Step 5: Make it last. (Process over Production.)

We often describe our collaborations with scientific researchers as Public Engagement but what does Public Engagement actually mean?

It’s one thing to visit the researchers in their workplace, have a look at what they’re doing & do our level best to understand. Sure, that’s Public Engagement: the scientists get a chance to explain themselves; we get a chance to gawp slack-jawed at their high tech equipment.

It’s something else to process what we’ve learned & convert it into something performable that the world can access & understand & engage with. That’s Public Engagement too: converting the research into a different vernacular & exciting a response from a different public. Ideally a public who wouldn’t normally have much to do with VR or Quantum or whatever we happen to be working on.

But, for us, Public Engagement goes much further that that. Our understanding of Public Engagement means involving as many people as possible in the wierd & wonderful world we’re interrogating for as long as possible. A play can be consumed in an hour or two &, if you’re not careful, it can be forgotten about on the bus home. You might get lucky & receive a few complimentary emails. It only plays to a few hundred people at best each night though & it can’t run forever.

That’s why we like to emphasise the process over the production. The performance is the icing on the cake but the process of dissecting the research & putting it back together creatively is where the work is done. It’s mixing all the ingredients together where the Public Engagement takes place.

It goes a bit against the grain for us. Kilter is a company rooted in making plays. The normal format in our business is to get as few people involved for as long as possible & then throw everything together in a few short months or weeks in the run up to Opening Night. When the press have been & said what they want to say, it all boils down to the vision of a handful of people: the writer, the director…. And normally, that's about it. ‘The play’s the thing’ to use the words of one highly respected member of our profession.

Anyway, that’s where we are at the moment. Hunting around for exotic ingredients & steadily folding them, layer upon layer, in the mixing bowl. We are running workshops in schools to tease out the voice of the youth. We are setting up meetings with ethicists & business people who might be pulling in opposite directions. Getting them to talk to each other.

For every gung-ho enthusiast, there is a died-in-the-wool resister. For every machine-minded genius, there is a wandering poet. We’re calling in friends & enemies: the ignorant, the old-fashioned, the hopeful dreamers; those that have learned from the mistakes we are about to make.

We’re continuing to gently disrupt the researchers. Asking them ever more searching questions. Constantly encouraging them to reframe & rephrase their work. We don’t just want to know what but why? Why you? Why now?

Later, when we have a promising mess of a mixture, then we’ll set the temperature on the oven & start to think about cooking up a play.