If the majority of …Blues appears to recall the mediatisation of the disaster or tragedy, both as ?ction and hyperreality, this device was suggestive of the un?lmed, the undocumented and the unreported. Not least because of the word by which I have been abbreviating the piece’s title throughout this essay, and its origins as an African American musical form, cries for help put me in mind of New Orleans, post-Katrina, and the distinctly un?lmic catastrophes experienced by one of North America’s more socio-economically disadvantaged areas: not least in terms of the ongoing aftermath that, without hyperreal existence, the vast majority of the ‘available’ audience simply does not see. Whilst other audience members may be reminded or prompted to consider alternative (comparable?) realities, these moments of choral unison feasibly retain a more general function. In providing de?nitive contrast with the lines individually spoken (and a contrast honed through there being no apparent pattern to the instances of unison), these cries for help are delivered in a style rather closer to mimesis than the lines individually delivered. In something of a paradox, then, the evocation of ‘the real’, through the most basic workings of theatrical liveness, may have looked to reinforce the profoundly hyperreal domain of the mediatised disaster, as we choose to watch it, and watch it, and watch it.
KATE WHITTAKER
@rowenaeaston congratulations on #HollywoodBlues @NGTheatre - What a ride!! Brilliantly imagined, written, orchestrated, and performed. Emma Haughton @sugarhouseEmma
WE LOVED IT! GENIUS!!!! AUDIENCE
41