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Why ‘Teh Internet Is Serious Business’ is a play for our generation?

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Tim Price’s play fills theatre seats for the second night in a row. The Two and a half hour production is packed with references to Anonymous, Lulzse and 4chan. It blurs memes with people and reality with fiction in an attempt to reflect on our online lives.

The first thing to notice upon entering the theatre is a pool of colourful balls, designed by Chloe Lamford, immediately making you ask yourself if what you are about to watch is purely satire. Banners with Visa, Paypal and Mastercard (all previously hacked by Anonymous) are hanging from the ceiling, all of which symbolically fall down as the companies are compromised within the production.

The play starts with young Mustafa Al-Bassam, who at the age of fifteen chooses a life of hacking. He struggles to find meaning in schooling and finds his only solace in Jake Davies who follows the same ideals in regards to freedoms within the online world.

Quotations and funny choreographies performed by Grumpy Cat, sex dolls, Anxiety Cat, Socially Awkward Penguin, Paedobear interrupt the flow of the play and maybe come too often. However, they highlight the dangers of social media sites, turning serious hackers’ discussions into petty humour.

When the masks are put on, internet becomes serious business. Anonymous mantra is put upon us all throughout. ‘All the kids are undercover FBI agents’ and ‘there are no pervs on the internet’ hilighting the tongue in cheek nature of Price’s play.

Tunes such as ‘I use the same password’ are hilarious but also poke at our habit to use the same password for every site we use. As Mustafa says the ‘Internet doesn’t belong to millionaire companies whose websites we use, but to trolls and hackers’.

The online party involves hacking the FBI and CIA, but also the freakier organisations such as Scientologists and Westboro Parish Church. Scientology references bring on the laughs- Price has replicated Tom Cruise’s speech to show how easy it is to take a video down and troll the whole organisation.

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The dark side of hacktivism comes alive as the characters abandon their families for the pursue of this better cause. Trolling the Facebook pages of dead girl and the rise of Anonymous protests which end gravely allow us to see how intense the issue really is. As names start leaking, the group realises that they are becoming as much of a bully as the groups they are hacking and attacking.

The second half sees the play reach a whole new level. Wikileaks hack has been justified as ‘information wants to be free, let’s free it.’ Personal lives come at stake as the protagonist needs to decide to give up Anonymous or his freedom. Their sentences are read out leaving us unconvinced the ends has justified the means.

The play might not be for everybody proven by a few empty seats after the interval: if your preference lies with character development and detail, this play is not for you. The hefty length of the play is justified, as a topic this broad could have not been fairly represented in any shorter a time span.

All in all, the play is a balanced account of the seriousness of internet security along with the fun of memes and having your rightful freedom.

Price’s ideas for the play are vivid and provocative, bringing insanity by Anonymous into a thought-provoking piece. It captures the minds of our generation as we assume we know all about the online world, but also raises the issue of, do we really? We come out of this play, made for our generation, with at least a feeling we know what Internet really means.

 

Teh Internet is a Serious Business is showing at the Royal Court Theatre, London, until 25th October 2014

For more on the show and links to reviews, click here: http://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/teh-internet

By Maja Scepanovic

Photos: Chloe Lamford design

 


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