Source: The Telegraph)

Notably, Realdoll are working on incorporating AI in their hyper-realistic sex dolls. Their founder, Matt McMullen, has stated that ‘It’s far more than sexual entertainment. People really zero in on, “Oh, you’re making a sex robot.” I’d say we’re making a robot that can have sex.’ Given the prerequisites of programming required for a robot to perform intercourse, I’d argue that there is surely little difference.

realdoll ai prototype faceless
The Realdoll AI Prototype without its ‘skin’ (Telegraph)

 

 

People seem to feel more comfortable with the idea of having sex with a machine if it isn’t sentient – but I still wouldn’t make out with a glorified toaster, even if it did have Scarlett Johansson’s face. I know for a fact that the toaster also doesn’t want to make out with me – it’s more into Hovis and Warburtons.

But let’s say we provide the toaster with sexual faucets and desires, as is bizarrely the case with the AIs in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Now does it want to make out with you? The short answer: No. It is likely that the toaster wants nothing at all. Although it may be wired to warm you up as well as bread, it still has no desire – only functionality.

What will this do to the human mind? When Realdolls come walking and talking their way into Argos, will we do away with the (already fairly disconnected) hookup apps like tinder and grindr? Perhaps we will avoid intimacy between humans altogether.

Mark 1 Scarlett Johansson lookalike robot
Mark 1 Scarlett Johansson lookalike robot

Whilst this may do wonders for overpopulation and the spread of STIs, it may encourage some strange mindset changes. If dangerous kinks, such as the likes of violent Chemsex (cn: abuse), can be performed on a robot without ethical implications, will they become a normalised pattern of human behavior? Since robots, as Bryson states, are first and foremost ‘slaves’, does this mean that non-consensual sex with them is acceptable? In the world as we know it, non-consensual sex with a person results in imprisonment for the culprit, and years of mental recovery and fear for the victim. In the world to come, non-consensual sex with a robot could result in nothing but a trip to the AI repair shop.

The future is always a daunting thought. But retrospectively, consider the amusing convenience of the USB ports written into Independence Day’s spaceships, and the Floppy Disks that upload Karate to Keanu Reeves’ strange mind in the Matrix. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current science fiction becomes somewhat laughable in the future. But it is hard to decipher whether we will laugh because of our preoccupation with sex, or look back and laugh at our outdated, clunky prototypes compared to our brand new ISex7s. As Rainbird chairman James Duez suggests, the ‘most progressive tech companies accept that if a bot is doing its job properly then there is no need to sell it as a blonde, smiling woman’.

 

Whilst researching I discovered a quotation from Angela Carter’s short story, ‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’ (1986), The story intriguingly dissects gender in a brothel peopled by “female” automata:

‘They had been reduced by the rigorous discipline of their vocation to the undifferentiated essence of the idea of female. This ideational femaleness took amazingly different shapes though its nature was not that of Woman.’

Here, Carter suggests that it is the ‘vocation’ of these automata that enables them to be categorized in the female gender role. A vocation, in this case, concerned predominantly with sexualisation.

To model machinery designed for household chores and sex on women is hardly revolutionary. How far can we truly progress whilst it is the sex market that is at the forefront technological advancement? If, as The Young Turk’s Cenk Uygur suggests, the strive for sex-bots is ‘the most unstoppable force in human history’, what does this say about humanity?

I would like to end this post another of many questions. In the year 3000, will your great, great, great-granddaughter be pretty fine? Or non-existent, since no one wants the baggage of intercourse with something that has opinions and non-programmed thought?

If you want to read more about creepy robots, check out these articles:

Attractive, Slavish and at your command: Is AI sexist?

Does rampant AI threaten humanity?

Why an AI-Judged beauty contest picked nearly all white winners

Is it ethical to have sex with robots?

Is realdoll a step closer to delivering its promised AI Sex robots?

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Robots in Fiction: A Watch List

By Adam Smith, Lecturer in English Literature

@elementalAdam

 

Our business is representation. Whether we be literary scholars, films scholars or creative writers, our business is always representation. Events happen, ideals or anxieties emerge, they get represented, and then we study (or create) the representation. First comes reality, then comes representation. Of course, if you’re half-way through a degree in English, Media or Creative writing you already know that it is never really that easy.

 

Thinking like this assumes that there exists a dichotomy between reality and representation, between fiction and non-fiction, between the real and the hyper-real. We should always be sceptical of any apparent binary and of this one in particular. One cause for scepticism is that it presumes a chain of influence that only goes one way: something happens and people write about it. Real world stuff becomes fictional stuff. Science becomes science fiction. But what happens when fiction starts to inform reality? What happens when what we imagine informs our lived experience? What happens when science-fiction has an impact on science? Nowhere is there a better example of that, I don’t think, than in robotics.

 

This was the opening premise of a lecture that I gave earlier this week on ‘2EN440: Imaginary Worlds’, a second-year optional module about science fiction. The module is taken by students on the English, Media and Creative Writing programmes who this week were reading Villiers de L’isle-Adam’s The Future Eve (1886) and watching Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).

 

Ex-machina-uk-poster.jpg
Garland’s Ex-Machina. By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, Link

 

Over the course of the lecture I referred to an awful lot of films and TV shows (even for me!). Subsequently a few students have asked me to recap everything I recommended, so I’ve written the list up at the bottom of this post.

 

Before starting your way down the list (make sure you have provisions to hand, it may take some time) let me just give you some context for these suggestions, just in case you didn’t see the lecture itself.

 

During the lecture, I sought to foreground the peculiar relationship between the fictional robots that saturate our popular culture and the actual robotics industry. After familiarising ourselves with the ‘pop culture’ robot in the form of the Forbidden Planet’s famous Robbie we considered the frustrated perspective of roboticist Joanna Bryson. In her controversial essay ‘Robots Should be Slaves’ Bryson argues that the robotics industry is inhibited by the misguided notion that robots are owed some sort of ethical obligation, a misconception that she blames on science fiction.

 

Robby the Robot

The representation of the robot as slave has been there from the very beginning. Karel Capek’s play R.U.R (1921), which stands for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’, is often acknowledged as the first popular use of the word ‘robot’ in the sense that we recognise it today, and here it is the Czech word for ‘slave.’ The play essentially stages a slave uprising, with factory robots rebelling against their human masters. Elsewhere literary scholar Gregory Hampton has successfully foregrounded the similarities between American Slave narratives and common robot narratives, a point rendered startlingly overt when comparing a text like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) with Issac Assimov’s Positronic Man (1992), later adapted into the movie The Bicentennial Man (1999).

 

Hampton finds such treatments of the robot (both inside and outside of fiction) profoundly disturbing. When a relationship is recognisably one of master/slave, regardless of whether the slave is human or robot, born or formed, physical or fictional, there will be harmful psychological side-effects. Hampton stresses that it doesn’t really matter if robots have feelings or not, the question is: how will engaging with robots change us, and what we consider acceptable behavior?

 

Does it make sense to say Boston Dynamics ‘bullied’ their robot Atlas?

 

In both of the texts studied by Imaginary Worlds students this week, The Future Eve and Ex Machina, this question is explored through the treatment of robots who are clearly coded as female. In fact, it is central to a series of questions raised by a huge range of science fiction texts interested in what it means to have sex with ‘female’ robots. Can you truly have sex with a robot? Where do you draw the lines of consent? How must you think of robots to want to have sex with them? And, what are the psychological effects on the participating human?

 

We get a disturbing contemplation of this in Ex Machina, as Domhall Gleeson’s Caleb Smith slowly discovers what Nathan Bateman has been doing with all of the robots on his island, becoming increasingly sadistic in his behaviours as he goes from having sex with the robots to torturing them, only to eventually be killed by the robot Ava in an act that lends itself very openly to a reading in which she is taking cathartic revenge on her depraved abuser. And, just like that, we’re back to slavery again: the common narrative of the megalomaniac slave master who, drunk on the power he holds over other subservient humans, becomes increasingly cruel, killing and raping his own slaves in an overflow of nihilistic and hedonistic violence.

 

So, what can we take from this? Well, first the idea that when it comes to robotics, for better or worse, the representation can clearly be seen to dictate the reality. Perhaps the most important question is not about whether people should or shouldn’t treat robots badly but about why it is that people feel compelled to treat them badly.

 

And second, you can take from it the a hugely ambitious list of things to watch, detailed below.

 

 

 

Further Reading

 

Gregory Hampton, Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film and Popular Culture (2015)

Joanna Bryson, Robots should be slaves, IN: Close engagements with artificial companions (2010)

 

Watch list (in the order that they appeared in the lecture)

 

  1. Film

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dir. by Garth Jennings (2005)

Prometheus, dir. by Ridley Scott (2012)

Robocop, dir. by Paul Verhoeven (1987)

Short Circuit, dir. by John Badham (1986)

I, Robot, dir. by Alex Proyas (2004)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, dir. by J. J. Abrams (2015)

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, dir. by George Lucas (1977)

Wall-E, dir. by Andrew Stanton (2008)

Transformers, dir. by Michael Bay (2007)

Interstellar, dir. by Christopher Nolan (2014)

The Black Hole, dir. by Gary Nelson (1979)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence, dir. by Steven Spielberg (2001)

Lost in Space, dir. by Stephen Hopkins (1998)

Aliens, dir. by James Cameron (1986)

Alien, dir. by Ridley Scott (1979)

The Day the Earth Stood Still, dir. by Robert Wise (1951)

The Terminator, dir. by James Cameron (1984)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day, dir. by James Cameron (1991)

The Forbidden Planet, dir. by Fred Wilcox (1956)

The Bicentennial Man, dir. by Chris Columbus (1999)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Terminator: Salvation, dir. by McG (2009)

Metropolis, dir. by Fritz Lang (1927)

Austen Powers, dir. by Jay Roach (1997)

Blade Runner, dir. by Ridley Scott (1982)

Ex Machina, dir. by Alex Garland (2014)

Weird Science, dir. by John Hughes (1985)

The Matrix, dir. by Lana and Lily Wachowski (1999)

Ghost in the Shell, dir. by Mamoru Oshii (1995)

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, dir. by Kenji Kawai (2004)

Ghost in the Shell, dir. by Rupert Sanders (2017)

 

  1. TV

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981)

Futurama (1999-2013)

Red Dwarf (1988-)

Doctor Who (1952-)

Lost in Space (1965-68)

Humans (2015-)

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)

Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

Westworld (2016-)

 

This is only loosely related to Adam Smith's post, but it's just a great track.
Kraftwerk: representing the robot community since 1978. Fair use, Link

 

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Reviewing Arrival: Space Squids and Paradoxes

By Zoe Buckton

@Zoay23

After managing to swipe the last tickets to see ‘Arrival’ with the Imaginary Worlds module, I was stoked to see some sci-fi that wasn’t a reboot (and for free, too!). Having only seen 30-second trailers for the film, I’d assumed it would follow your average ‘defeat the evil aliens!’ storyline. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that ‘Arrival’ focused on communication and language, rather than big guns and all-out war.

The film opens with a voiceover by the protagonist, Dr Louise Bank’s (Amy Adams), in which she considers where her daughter’s story really begins. Usually I’m a bit adverse to voiceovers. But by the end of Arrival, it is clear that these are the glue that holds the cyclical narrative together. Louise’s stream of consciousness is the key to understanding a complex narrative, revolving around bootstrap paradoxes and communication barriers.

Louise’s character is certainly well developed. She is such a talented linguist that she is asked by the military to visit a spacecraft, or ‘shell’, within two days of its sudden appearance. Two days, it’s worth noting, in which she continues to attend university to give lectures to empty classrooms. Of course, she’d be damned if giant squids from space disrupted her teaching schedule.

 

It is a shame that Louise is the only female main character – in fact, one of the only female characters present. This causes the film to fail the Bechdel test, a flaw that is also shared by director Villeneuve’s 2015 film, Sicario. Indeed, one of the funniest moments in the film comes when Louise interrupts a trigger-happy soldier with the quip, ‘why do I have to talk to him?’

Ian Donnelly, on the other hand, proves that slapping some glasses on Jeremy Renner is enough to constitute a scientist. Whilst his friendship (and inevitable romantic arc) with Louise is great fun to watch, watching a physicist refuse to do any actual physics is rather concerning. Especially when his primary response to intense gravitational distortion is a mere stumble, without a sign of fascination.

The film shares many elements with the psychological horror ‘The Babadook’, increasingly dependent on dreams, sleep deprivation and hallucination to create a sense of unreliability. These elements are ultimately manifestations of Louise’s mindset adapting to the Heptapod language. A language which is complex, palindromic and resembles tea-rings so much it’s a shame the humans couldn’t introduce them to coasters.

The scenes of communication between the Heptapods, affectionately nicknamed Abbot and Costello, are arguably the best moments of the film. ‘Arrival’ spends majority of its run-time attempting to establish discussion with aliens behind misted glass, pushing back military action all the while. This feels particularly prevalent in our society, which is reluctant to embrace discussion with minorities and refugees, fogging up these issues with misleading media representations and fear of the unknown.

It is hard to deny that the film is gorgeous. Louise’s house is like the Cullen’s, all glass and view. The soundtrack, finely composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson, mixes dread and child-like wonder through acapella acoustics and daunting basslines. The twelve spaceships hovering above the Earth’s surface resemble Airwick’s attempts to make air fresheners in keeping with minimalist decor. Or, if you prefer, very large eggs. There is barely any Michael Bay style explosion flaunting. Yet, where scenes depict changes in gravitational force, and the Heptapods themselves, the film shows a subtle ability to create intriguing visuals with little displays of incongruity.

‘Arrival’ was an intriguing film. I’ve avoided spoiling the ending in this review, because I really believe it’s worth watching for yourself. Although the film did leave me with a lot more questions than answers (which you can see here [spoilers]), perhaps this is the point. After all, isn’t it better to leave the cinema with big, existential questions than none at all?

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Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon: Unpacking Shakespeare

By George Moss

@MossRamblings95

As part of their recent visit to York St John, RSC actors Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon led multiple workshops on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 

Hamlet is a tale of madness, love, revenge, death, incestuousness and secrecy. When the king unexpectedly dies, his son the Prince of Denmark finds his destiny drastically altered and his rightful throne occupied by his uncle, Claudius. His father’s spirit returns and reveals his own murder, stoking a fire for revenge in his son that will thrust Hamlet down a twisted path of misery and deception.

After arranging us into a relaxed semi-circle, Nixon began the workshop by breaking down its structure: “We thought it might be useful with this session to maybe share a little bit about our experience of being in Hamlet for a long period of time with the RSC. I played Ophelia and Al played Horatio […] and then maybe we would just do half an hour of looking at the nunnery scene, in a very condensed way, and just go through how we might play with the text in a rehearsal room, which will be a little bit of audience participation. Don’t worry, we’ll get you all up on stage! Does that sound okay?” Heads shot down here with nervous chuckling by all, anxious fidgeting erupting across the room. Waldmann piled in on the gag, quipping: “Too late now, get up lock the door!” The jokes were soothing, and the room was now set to discuss the play with a comfortable determination.

— Shakespeare @YSJ (@ShakespeareYSJ) 24 November 2016

As promised, the duo started by reflecting on their shared relationship with Hamlet. Nixon and Waldmann performed Hamlet with the RSC in 2013, under director David Farr. Nixon offered a detailed description of the setting, along with her own approach, explaining the play was “set in a fencing school. In a very posh house or a school? It was quite difficult to determine where this room was, but it was all set in this one room. I felt quite lucky playing Ophelia in this production, because a lot of actresses want to play her but she is such a difficult part because there are so many missing scenes. Like one minute you see her cut up about Hamlet, and the next minute she’s gone mad, and that’s a massive leap for an actress.” However, no matter where Nixon leaped, she always reached the other side. Ophelia has often been portrayed as something of a slippery snake, and the technicalities of grasping the character seem equally as challenging. It was after all the actor’s responsibility to give the audience something comprehensible to latch onto in the whirlwind madness. This was achieved, according to Nixon, by really interrogating the question, “what does madness mean to us? What does madness mean to us at the time?” Waldmann added firmly that “the most interesting thing in [Hamlet] was Pippa’s version of Ophelia. In real life, people that are mad don’t necessarily think they’re mad. That’s what makes them scary. They think they’re right, and that everyone else is wrong. It’s the certainty thing, Hamlet can never be sure that [his father] is a ghost, and that’s what makes him sane […] What made Pippa’s version of Ophelia really moving is because everyone else was mad because they didn’t understand ‘the owl was a bakers daughter’, but there was a certainty in that I’m going to get married.” This is an unsettling, complicated role reversal. Madness is treated as a power, as a tool that can evolve and conquer. It is a startling prospect, the gaps in Ophelia’s appearances and psychology partially filled in by infesting and tainting the thought processes of others.

 

Both Nixon and Waldmann were keen to get to the centre of the characters’ mentalities during the workshop. They provided a clear way of unpacking the character’s psychology, by analyzing the “nunnery” scene. In the play, this scene comes shortly after the famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy. After plucking up our courage to engage with two esteemed acting veterans, we slowly gained traction in creating a sizable list of potential character actions. Nixon elaborated that this process was called: “actioning […] and you would do this on each line or each thought, but we thought we would do it just for the overall peice right now. An action is like a verb, a doing word, of something that I would be doing to Al as Ophelia, as Ophelia what would I be doing to Hamlet. Maybe I would be imploring, or maybe I would be seducing, or humiliating. So we thought maybe we could bounce some ideas of each other.” There is a huge range of options and avenues to explore here, and it is easy to see how Shakespeare becomes so adaptable when this exercise is engaged with properly. Many of the actions we interpreted in the scene sometimes contradicted with another, but such contradictions can in turn spark further variations of Hamlet. Waldmann confirmed this, describing how “we’re using the same words, but depending on what action you play, it can completely change the way those words come alive. When you see boring Shakespeare, you just see a lot of people standing on stage trying to make it sound nice. And when you see good acting, or good Shakespeare – I’m talking to you now because we want to excite you and educate you and inspire you, I’m not just talking for the sake of it. I want my words to change you in some way. And the same way in any scene in any play, people and the characters are talking to each other because they’re saying ‘I need you to understand this about me. I was hungover too, I was drunk last night as well.'”

Following that poetic description of a dialogue, it was time to get stuck in! As a group, we brainstormed many variations of Hamlet and Ophelia’s actions during the infamous nunnery scene. Waldmann and Nixon patiently explored a few different variations, explaining that “what Ophelia is feeling is less important than what she is trying to do. Often in life we cover up what we’re really feeling to try and win the argument.” From that moment, our list of actions and reactions grew exponentially. For Hamlet to Ophelia: to humiliate, seduce, reject, punish, to implore. From Ophelia’s actions to Hamlet: to manipulate, provoke, irritate, degrade and to mock. Nixon then explained the interconnections of each action and how they feed into one another: “You guys will choose one now for both of us to play, and it might be like, mine might be to manipulate, but within manipulation I might have a moment of seducing or blocking. There are different actions within that main action.” In a special one-time treat for the group, or what Waldmann described as their catchy “world premiere of Hamlet provoking Ophelia humiliating”, Nixon and Waldmann began to act out our choices. Waldmann was to be Ophelia and Nixon to assume the role of Hamlet for the first round. However, what followed was near indescribable. They weaved their way through the crowd, poked and prodded each other, grappled on tables, banged on keyboards and erupted with hysterical laughter as they performed the scene, using their physicality to expand the meaning of the language. Their humour was natural and their acting compelling, giving a flavour of how Shakespeare’s text can evolve not only through history, but in the present, precise moment.

Thanks in no small part to Shakespeare: Perspectives tutors Julie Raby and Saffron Walking, Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon generously put in time and effort to bolster York St John’s understanding of Shakespeare. This was no ‘tick the box’, run of the mill drop in – they spent time with York St John because they care about the material and they care about how it is comprehended. That passion and level of commitment is wonderfully infectious, enriching York St John’s enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s words have stayed with many throughout their lifetime. In the case of Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon, theirs will also stay with us long throughout our own.

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Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon: Theatre For All!

By George Moss

@MossRamblings95

Hot on the heels from multiple RSC visitors, two of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s most decorated actors Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon paid a valuable visit at York St John to unpack the evolution of Shakespeare’s King John and the true meaning of theatre.

Waldmann and Nixon met during the 2012 RSC production of King John at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre, directed by the magnificent Maria Aberg. The RSC’s plug for the play is that: “King John explores inheritance and illegitimacy and the subsequent political deals and struggle for power. It is one of Shakespeare’s least performed plays.” In retrieving the play from this obscurity, Waldmann starred as King John whilst Nixon performed as The Bastard, the two central characters.

 

  Waldmann, Nixon and the rest of the company created their production from an enthusiastic foundation. Nixon found rehearsals compelling from the start, stating that the “rehearsal room was one of the most creative and brave spaces that I’ve certainly ever been involved in. That play [King John] was a big risk.” Risks and challenges are vital terms frequently found in an actor’s vocabulary, and it is the sense of risk that keeps a play feeling rejuvenated and fresh. After all, if Shakespeare himself was ‘creative’ and ‘brave’ in the writing of his work, then surely the best way to honour this is by following suit. Rather than striving to re-create past performances or simply adding another familiar iteration, the company rightly wanted to add another link in a four hundred year-old chain. As King John is rarely performed, the cast’s previous exposure to the text was limited. Waldmann himself readily confessed that, “I didn’t really get the play [King John], it’s one of his [Shakespeare’s] least familiar plays […] it didn’t really make any sense to me”, a shaky start for a lead actor. Nixon similarly added that, “I didn’t know anything about King John. I’d never seen it, never read it.” This is what fueled the creativity of the aforementioned creative rehearsals, putting a face on the unknown. The ingenuity of the company allowed the production to transform from a place of skepticism and mild dissatisfaction to a natural evolution of King John, a fresh creation. Nixon spoke of director Maria Aberg’s own perspective: “she found it quite impenetrable I think, and for her, making The Bastard a female character and having this particular relationship with King John, and conflating Hubert with The Bastard, sort of made sense for her.” This genius change in the character propelled the production into uncharted territory. Distancing their production from preconceived parameters, their King John began to breathe a life of its own. This is something that Waldmann reaffirmed in a moment of realisation: “All of a sudden the play came to life to me, and made sense, and it all felt that it centered around this intense, destructive complex relationship between King John and The Bastard. Whereas in the original play you get to see these two people at the beginning and at the end, and in the middle their relationship disappears. So suddenly the play made sense to me.” Not only did they unearth a sense of a more linear narrative, but the play was rooted deeper in a vividly intelligible exploration of relationships. Both Waldmann and Nixon still rank this piece and their efforts as ones they are extremely proud of, and with very good reason.    


Not only were the gender paradigms shifted, but the duo’s approach to Shakespeare’s language was also insightful. Where does language end and the character begin? Do they intersect? Is language always reliable? These are questions which layer any production with depth and complexity. Waldmann explained his observation that: “people get obsessed by the words, but often we say the opposite of what we feel […] the language betrays what we’re really feeling […] you’ve got this template, and it’s about finding a way of bringing those words to life.” Though Shakespeare’s mastery of language is often heralded, it would be fair to say that his language has become an entity of its own. As Shakespeare continues to be adapted, Shakespeare’s words are difficult to comprehend to the uninitiated, and deeper meanings are difficult to discover. To combat this, language must not be a confinement to character, but a sandbox to play in. Pippa Nixon spoke about this in great length, stating, “to have the modern meet the classical is great, because I always found there was a slight veil between speaking ‘it’ and feeling ‘it’ and suddenly with The Bastard, because we did so much detailed work about who these people are, the character starts coming alive so much that the text is just a way to access that character […] And that got brought into As You Like It completely, then Ophelia in Hamlet and then it’s gone on to Ariel in The Tempest. It feels like that work had unlocked something, it unlocked this reverence to Shakespeare’s texts and it’s incredibly elastic, you can stretch it and pull it and throw it across the room.” Shakespeare is often thought to be on an untouchable pedestal; that the only way to understand him is through an enormous supply of ‘highbrow’ intellect. But this is not the case at all: you simply need to be in touch with your humanity.

“people miss the excitement and the danger of the stories”

 

Shakespeare’s plays are in large part studies on the human condition. Do academic dissections eclipse all the fun? Waldmann seemed to think so to an extent, stating that “people miss the excitement and the danger of the stories” when the mechanics of a text override the thematic essence. Expectations invade the sense of wonder, of spontaneity and creativity that the theatre strives to fuel. Waldmann notes that, when it comes to accessibility, companies are “trying, but part of it is to do with the performance style, where ‘I don’t really understand what you’re saying, and you’re not a human being, so I don’t really care – I’d rather go and watch something modern, a telly programme.'” It seems from here there is only one way to go, and that is to update the tactics of putting on a show. Shakespeare interrogated the sociopolitical climate of his own era, and it is now time to adapt his work to fit within our own understanding of our world. Nixon shared this sentiment, that some Shakespeare productions today are: “not feeling like it’s evolving and going to more exciting spaces and places”, and this presents a ceiling that can only be shattered by the creative industry. After all, as Waldmann concurred, the theatre is not a museum, but an arena of innovation.

Shakespeare is for all, not only to be studied rigorously by select few, but also to serve its most basic, original purpose: to entertain everybody. Waldmann and Nixon carry this torch high and proud, and it pays off in their audience feedback, according to Waldmann. After a Saturday Matinee performance, Waldmann was beckoned over by a heavily tattooed man from Salford. “I was like oh god, this is it, I am gonna get beaten up before tonight’s show. He said he was from Salford and got dragged down [to the play] by his in-laws and had never been to the theatre before. He said, ‘I didn’t really understand what you’re saying all the time, but I fucking loved that’. And it meant more than any peers saying that.”

Through the fundamental decency of Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon, the inherent creativity and humanity of the theatre will seldom be forgotten. Shakespeare would surely  approve.

 

 

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Teacher Training Event 29 November

Ebor Teaching Schools Alliance will be on campus on Tuesday 29th November to run a panel session. The focus of the event will be to inform students of their options regarding teaching training, and specifically the Schools Direct route.

Ebor Teaching Schools Alliance offer both Primary and Secondary Schools Direct programmes.

The panel will take place in Quad South Hall between 2pm and 3pm. Interested students can book their tickets by following this link.

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Tiny Sandwiches & Productivity

By Bethany Davies

@Bethanyjoy18

I have a task for you. Look back to a moment, or perhaps sit and look sad in the one you’re in, where you have felt stress over a deadline. Reflect on that feeling (or sit and feel sad with it) where you have more work to do than time to do it in. It’s a common predicament. A lot of us find ourselves in it most days. And yet, that irritating presence of worry still looms over us like the grizzly clouds of York in November.

Now, be sure not to get offended; don’t take it personally. But, you see, if you’re not a writer, this post really isn’t for you. Because these deadlines aren’t any old deadlines. They’re not the filing of the end of year paperwork; the re-stacking of Tesco’s shelves before 5pm; or the need to feed the cat, dog and hamster before a night out with friends. These are the kind of deadlines that demand creativity in a temporarily hollow mind that only sees one thing; a blank page. It’s a killer.

So, what’s the cure?

The first crucial step is to turn Netflix off. Completely off. Remove Facebook from your bookmarks bar and rid the room of people who only want to distract you and make sure you never ever (ever) succeed in life. Lock your phone in a bullet proof safe. Shut the door. Lock the windows. Glue your elbows to the table. With extra strong PVA.

There’s no doubt that you’ll have heard all of this before. So, let me tell you the secret ingredient. Motivation. You don’t need to want to do the work but you need to be motivated. This could be inspired by an anticipation of future greatness or simply the promise of a bowl of coco pops when the work is done.

Tiny Sandwiches

Since we are all writers, unless some of you cheeky few stuck around, we are supposedly holding creative minds that function on inspiration. So, find out what inspires you. Take your creative flare and light it up in the city of York. You live in the city of history and architecture where minds were inspired to create beautiful pieces of art.  Take a laptop or notepad and use the surroundings for inspiration. Climb out of bed and sit in one of York’s quirky independent coffee shops and read your set text for the week. Head off to Betty’s and sit amongst an array of tiny sandwiches and teapots classed as ‘cute’. Whatever works. Try it. Become motivated. And watch as that thick grey cloud looming over you is replaced by a carried sense of accomplishment and productivity.

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Upcoming events: Dialogue Day and MA Information Evening

Two upcoming events for current third years

 

Sour Cream Coffee CakeOn Wednesday 30th November we will be holding a Dialogue Day from 2.30-5pm in SK128. This is an opportunity for you to offer some vital feedback on your engagement with your Literature and Creative Writing Programmes, learn more about prospective careers paths, and reflect on your learning so far. This is intended to be a helpful and informative session to help you during your final year of study, and there will lots of opportunities for group work and discussion. Most importantly, there will be tea, coffee, and cake served for everyone! Please email Anne-Marie (a.evans@yorksj.ac.uk) if you would like to book a place.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Did we mention the cake part yet?

 

After the Dialogue Day, we’ll be holding an MA Information Evening for anyone interested in applying for the MA in Contemporary Literature or the MA in Creative Writing here at YSJ. This will take place on Wednesday 30th November at 5pm in SK037. You will have a chance to hear about the modules on offer, and ask any questions that you might have about postgraduate study. There will be wine and nibbles served at 5pm. Please email Anne-Marie (a.evans@yorksj.ac.uk) if you would like to book a place.

 

@DrAMEvans

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Stranger Things: Do We Need The 80s?

Please Ferris, don’t have another day off. 

By Oliver Driver

@OliverDriver20

Check the cinema listings and you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re back in the 80’s. Star Wars, Star Trek and Ghost-Busters are all on the big screen and Flash Gordon isn’t far behind. In this context, Netflix Original series Stranger Things looks right at home. In reality, the Duffer Brother’s mini-series is as alien as E.T. Far from the tepid waters of safe-bet remakes and cash-grab sequels, it’s a retreat into the warm bosom of rose-tinted past.

 

Stranger Things logo

 

Stranger Things doesn’t jump on the table and rub its 80s credentials in your face. We don’t even see the predictable Rubik’s Cube cameo.  It may as well not be the 80s at all, simply ‘a long, long time ago in a galaxy not far away’. What matters is that it’s not now: it’s pre-digital. Like the crackle of a record, there’s comfort to be found in the fuzzy black screen that precedes those synth opening titles. The fiber-optic streaming feels like VHS, and it feels great.

From then on, Stranger Things is laced with nods to its influences. Beginning in the stars, you’re left expecting an Imperial Cruiser to steam through the first shot, leaving a palpable feeling that you’ve seen it all before – and it’s probably because you have. Far from shying away from its predecessors, we spend our time shamelessly cycling away from the “bad men” in radioactive suits, hiding aliens in closets and walks along train tracks (a-la-Stand-By-Me.)

“There are no short cuts and no cheap shots. The roster of characters gradually reveal complexity and depth in dialogue”

Cynically, it seems like the recipe for success: cheap pop-culture shots and familiar plot lines. But that’s in a world where success is measured at the box office and Ice Age 3 comes out on top. And this is exactly the world from which Stranger Things seeks to escape: one where consumerism is omnipresent and mobile phones tether us to our stresses, like landlines to the wall. There are no short cuts and no cheap shots. The roster of characters gradually reveal complexity and depth in dialogue, rather than wandering around explaining the plot and shouting “I love Dr Pepper” (See Real Steel and 90210). Nothing is written with target audiences and marketing in mind.
rubik-cube-1400876325eiT

Rubik's Cube: a predictable 80s pop cultural reference

 

The Duffer Brothers don’t take us to L.A landmarks, but idyllic Indiana suburbs – where garden gnomes go missing and the worst thing to happen was “an owl attacked Eleanor Gillespie because it thought her hair was a nest”. For the charming, carefree (if a little too familiar) gang, it’s home to Dungeons and Dragons, pillow forts and bike rides.

It’s here where the series flourishes, not in the well-rendered monsters, but the formation and interplay of unlikely, yet tender, relationships. For me, the greatest jump came at the fate of misfit Jonathan’s camera, not the faceless ‘Demigorgon’. It’s a world that feels so much simpler than today, but only because they’ve made it so. A time to which we owe so many of today’s horrors, of conflict and greed, the 80s deserves little fetishism. Much like Abraham’s Super 8, Stranger Things is a love letter to a nerdy childhood that just happened to be in the 80s.

The best art comes from love. If you loved the 80s, write that. But we don’t need nostalgia, just because it sells. If we write what sells, those reboots will keep coming. Roll on Ben Hur.

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Melly Still – From YSJ to the RSC

By George Alexander Moss
@MossRamblings95

In a riveting discussion mediated by York St. John Senior Lecturer in Drama David Richmond, famed artist Melly Still discussed topics from her time at York St John, to her directorial efforts in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, currently playing at the Barbican Theatre, London.

Melly Still is a director, choreographer and designer. She has been nominated for four Olivier awards and six Tony awards, including best director for both. In a career going from strength to strength, Still has developed productions with The National Theatre, Blind Wall Festival Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her work has been recognized on an international scale, influencing theatrical circles in Europe, America, and Asia. Needless to say, Still ranks among York St John’s top alumna.

Still’s rationale for choosing to study at York St John University in the 1980s was that, “at the time, it was the only place in the UK that I could find that did theatre, fine art and dance – all three.” Retrospectively, this education route seems like an exhausting shocker. After all, it is not uncommon to find single honours undergraduates in the library engaging in various activities; working, reading, sleeping, crying. It would certainly be remarkable if Still aced three subjects at once, but as is true for many undergraduates, it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

Still highlighted many obstacles that came her way during her time at University. She openly admitted that, “I think I displayed lack of confidence by just not giving a damn at the time”, which for the theatrical arts obviously will not fly. In a subject that relies so heavily upon inspiration and creativity, a stunted student will find it difficult to reap the rewards of study and practice. Coupled with a lack of confidence is untapped potential, and that is something Still evidently had much of. Eventually this potential was unleashed, and Still “started to click with some of the work we were doing […] I really loved it at after that, second, third and fourth years. I don’t think I missed anything. Plus I was making work and putting on shows at every opportunity that wasn’t part of the curricular [activities].” It is often said that University is a time to broaden ones prospects, to participate in as much as possible whilst also, creating our own opportunities. Between the endless hours of Netflix and noise, a sense of maturity is eventually unearthed in the first year, and propels each and every student into the productive years that follow. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves at 3am whilst devouring another episode of Luke Cage.

Nevertheless, Still began harnessing her talent through the three headed beast of a course. She described it as “really fascinating work – I remember a lot of the tutors. There was this kind of, strangely enough at the time, everything was very, very compartmentalized. At the time, theatre practice was theatre practice, art was art, and there was never a between, they would never meet ever. There was a lack of cooperation between departments at the time. Which seemed nuts to a lot of the students.” Of course, this has been clearly rectified now, with York St John University breathing as a whole by sharing trips, societies and a great many lectures. However, where the artist is confined it could only ever lead to rebellion. Still reflects that it: “Seemed mad we weren’t being able to do mad things on rooftops, and things like that. It was quite conservative, but it helped, because it meant we could sort of push against it. It’s quite easy to shock people here, which some how I found quite incentivising at the time.” Creativity is at its most vibrant when demolishing boundaries and offering new perspectives on a great many things, changing thoughts and feelings for the better. Of course, clambering onto somebody’s roof is also a stellar method of inciting change: hopefully we can expect someone to be on the roof of The White House one day soon.

Still’s continuing hard work eventually led her to where she is today, directing rarely performed Shakespearean juggernaut Cymbeline. Whilst she contemplates that “the tutors encouraged us to be quite experimental at the time”, she later stated that her artistic nuance came: “very late in my career, finding my voice. But I certainly felt I really want to work in a narratively driven, choreographic work”. In the case of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline, that voice is on a speaker phone. The play’s pitch is hauntingly that “Britain is in crisis. Alienated, insular and on the brink of disaster. Can it be saved?” Reflecting a vast array of contemporary catastrophes (looking at you brexit), the play has arrived at a time in Earth’s history that is more poignant than ever. This is the crux of what Still is trying to communicate, stating that Cymbeline is “completely about isolationism. England was still struggling with its identity, do we become part of a bigger statehood? Lets reach out to our neighbours. They’re not my words, they’re Shakespeare’s. You can’t help but reach out to those parallels.” It is disheartening to consider whether Britain has come a long enough way in 400 years. Now of course, it is not merely England struggling with a contested identity; America, Germany and a great many other places are facing this question too. It is on this that makes Cymbeline truly vital and Shakespeare a timeless writer.

Ultimately, whether shaking things up at York St John or on a global stage, it is unquestionable that Melly Still makes our world immeasurably bigger.