The need for blame

Phil Hague and I have been looking at the need for blame. We were commissioned to write this show in early 2020 and whereas in the two year hiatus many things have moved on and become irrelevant, or at least less pressing, this seems to have become more and more pertinent. 

Why blame? I had just performed the very first version of Relentless Approach, and having spent a year combing through newspaper articles about global politics, climate change and studying how we process and deal with trauma, I was interested in why we so often feel the need to blame. It seems to have become a reflex, without actually questioning what we are doing. 'heads must roll'... I knew this would take more than one creative brain so I enlisted the help of the brilliant Phil Hague.

The more we look into it (and bear in mind we've had two years now) the more complicated it gets. You can't have justice without it, and by extension forgiveness. If the person who is at fault doesn't take the blame, what happens then? Can you blame someone - and expect that to serve a purpose - if they have no sense of shame? (Can you tell which politician I'm thinking about right now? Or are there too many?) Then there's scapegoating, gaslighting, ghosting... it gets overwhelming... but we've found it, a clear line through it all.

We've started to see blame as a fragile thing, something unique and vital to our ability to survive and thrive in groups and this makes the manipulation of it all the more... eh... blame-worthy.

The gigs are booked, look out for announcements on twitter and instagram.

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