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back to article Privacy at the Donmar Warehouse: All your data are belong to THEM

Josie Rourke, mummer-in-chief at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London, was halfway through researching a new play on how “smartphones and the internet are changing the ways in which we live”, when the Guardian and its partners began publishing the Edward Snowden files. This timely interruption gave Rourke new impetus and …

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  1. Mike Pellatt

    With its use of ... (a) partially borrowed script and threadbare plot, Privacy is more of a show than a play. But it’s a decent show.

    If that's your premise, I'd wholly disagree.

    Is it the show's intention to make us think, challenge our preconceptions, change our behaviours ?? If so, then a show won't do it. It needs to be theatre - proper theatre. I've done no stage stuff since my school years, but my son went from the Brit shcool to MMU Crewe's CTP course. I understand from him a little of how theatre should work, and always remember his utter disdain for the show of the Hutton Inquiry, where the thing was read out verbatim. This neither challenged the audience nor added anything to the corpus of knowledge - and from this description, it seems Privacy is much the same.

    Still, maybe I should go see it just in case....

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    1. cmc
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      See it. Theatre was definitely at work, and perceptive comments within the play about art, artifice, imagination and how it's difficult to communicate the abstract in story form help the viewer go with the flow. "Privacy" is of a particular genre (documentary/"living" theatre); not easy to categorize. The reviewer does it justice -- his last comment is just a caution for people who might be expecting a traditional format and a heads-up that it is very entertaining. That said (spoiler 3): Shakespeare had the last word.

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      1. Mike Pellatt
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        Thanks for the heads-up. Shame it ends on Saturday, then, and I don't have a free evening before then

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  2. Zog_but_not_the_first

    Learning from the past

    How did we get here? Seriously.

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    1. Mark 85
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      Re: Learning from the past

      Seriously.... ???? Started with spammers wanting email lists (yeah.. simplistic, I know). Websites needed cash so doubleclick and host of other ad companies popped up. Google got into the fray and wanted info on users to target ads. I suspect the NSA has been on top of things since day one but not sure. Things grew from there (or maybe went to hell from there is more appropriate).

      I remember a boss I had back in the early days saying "the Internet is for business". I and others thought he either had too much to drink the night before or was off his rocker. This was during the heyday of Geocities, Anglefire, etc. and site wars and the general anarchy that we loved. But he was right... it's all about and for making money.

      The days of innocence and Dogbert being able to say: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" are long gone.

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  3. Mephistro
    Unhappy

    It's a lost battle anyway

    Most people doesn't want to be educated. Most of those who can be bothered to watch the play will get a very nebulous idea of what it's all about, and most memes acquired while watching it will be forgotten in a few weeks at most, or set aside in exchange for some shiny shiny.

    As usual, people won't understand the consequences of losing their privacy until said consequences bite them in their arses*. Things will get a lot worse before improving. If they ever improve, that is.

    * Which seems to be the moral of this play.

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