Prompter

Prompter 1Something has been broken in the world of Prompter by instantaneous news reporting. Journalists and their audience are caught in a game of ‘guess-what-is-happening-while-it-streams-right-into-your-home’. And as this real-time event unfolds the gaze of the audience feeds a storm of converging narratives.

Prompter takes place in a surreal newsroom studio and explores how the boundaries of news practice is slipping away via new technology and driven by the rapacious appetites of media consumers.

Onstage, a live media drama plays out – while an ‘online chorus’ of performers observe, stage vigils and re-create action in their homes. The chorus are part of an epidemic of performative empathy that is spreading through living spaces across the globe.

The journalists caught at the centre of this storm, who have become the darlings of disaster and violence, must find a way forward or out of this loop of information, concern and intervention.

Written by journalist and writer Patrick Pittman (Monocle, Smith Journal and Dumbo Feather) and Perth’s Hydra Poesis director Sam Fox (Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship recipient), Prompter features five onstage performers and an online chorus of voices streaming into the performance from around the globe – including Australia, Argentina, America, France and the United Kingdom.

Prompter incorporates broadcast, theatre, dance and performance art; and interrogates the ethics and conflicts of today’s media environment, journalism practice and digital culture.

Prompter
Arts House –  5 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne
Season: 9 – 18 August 2013
Bookings: 03 9322 3713 or online at: www.artshouse.com.au

For more information, visit: www.artshouse.com.au for details.

Image: Sete Tele