Performance created with HND Media Performance Students at Salford University. Performed at The Robert Powell Theatre February 2009.

What happens when life starts from scratch? What shall we do when people arrive who are nobodies, know nothing, have no life, no history, no soul? The Scientist arrive and try to find the answers…
Maybe stories emerge, stolen memories are exposed, power struggles occur, and a leader, a dominant being emerges and grows. Maybe truth is revealed and then twisted and turned upside down and over and over until it breaks. Maybe… Maybe everything is forgotten. Maybe none of this happened at all.

The piece is a collaboratively devised performance with an emphasis on physical and visual expression. It is based around the premise that a group of people are discovered who are unknown and know nothing. Attempts are made to teach them the basics of life – movement, speech, how to interact, love. In doing so hidden information is unleashed. Stories, memories are recorded and then repeated by the Scientists so that they can understand them. Physical and emotional conflict develops as the amassed bank of knowledge begins to take on a life of its own.

The central theme of the piece is learning – how people learn about things, process information and generate understanding. If a being is a blank slate, an empty vessel, then could it be that the minutest of information could have a maximum effect? Scientific themes are also explored – the piece considers the aesthetics and mechanics of scientific research; when movement, memory, speech and text are observed and the results recorded and displayed. Also emotional conflict, and the fluctuating relative status of the observer and the observed.