VAULT literary festival

Proxima V – The Vault Festival

· December 6, 2016 · Uncategorized · , , · No Comments

I attended several of the Vault Festival events last year and was blown away by all of them! Sited in vault-like spaces under Waterloo these are experiences you don’t want to miss. So, here’s the info you need…

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This is an official plea for assistance.

The Earth is imperiled. Resources are being depleted at an unprecedented rate. Politics is in turmoil across the globe. It is no longer possible to engage with others without owning accounts for Netflix, Now TV and Amazon Prime simultaneously.

The People are dangerously close to being without hope.

We need brave individuals to offer themselves for the next phase of human existence: off-world. We are preparing a flight manifest of those willing to join us in our first efforts to colonise a new world – a better world, not so far, far away. We call it: PROXIMA V.

Well – maybe. It’s an idea, anyway. We’re not quite ready to abandon all hope just yet. It’s easy to feel despair in these times of political and economic uncertainty – but we look to the skies and find no sign of any limits to human creativity and passion.

Join us on PROXIMA V – a carefully selected strand of sci-fi and space shows designed to make you smile, and make you think about where we’re all headed. Check out the programme below and reach for the stars.

VAULT Festival – 252AM (After Man)

· February 23, 2016 · Event Reviews · , , , , · 2 Comments

VAULT Festival (Waterloo) is amazing. Going along to experience their short plays/events is becoming a habit.

252AM (After Man) by Rebecca Pollock:

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When planet Earth belongs to women, who will fight for the rights of men? All the men on Earth are dead, and have been for 252 years; a fault in the Y chromosome killed them off, so no new men can born and survive. The countries of the world have been sharing the stored sperm to create new generations of women, but supplies are running out. They have to find more.

Set on an inter-planetary starship, crewed by women, who after hundreds of years of searching have finally found a planet with a compatible male genotype. The question is, do they invite men from this new planet back to Earth in the hope of re-establishing the ‘old’ male-female family unit. Or do they capture men to take back for their ‘contribution’ to the new all female society?

When the Captain finds out about the hidden agenda (capturing men and not allowing male children to be conceived, except to be kept for their future ‘contributions’), she says something along the lines of, ‘So all these years I’ve been the Captain of a slave ship?’

In one short hour this play raised a lot of questions. It has certainly left me with a great deal to think about. The all-female Earth has no wars, is calm and seemingly peaceful. But history has been rewritten, with the work of male writers/artists/musicians now ascribed to women. Male artefacts are restricted to museums, and men themselves are portrayed as aggressive and controlling. Everything is decided by consensus, but it is a consensus that contrives to put women in boxes with specific roles (e.g. the highest honour is to be granted the status of a mother, but once granted, that’s your position for life–literally). So, are the women in this new and perfect society any better than the men they vilify?

There are plans to develop the play into a full length run. It’s something I would go and see.

 

 

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