Showing @ 12 March @ The Tron & 16 March @ Brunton Theatre Edinburgh, then touring see dates below.
Television is full of aspirational ‘how to make your life better than everyone else’s’ type shows. They often engage with someone seen as an outcast from society and tell us why we shouldn’t be so judgmental. Just as BBC Scotland’s The Scheme was being shown, Pamela Carter began work on Wild Life. No doubt, the media reaction to the two-episode series (the rest were cancelled) influenced her work; Wild Life criticises our judgmental and idealistic society.
Middle class couple Daisy (Lesley Hart) and Dave (David Ireland) are having a night in. With nothing good on TV, they make their own entertainment: inventing a virtual feral boy, Victor. Based on the so-called ‘wolf boy of Aveyron’, the play explores the couples imaginary relationship with the child and the savage use of social media in contemporary society.
Carter’s production with Magnetic North is reminiscent of An Argument About Sex, her 2009 play in which four children are shut away from society from birth in an experiment designed to examine their ability to adapt into modern day life at the age of sixteen. Carter’s work often focuses on such themes and ideas, using the relationship between a male and female to understand the impact of society on an individual. In Wild Life, both characters contemplate their existence as parents, children, individuals and within a relationship. Daisy’s iphone is used to show how the internet has become a means of expression; the freedom of information and opinion giving way to brutal comments about Victor from anonymous users. Stars of The Scheme spoke out against the BBC for making a mockery of them. Whether they did, or whether the general public could only engage with them as such is debatable. Setting ourselves apart from one another, be it class, gender or race helps us fulfill the ‘I can make my life better than everyone else’s’ dream. Wild Life questions whether it is possible to remove ourselves from that mentality. Unless we forget all our social conditioning, it seems unlikely.
Full Listings:
Sat 12 March, 8pm
Tickets £9/£7 conc · Tel: 0141 552 4267
Wednesday 16 March, 7.30pm
Tickets £11/£9 conc/£6 under 18sTel: 0131 665 2240
Saturday 19 March, 8pm
Tickets £12/£10 conc/£5 children (14+)Tel: 01350 727 674 ·