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| Nick (Peter Campion), Gethin (Ciaran O'Brien) and Sarah (Roxanna Nic Liam) in Gregg's Perve |
Stacey Gregg’s gripping new play Perve critically examines the way in which technology has come to define and mediate our modern day sexual experiences and the voyeuristic opportunities it provides for us to distance ourselves both from one another and from the consequences of our own sexual actions.
Gregg’s drama centers around a budding documentary film maker, Gethin (Ciaran O’Brien), interested in exposing the prejudice and panic surrounding Pedophilia. He offers himself up as a test subject by starting a rumor about his own questionable sexual practices. The proverbial curtain comes up on two young men, Nick (Peter Campion) and Gethin, looking out over the audience. Gethin looks through a video camera. This initial image is emblematic of the style of the piece as a whole. There is a strong visual motif of mirrors and lenses that reflect images back to the audience, or through which the audience must look to watch the action. The spare set is backed entirely by panes of glass which can be lit to function either as mirrors or as windows and there are moments in the play in which the actors stand offstage and are visible only in reflection. This aesthetic choice underscores the strong underlying theme of technological mediation within interpersonal relationships. Lenses of all kinds stand between the audience and the story being enacted onstage, making us aware of the possibility of the distortion or inaccuracy of our perspective. In forcing us to view the events of the play through myriad screens, the set succeeds in highlighting the ways in which modern society in general, and the characters who populate this text specifically, often run friendships, relationships and dialogues through the technological filter of cameras, phones and computers. The ways in which these pieces of information may have been distorted or altered by the time they reach us, is exactly the problem Perve asks that we contemplate.
The theme of technological alienation is treated also in the acting style of this piece. Throughout, the extremely able cast of actors tend to play their scenes straight out, placing their focus not on their scene partners, but on some unspecified point in the distance. In fact it is surprisingly rare that two characters look each other in the eye. This raises the question of the extent to which face to face personal interactions are altered or emptied out by the ubiquity of technology in our everyday lives. Downstage of the mirrors the set becomes a concrete wasteland, somewhat resembling a ditch or skate park. It employs no furniture or accoutrement of home or family life. Instead it references the blank emptiness of cyberspace, and resists any attempt to temper its barrenness with the markers of the personal or the familial. When Gethin’s family eats dinner, no dinner table materializes onstage. The play denies us the comfort and normality of that iconic “family dinner” image, recognizing perhaps that this is no longer a realistic depiction of most modern day family life. This raises the question of whether we have all become so accustomed to interacting through the barrier of a screen, that we have lost some of our ability to interact without one.
If the visual themes of the play suggest distance between people, its textual themes seem to suggest distance from the reality of one’s actions. Gregg tackles the very pressing and current issue of cyber-bullying with insight and complexity. Roxanna Nic Liam gives an extremely affecting performance as Gethin’s younger sister Sarah, who has experienced the trauma of online harassment. Her narrative grows even more disturbing when she speaks of a similar attack on another girl with amusement and even satisfaction. Sarah’s story explores the way in which technology has made it possible to cause so much damage to a person’s life with so little thought or effort. People seem capable of saying things from the safety of their computers that they would never say in person. The capacity to do so much harm and feel so little culpability is depicted in Sarah’s callous response to the perpetuation of the same kinds of abuse she has endured herself and illustrates the problematic nature of our increasing ability to communicate anonymously and thus escape accountability.
The possible dangers inherent in this ability to distance ourselves from our impact out in the world resonates too in Gethin’s filmmaking. He is eager to create an objective account of the injustices perpetrated against suspected Pedophiles and gain some critical distance from the emotional murkiness surrounding such a charged issue. However, his cocky assurance in the validity of his own removed vantage point is challenged when it is revealed that his best friend Nick has been a victim of sexual abuse. Campion’s powerful performance drives home the stark divide between Gethin’s theories about Pedophilia and his own lived experience of it. This dark event in their shared boyhood, which has been half forgotten and half repressed by Gethin, complicates and questions the value Gethin’s attempts at such a sterile, intellectual look at a topic from which his friend was not granted the distance afforded by a camera lens. The play forces a look at the potential pitfalls of achieving emotional or intellectual distance from the real impact of traumatic events in real peoples’ lives.
Towards the end, the reliability of technology is called into question in a new way. After Gethin’s experiment spins out of control and he finds himself under investigation, he continually implores his interrogator to look at the files on his computer which document the conception and trajectory of his project. His computer becomes the repository of what he feels to be the objective truth of the situation. However, his computer betrays him in a number of ways. First it comes to light that his files have been tampered with. Here we see the tension between technology as a means of stable and reliable documentation and technology as something eternally in flux and vulnerable to all manner of distortions and misrepresentations. Secondly, other computer files of a sexual nature are construed as evidence of his warped sexuality. Here again technology’s ability to document every aspect of our lives becomes complicated by questions of the viability of that documentation, and the extent to which it can be “perverted” into taking on new meanings.
As new technology continues to surface and to alter our lives, definitions of “the normal” are constantly being renegotiated. The scene in which Gethin is interrogated is full of references to what is “normal”. But if the play tells us anything it is that we are still discovering the ways in which “normal” sexual practices intersect with the kinds of technology we are creating. In the wake of the Ryan Report questions and anxieties surrounding the nature of public and private sexual proclivities are understandably omnipresent in Irish culture. Perve boldly challenges some of the most fundamental components of modern life, while skillfully navigating the minefield of some of our deepest-rooted human fears.
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