Appendix 3 – Other Related Works
Throughout the whole time frame of the PhD I was conscious to allow the reflections and learnings from all of my artistic activities relating to opera creation and performance, to influence the subsequent work I produced. The impact of the COVID restrictions right at the beginning of my data collection stage also meant that I had to seek to broaden the kind of work I was producing, so as to be able to work within the lockdown restrictions. This meant that I became involved in some projects which will not be used as key case studies in this PhD, but which nevertheless contributed greatly to the ongoing development of my method and understanding of the efficacy of my creative process and aims.
AP 3.3 Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing
The work towards creating this piece was carried out between myself, Infinite Opera and Postworkers Theatre from December 2019 to December 2021. I participated as collaborative script writer, performer, director, choreographer and film editor. The final film was recorded in Vivid Projects in August 2021.
The piece is based on the testimonies of workers in Amazon fulfilment centres, in particular around the poor conditions, intense pressure and precarity they suffer whilst working there. We based the form of the piece around Amazon’s 3 warning system, with each Act being marked by the first two warnings and then the firing. The character of Captain Swing is raised from the past by the Lead Picker, who badly hurts their hand in a machinery-based work-place accident. This means they have to stop working and leads to a series of warnings and ultimately being fired. Captain Swing at first attempts to fight the Molly Bot (the shelving unit that hurt the Lead Picker) but is overwhelmed by the might of Alexis (the scanner that controls the pickers and manages the Algorithm). When all the pickers and packers defeat the Molly Bot with the help of Swing’s ‘bugs’ Alexis fires the Line Manager. Swing then gives the Line Manager an SD card that will reprogramme the algorithm inside Alexis and give the workers back their rights.
I first began working on this piece when I was visiting tutor with Goldsmith’s design MA, helping them put together staging for a preliminary version of this story. Using what we had created in that session, along with the scaffolding of using the format of a Hoodening play, we began working with the Infinite Opera performers on redeveloping the work for a protest. We did this during the lockdowns in 2020 – 2021. A Hoodening play is a traditional theatre from the nineteenth century (in the Kent region) where one of the characters was an old workhorse, which was always represented with a hood and wooden mask. These plays would be performed at Christmas by local farm workers to raise money for beer and food. They involved some stock characters and were religious in theme, with the narrative trope of a death and resurrection.
The character of Captain Swing was introduced when Postworkers Theatre began work with Infinite Opera. Captain Swing is an older figure from the 1830’s Swing riots, in which the farm workers rebelled against the farm owners to try and stop the growing use of machinery. Captain Swing was the name used to sign letters of complaint and protest to the farm owning classes. This is comparable to and reflective of the growing use of AI technology today to potentially replace many jobs (such as is exemplified by the writer’s strikes of 2023). But also in this situation the use of algorithmic and data driven target setting is largely what causes many of the poor working standards present in Amazon factories today.
We collaboratively developed the script through a series of online workshops with and without the performers. It was jointly written by myself, Dash McDonald, Demetrios Kargotis and Nicholas Mortimer, making use of testimonies from the GMB union and that had been found online. We decided to reverse the roles of the machinery and the humans anthropomorphising the machines to magnify the power they hold over the workers. Through doing so we were also engaging in an anthropomorphising of the tyrannical and poor working practices that have been able to thrive in the largely profit drive online commerce sector today.
