Evans Catrin - Leaving Planet Earth

LEAVING

PLANET

EARTH

By Catrin Evans and Lewis Hetherington

The World Premiere of Leaving Planet Earth was produced as part of Edinburgh International Festival 2013. This site-responsive production was performed in Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

CAST (in character alphabetical order)

CREATIVE TEAM

PRODUCTION TEAM

TRANSMEDIA TEAM

For University of Edinburgh Centre for Design Informatics/Centre for Speckled Computing/Edinburgh College of Art: Professor Jon Oberlander, DK Arvind, Janek Mann, Michael Walters, Andrew

Bates, Arno Verhoeven and Mark Kobine.

For Edinburgh Napier University: James Blake, Malcolm Innes,

Ian Lambert, Andrew O'Dowd, Euan Winton.

LEAVING PLANET EARTH

Catrin Evans and Lewis Hetherington

LEAVING PLANET EARTH

OBERON BOOKS

LONDON

WWW.OBERONBOOKS.COM

First published in 2013 by Oberon Books Ltd

521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629

e-mail:

www.oberonbooks.com

Copyright Catrin Evans and Lewis Hetherington, 2013

Catrin Evans and Lewis Hetherington is hereby identified as authors of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The authors have their asserted moral rights.

All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to the authors c/o Oberon Books. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author's prior written consent.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

PB ISBN: 978-1-78319-034-8

Epub ISBN: 978-1-78319-533-6

Cover image by Douglas Chalmers

Printed, bound and converted

by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

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Contents

This play is performed across three floors of Edinburgh International Climbing Arena.

Each audience member will be given a Personal Quanitifier. A device which attaches to the hand that can light up, vibrate, be tracked through the space and collect and record data from the wearer.

The audience groups will leave Edinburgh in three buses and travel to the Arena. The audiences will have an almost identical experience on the buses.

When they arrive the three groups will see the show via three different routes so each audience group will see the same scenes but in a different order. The show ends with all the audience coming together in one space the main climbing arena.

For clarity we have included a table summarising the three routes so that you can see what order each audience group see the scenes in. But so as to save paper, we have ONLY included Group One's route in its entirety here.

Characters

VELA

The Psy-architect of New Earth

MEEKA

A Pilot Pioneer who works in the Mapping Station

HAL

A Member of the Data Mining Team

JOHN

A Guard of the Old Earth Museum

HARPER

Arrivals Officer

SAAD

Peacebuilding Commissioner (and Mentor of Group One)

JOST

Wellness Enabler and Member of Vela's Team

(and Mentor of Group Two)

EMILIA

Transparency Coordinator (and Mentor of Group Three)

AV characters

SINEAD

Vela's Sister

YOUNG BOY