re:mote voices

alladeen - well i managed to catch this last night, the first performance of the three night run. it was in the tramway, which is in the old tramworks. not somewhere i've been a lot, the only other time i can thing of was the touch tour with biosphere, fennesz and hazard, and it was in the same hall as that had been.

-the story has the aladdin myth as a back drop, with the suggestion that none of the characters in that were who they seemed, or from where they ended up. also from that were the ideas of wish fulfilment, and at that time the prime commerce would have been the silk route - which is then updated to the drift of technology and call centers and how that relates to modern commerce. with that drift comes the idea of identity, how we have these call centers in india, but they are pretending to be british or american depending who they are dealing with.

-although the play has it's basis in america, i think the issues of call centers and work moving to india is a bigger deal over here. of course the fact that i used to do the software for a small call center also makes it something i am particularly conscious of. here we hear the stories of a man phoning to look for tourist information on a visit to scotland, and being met with the question of where scotland is - not something you would expect from someone in your country - true story? the play has its own examples of cultural misunderstandings, which is where a lot of its humour comes from - the bemusement of staff in india as they deal with the random colloquialisms of americans.

-the play is one of those new fangled multi media things - at the start we are presented with a big screen, on to which we see a new york back drop. we witness a woman complaining about the ability of someone she is speaking to on the phone - do you even speak english? transporting us to bangalore, mixing in documentary footage from the real call centers about the training to become americanised, to give up traces of the mother tongue. again there is humour with the repeated mistakes and misunderstandings that result.

-the bulk of the play is then set in the call center, the actors taking turns as caller and recipient, inbound and outbound. mixing the live action, with live music, and video effects - mixing images on the big screeen to reflect and contrast what is going on on stage.

- with progression we see the two extremes - a woman threatened with being sacked because she still speaks with too much of the mother tongue, compared to a man who is become too americanised in some ways, mounting debt on credit cards on his attempts to keep up, though in the end being rewarded for having the most sales. mixed in with that we have the wishes of the staff, their wishes to get out of the call center, their wishes to get to america, again mixed with real footage from call centers and their commentary.

-the play ends in london, a wandering salesman, trying to sell the bangalore call centers to new customers. then bumping into the woman from the new york scene in a london kareoke bar - another scene for people to pretend they are someone else by singing the songs of their favourite star.

-overall the production is fun and well staged, some interesting observations being made, while providing a commentary on the current state of technological drift. the end perhaps was an anti-climax, the kareoke bar under played given that its supposed to be the big last scene, as is the last phone call from the salesman - giving more of a fizzle than a bang.