In the article I included two quotes from the co-curator of the project, and director of the opening play, Derek Bond, that were part of a much longer and very interesting interview. So, for fear of it festering on my hard drive forever more and never being used, I thought I’d put it up here.

Towards the end of the interview, we discussed Hacked in relation to another of Bond’s project, PLAYlist. Adopting pretty much the same format, this recurring show (now a fixture at the Latitude festival, as well as regular runs at Theatre 503) sees writers creating short plays based on songs. The only rule is that the play can’t be longer than the song that inspired it.

AM: How did this project come about and become what it is?
DB: Well, Telegraph theatre critic Dominic Cavendish has been involved in a couple of projects here. He did a thing called Decade a couple of years ago where we asked ten writers to all write a play, one for each year of the last decade, performed on New Year’s Eve 2010, and also Coalition, [where] we paired up other writers from other disciplines and had these sort of unlikely collaborations, and that was sort of examining what the coalition government was all about.

Then he suggested doing something about the phone hacking scandal, and so the artistic directors here, Tim Roseman and Paul Robinson, got in touch with myself and Lisa Cagnacci, who’s the programming director here, and we had a meeting and talked about ideas to do with phone hacking.

I think a lot of people are going to perhaps want to do something phone hacking related that is sort of a verbatim piece that talks about the courtroom drama of what’s been happening with that, the legal ins about outs of it, because it’s an interest scandal, but we want to look at the human story behind it and actually what effects it. What it’s about really is an invasion of privacy and we wanted to look at the sort of emotional feeling behind it. And also what actually is on people’s voicemails.

How would you feel if someone was listening to your voicemail? What sort of idea would they get about you? What would they learn from you? And would they have to fill in the gaps? The big thing we said to all of the writers was, “Don’t feel like you have to stick to the god’s honest truth, use your imagination and don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

AM: How long did it take to put the whole thing together?
DB: Well, Dominic came to us with the idea at the height of the scandal in July and we knew we had this slot that we wanted to do it in at the end of September/beginning of October. There was a worry that actually the story would have gone off the boil by then, [that] by the end of September it would be old news and no one would care about the hacking scandal, but it seems, you know, it’s the gift that keeps on giving to the media, it keeps on coming out and new revelations are coming out. There’s more revelations even just this week, which made the whole event seem very prescient.

Coming up with the idea was the work of an afternoon at a meeting sort of talking about it and thinking about it then refining it, then we commissioned the writers – we got the first drafts about two weeks ago in some cases – and then got directors on board straight away and most of the plays were rehearsed within a week. Because they’re all around ten minutes it’s been something that’s been relatively easy to put together. It’s a great way for us to get involved with a number of writers but also a number of directors who each take charge of their own play and they cast the actors of their choice, which means that you get a multitude of actors all involved who perhaps I’ve never seen or worked with before, but would definitely work with again.

AM: As well as directing one of the plays, what’s your involvement?
DB: So, I directed one of the plays and my involvement along with Lisa Cagnacci, who’s the other curator of the project, we commissioned the writers, chose which writers were going to be involved, and we got the directors involved as well, selected them and paired the writers up with the directors.

We also work on scripts before they actually end up in rehearsal, so we worked with some of the writers and suggested ideas and changes that they might want to make to the scripts before they finally started work with their own director, and obviously changes happen in rehearsal as well all the time, so it’s sort of really about overseeing the whole project and putting it all together and making sure the directors have got the support they need, and making sure the evening feels like a whole, rather than just six episodic, unrelated plays.

AM: You were about to tell me about Chris Beanland’s voicemail just now.
DB: Well, Chris’ voicemails were really interesting because, the other thing, I did all the recordings which meant that I’m one of the only people who’ve listened to all of the voicemails, and then having seen the scripts and then having seen the productions, er, because we’ve kept the voicemails secret, the directors haven’t heard them, and the actors haven’t heard them, only the writers heard them, and the writers and directors don’t know what the voicemails actually contained, or who left the voicemails

AM: So the recordings that were played in the theatre aren’t actually the original voicemails?
DB: A lot of them are recorded verbatim, any voicemails that you heard are actors who’ve recorded as they were heard, so those are the only ones. But having had that overview, it’s really interesting having seen, you know, what the writers have come up with and then what the directors have done.

There’s a very interesting couple of coincidences. In the play that was called Showmance by Anna Jordan about two people who’d met while working on a play and the re-meeting a year later on after their romance had sort of fizzled out, the director chose to cast a Northern Irish actress. And I happened to actually know that the person who owned the voicemail that sparked the play is also a Northern Irish actress, so it’s a very interesting coincidence that that’s all come about – a Northern Irish actress who’s inspired it, and you know, the director happened to cash a Northern Irish woman in the central role.

Also, in the play that was inspired by Chris Beanland’s voicemails, the writer originally wrote the character as named Christopher and I had to get in touch with him and say “I’m really sorry, but you’re gonna have to change the name”, because I guess it must have been left on a message and the writer, Ben Ellis, had no idea that Christopher was the name of the person whose voicemails he’d been listening to because we’d bleep out the names in the messages.

But Chris’ voicemails were very interesting because of course he’s a freelance journalist so he gets a lot of phonecalls from various people asking him to do things. So one of his messages was from somebody in an accounts department at a newspaper apologising for not paying him time, another phonecall was from a PR agency asking him to come to a particular event, another phonecall was from a PR agency asking him to go to another country for an event, another phonecall, you know, another PR agency, a commissioning editor, and then eventually some from his family as well.

What you get when you’re listening to a voicemail is you get little glimpses into people’s life, the different aspects of people’s lives, without actually any context for that, and any kind of understanding of where those pieces belong, and how they fit into someone’s life.

AM: So, it wasn’t based on one message?
DB: No, we told the writers to take inspiration from either one message or all the messages as a whole, in their wider context or to fill in the gaps. The play that I directed by Matt Hartley was inspired just by one message which was a message [from] somebody’s lawyer leaving a message about a house exchange that was going through and it seemed very innocuous. And that’s what Matt’s plays all about, how those things can be misinterpreted when taken out of context, because context is all.

AM: Without naming names, obviously, who are the people whose voicemails were used?
DB: Well, they come from a range of backgrounds. We advertised on Twitter and on Facebook and on the Theatre 503 website about, you know, saying we were doing this project, would people like to volunteer, and we had volunteers from all over.

Some people were from the theatre community, cos I guess those are the people that follow our feed, other people were from the journalism community, again I guess those are the people that follow the feed and were interested in the stories as well, and we also invited some people to get involved as well. So, there are some prominent journalists in there whose voicemails we’ve used and also people who work in bars, people who aren’t connected to any of those industries at all, either the theatre or the press, just ordinary everyday normal humans.

And I think that’s the interesting thing about it, it could be anybody’s voicemail. When we first talked about the project, we thought, you know, will anybody let us listen to their voicemails? And I thought, clearly I wouldn’t mind someone listening to my voicemails, and I just, I, er, then I listened to what was on my voicemail and was talking about that and, yeah, you kind of go, oh wait a minute, would I be comfortable with someone listening to this?

AM: Because there is the one play where everyone’s broadcasting everything in public…
DB: Yeah, it’s sort about the division, the dividing lines between what’s public and what’s private. I think that’s the point there. Because of course what the whole hacking scandal’s about is it’s taking something very private and something personal, somebody’s voicemail, and it’s shown it all to the world. And what we were doing is exactly the same, taking something that’s very private and then we’re showing it to a paying audience in a theatre.

Part of what I think about what’s interesting about the project is how it makes you feel sitting in the audience watching something that’s been inspired by a private message. It sort of makes you complicit in that, and I think in all of the hacking scandal, we as the public are complicit in that, because the reason why these newspapers did this is because they sold papers, and it’s just an interesting way to examine that and sort of ask the audience to examine that as well.

We’re all interested in people’s private lives, that’s why tabloid newspapers sell, that’s why gossip magazines sell, and I think what the Hacked project as a theatre piece does very well is ask everyone to examine that, that sort of voyeuristic interest in other people’s lives, as humans.

AM: Are you planning to do any more with this project? It’s only running for a week.
DB: Yeah, there’s been more interest in this project than we’ve had in almost any project we’ve done at 503. I think that’s largely because the media’s always interested in things that are about the media. The media is very very fond of itself. It’s why it’s been such a big news story and I think it’s why the theatre project has had so much interest as well.

There’s been pieces in the Guardian, in the Independent, I did an interview with Dutch television last week, it’s been covered by ABC in Australia, the Australian version of the BBC, French television came and did a piece on it. It’s had more international interest than anything that’s ever happened at 503, other than The Mountaintop, I think. And I think a lot of that is because the media is very interested in itself, which is understandable.

There’s been interest in other countries about perhaps doing something with the text that’s come out of it with these plays, potentially restaging it in other countries, which we’re looking into. In terms of the idea as a project, I mean as long as the hacking scandal is still in the news it’s still relevant. If it’s still there in six months time, potentially we could get six new writers to do exactly the same and repeat the same format, with six new writers listening to six new volunteers voicemails. But I think as long as it’s in the popular conscious it’s still an interesting format.

I think also what’s good about the format is that it doesn’t rely on necessarily on it being on the news. I think it’s interesting anyway, listening to somebody’s voicemails and using that as inspiration for a play. I think it would be an interesting project at any time with or without the hacking scandal. The hacking scandal makes it feel particularly prescient.

AM: There are similarities between this and PLAYlist, is that because you’re involved? You said it’s not your original idea but is it your format? You’ve just kind of applied the PLAYlist format to this?
DB: That’s right, I mean [in] PLAYlist obviously we ask writers to write plays inspired by songs and in that sense it’s similar, but we do a lot of things at 503 where we provide a stimulus to writers and ask them to write something shared off that and they tend to be multiple writer projects.

We do a thing called Rapid Write Response, which is where, when we have a show that’s running in the theatre for four weeks, we ask writers to come and watch it at the beginning of the run and then write a response play inspired by the themes or the characters, just a short play, and then we perform all those plays in one evening the last week of the play’s run on a set format plan. It’s a fascinating and a great way to get writers new and less experienced writers working alongside more experienced writers and expose them to an audience and see how they get on. We’ve always felt that writers should be developed on the stage at 503 and we wanted to put writers onto the stage and see how their work actually works in front of an audience.

But yeah, the idea of putting in an inspiration to a writer is similar to what we did with PLAYlist, the idea of using recordings as well and asking writers to sort of take an inspiration from an audio thing, yeah, it is a similar idea to PLAYlist and sort of how we came up with the idea was talking about formats we had like PLAYlist.

The big thing I should say about the format is it came out of a discussion about how we wanted the format to be the thing that reflected on the news story of phone hacking and we wanted to free up writers to write plays about whatever they wanted, to write plays about just human beings living their lives and tell a story. We felt if we asked the writers to write plays about the phone hacking scandal we’d end up with a lot of very tedious plays about Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch and newspaper problems and everything would be set inside an office and it would be very boring.

Doing it this way just meant it opened it up and the possibilities were endless, it doesn’t limit the writer’s creativity, it frees it.

Read my article on Hacked for Wired here.

The show will run for two nights, this Friday and Saturday, at 10pm. Entry is free, but if you want to see any performances you’ll need to purchase some special Story Whores currency.

You can find more info on all of this at storywhores.org

I’m not just telling you about this because I think it’s a brilliant idea (that’s mainly why), but also because I’m involved in my own small way. The show’s organisers, the very fine paper/scissors/stone theatre company, asked me to select some music to play in the bar while all this is going on. The only rule I was given is that all each song must tell a story.

So, below is the complete list of songs I selected. It’s by no means a definitive list of narrative songs, but is hopefully a good mix of styles and stories, across famous and lesser known songs. Some follow a simple narrative, some are a little more abstract, but hopefully they will all paint pictures on your mind.

I’ve put nearly all the songs into a Spotify playlist, which you can listen to here. It’s a bit flippin long. I suggest putting it on random play and seeing what comes up. I just got Deck Of Cards by Wink Martindale followed by Eminem’s Kim. It was jarring to say the least. Mostly it’s more fun than that.

Johnny Cash – 25 Minutes To Go
Johnny Cash – Delia’s Gone
Johnny Cash – A Boy Named Sue
Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues
MC 900 Ft Jesus – Adventures In Failure
Arab Strap – Love Detective
Weezer – Across The Sea
Blur – Parklife
Blur – Country House
Pulp – Common People
Pulp – Disco 2000
Dresden Dolls – Backstabber
Dresden Dolls – First Orgasm
Amanda Palmer – Oasis
Bongwater – David Bowie Wants Ideas
Counting Crows – Mr Jones
Bright Eyes – Lover I Don’t Have To Love
Eminem – Stan
Eminem – Kim
The Dismemberment Plan – You Are Invited
Michael Jackson – Billie Jean
Slint – Good Morning, Captain
Slint – Breadcrumbs Trail
Tricky – Black Steel
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – John Finn’s Wife
Eels – Susan’s House
Dengue Fever – Sober Driver
The Shangri-las – Leader Of The Pack
Ricky Valance – Tell Laura I Love Her
The Undertones – My Perfect Cousin
Richard Marx – Hazard
Chris De Burgh – Spanish Train
Dead Kennedys – The Prey
King Missile – Cheesecake Truck
Warren G – Regulate
Deftones – Fietcera
Sufjan Stevens – The Mistress Witch From McClure
Squeeze – Up The Junction
M. Ward – Chinese Translation
Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
Kate Bush – Army Dreamers
Her Space Holiday – Sleepy California
David Bowie – The Drowned Girl
The Louvin Brothers – Knoxville Girl
Tom T Hall – Harper Valley PTA
Tom T Hall – Turn it On, Turn it On, Turn it On
Bobby Gentry – Ode to Billie Joe
Marty Robbins – El Paso
Tom Waits – Big Joe & Phantom 309
Tom Waits – Burma Shave
The Raconteurs – Carolina Drama
Blackalicious – Deception
Blackalicious – Cliff Hanger
Slick Rick – Children’s Story
The Smiths – Paint A Vulgar Picture
The Smiths – Frankly, Mr Shankly
Lou Reed – Andy’s Chest
The Kingston Trio – Tic Tic Tic
Wink Martindale – Deck of Cards
Robert Johnson – Love in Vain
Tenacious D – Tribute
The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby
Don Maclean – American Pie
Iron Maiden – Run To The Hills
Tim Ten Yen – Girl Number One
Bat For Lashes – Daniel
Bjork – Hyperballad
Buck 65 – Roses & Blue Jays
Comanechi – My Pussy
Snoop Dogg – Murder Was The Case
Sloan – Underwhelmed
Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Mississippi John Hurt – Stagger Lee
Leadbelly – Boll Weevil
Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat
Joan Baez – The Ballad Of Mary Hamilton
Bob Dylan – Hurricane
Scott Walker – Jackie
Latyrx – Latyrx
Cappo – The Looniest
MGMT – Time To Pretend
The Pipettes – Magician Man
Pearl Jam – Alive
Pearl Jam – Jeremy
Recoil – Luscious Apparatus
Thomas Truax – My Wife Had A Dream
Thomas Truax – The Butterfly And The Entomologist
Regina Spektor – Prisoners
Mr Billy Williams – John, John, Put Your Trousers On
DJ Shadow – Backstage Girl

Okay, I was expecting the theatre to be there, I’m not generally in the habit of wandering into damp, smelly tunnels in the hope of finding entertainment. No matter what you’ve heard. I was there because the Old Vic has commandeered part of the space deep underneath the train station for a series of events this year.

Last week saw two performances of graphic novel writer Alan Moore’s new spoken word album, ‘Unearthing’, with musical backing provided by Crook&Flail (aka Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker and Fog’s Andrew Broder).

On paper, it doesn’t sound like much: Alan Moore delivers a biography of one of his friends, writer Steve Moore (no relation), set to abstract electronic music with accompanying photographs by Mitch Jenkins projected on a screen behind the stage. In fact, it sounds quite pretentious. And maybe it was a little, but that was easily diffused by Moore’s fantastic writing and unforced humour, all delivered in his distinct Northampton accent.

The story, told over the course of three hours (with two fifteen minute intervals), was far more grand, epic even, than you could possibly expect of a biography of a comic writer who has lived in the same house in Shooter’s Hill – “where Kent begins and London disappears” – for his entire life, save for a misjudged period of three months. It goes back through the history of the area, treating it as much as a character as anyone or anything else in the story, and through the eventual meeting of his parents before getting on to his travels through the words of comics and the occult.

As Moore spoke, Drucker and Broder’s soundtrack (played with the help of Jeff ‘Jel’ Logan), swooped and swelled behind him, rising up to add to the drama, or falling completely away to punctuate the story. Jenkins’ photography and graphical interpretations added yet more tone and colour, though the focus was always the words.

In fact, perhaps the most impressive thing was the delivery of the words. In three hours, Moore never fluffed one of them. Never stumbled, coughed or even, as far as I could hear, breathed. It was a completely hypnotic, gripping and intense show; that intensity ramped up by the fact that we were sitting in a damp, dark tunnel with rusted corrugated iron hanging from the ceiling and the entire space often shaken around us by the deep rumble of overhead trains. Simply stunning.

Taken from my editorial in this edition of CMU Weekly.

First off, tech blog Pocket-lint asked me to contribute to a feature called How The Apple iPad Will Change The World. I gave my thoughts on what effect it might have on the music industry both before and after the launch.

Then, not content with filling other people’s publications with my words, I went and dedicated my editorial in CMU Weekly to the iPad, as well. Here’s what that looked like:

I do so love an Apple product launch. The hype that always precedes them can only ever mean that the new thing Steve Jobs trots out with will be a big disappointment by comparison.

I suspect that this might be part of the plan, though. People always flock to point out that the latest Apple gadget is pointless, unoriginal and over-priced. And then what happens? Once the products are actually released – with our expectations reduced a little – those devices seem rather cool. And so you have the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone and all the rest. The impact all those things have had is undeniable, despite all the initial naysaying.

Will that be the case with the iPad? Only time will tell. So far its main contribution to the world is to fill Twitter with jokes about “Dom Joly’s new iPhone” and iTampons. It’s certainly not the home computer replacement I was hoping for, and nor am I going to start carrying one around in my bag instead of my iPhone (I’ll still need that for phonecalls, if nothing else). However, if, as I suspect, the iPad turns out to really be the uber-terminal for accessing online content, at home or on the move, it becomes more attractive.

Following their purchase of digital music platform Lala.com late last year, it’s been rumoured Apple might launch a service that would let you store your entire iTunes library online, ready to be accessed from anywhere. If that included films as well as music, and assuming WiFi and mobile internet connections can handle it, you’ve suddenly got a fast, friendly and lightweight way to access all your entertainment content from anywhere.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s something worth having in addition to a laptop. Possibly not. But if you only really use your laptop as an online entertainment centre, well, then why have a laptop at all? And you should never underestimate Apple’s ability to sell something people didn’t think they wanted by the millions. As with all these things, it’s the content that really makes it what it is. All you need is one truly great app to make the iPad a must-have.

Read this edition of CMU Weekly in full here.

Zero Degrees is a performance by dancers Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkauoi, with set design by sculptor Antony Gormley and score by Nitin Sawhney (which is how this gets onto a music blog, in case you were wondering). It’s based on an actual experience Khan had on a train in Bangladesh with a dead body and explores the transition between life and death.

The show premiered at Sadlers Wells on 8th July 2005 and it was at the same theatre last night that it was performed for the last time. Although it is often described as such, it’s very difficult to see Zero Degrees as just a dance performance. The unique styles of both Khan and Larbi are obviously the focal point, particularly Larbi’s seemingly inhuman movement in many sections, but there is vocal performance, the sparse set (just two life-sized casts of the dancers) and the haunting score, performed live with violin, cello, percussion and voice.

The spoken word sections are almost, if not equally as impressive as the dances. Performed in unison by Khan and Larbi, they have not only managed to synchronise their voices, but also their mannerisms – something that is developed and used to amazing effect as the show proceeds.

Zero Degrees is an incredibly moving work that constantly excites both visually and sonically. The 90 minute performance sped past in what seemed like less than half that time. I wanted to see it again as soon as it had finished. That isn’t going to be possible, but I’m glad I was able to see it once.

Now, watch one of these videos (or both):

1 minute compilation of clips from Zero Degrees
http://www.youtube.com/v/3jKpVKJdWyI

8 minute feature from BBC 2’s Desi DNA
http://www.youtube.com/v/th3H2h9uukY

Akram Khan Company website
Sadler’s Wells

Buy music by Nitin Sawhney