Follow the Leader

The competition between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to see who could reach 1 million followers on Twitter raises some interesting questions about social media. What stands out to me is what it says about the people using and engaging with different forms of social media online.

As a celebrity, Kutcher is actively engaging with a community of fans and others interested in his work, allowing him to give updates without the spin a media source might have on what he’s up to. On Twitter, he can speak for himself and clear up any misunderstandings without worrying so much about how it will be perceived by others.

It’s clear that taking a ‘celebrity’ like of the biggest critiques of the race to 1 million is that it comes off as egotistical at first glance, especially where Kutcher is concerned, as this analysis from Nieman Journalism Lab notes. But underneath the “let’s see if I can beat a well-known news network on Twitter” assumption is a means of raising money for malaria relief efforts and, at last update, it’s “close to $1 million”.

But more curious than how it works for Kutcher is why CNN engaged in this race. What was their purpose in trying to get to 1 million followers before him? Perhaps it was reflective of a struggle between “old media” and new, as Daniel Terdiman’s article on cnet news suggests. But does it really give any indication that television or film will give way to the web? While this is a new perspective on the situation, I’m not so convinced it represents the old vs. new media discourse. 

One angle barely touched on is what CNN’s participation implies from a journalistic perspective. Here is a news network prolific in reputation and close to omniscient in presence, effectively going up against a well-known celebrity. What would be the purpose of CNN getting to 1 million followers before Kutcher? What would they gain from that? How is it, in any sense, a journalistic act?

A news network that is perceived as competing with an individual, regardless of whether it was intended to be competition, highlights a change in the role of media organisations. Journalism is supposed to be a way of watching over the estates, a voice for the people, a way of transmitting information of public interest. Over time it seems as though changes in society have affected what is considered of “public interest” and how the journalism industry works.

Ratings, and sponsorship and various other factors now play a part in the media landscape which has, in turn, affected what news networks cover, how they cover it and how the public perceive it. There is a reason so many news websites now offer ‘comments’ and ‘opinion’ sections, and why they do so well. People want to express their opinions, but often they also want to criticise what a journalist has reported (or correct spelling and grammar, as the case may be). This relationship between journalism and the public hints at a mass cynicism towards the industry that was once partly a voice for the people.

The final question here is whether news networks actually consider every thing they do, whether they think about what will be in the public’s interest. Among other things, Twitter has given journalistic organisations like CNN an opportunity to hear from the people and improve based on that feedback. But are they actually considering their role as journalists when they seem to be playing in a popularity contest?

Blogging and journalistic standards

 

Has line between personal and professional logged-off?

 

The internet is blurring the lines between professional ethics and personal freedom when it comes to journalists having personal blogs. 

Last time I wrote about blogging I briefly mentioned the rivalry between bloggers and journalists that has taken the media world into a frenzy of fear and scepticism. Journalists and bloggers like Antony Loewenstein (c.f. introduction to The Blogging Revolution) are among those who think that the two forms are different enough that any competition felt is a psychological thing, and frankly I’m inclined to agree.

But what about standards for journalists who keep personal blogs? The Guardian reports here about a recent spat between business journalist Adam Tinworth and representatives of the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ). The gist of the article is that the NUJ is calling for journalists like Tinworth to follow “basic journalistic standards” when he’s blogging, but also raised questions of whether journalistic standards should apply to a personal blog.

My thoughts are that professional standards are for the professional work of a person and, so long as a personal blog is not infringing on laws, it can and should be what the individual wants it to be. The internet is an open forum for people to discuss what they will and the individual’s professional life should not have to dictate how they express themselves.

In many cases the professional will influence the personal online – teachers may comment on news stories about education, doctors may weigh in with their thoughts on health issues, but that doesn’t mean they would say the same things in a staff meeting or at work. Opinion is opinion and it shouldn’t be subject to the same scrutiny and professional expression.

That doesn’t mean a whole bunch of journalists with personal blogs will throw ethics to the wind and write whatever the hell they want – it simply means it’s at the individual’s discretion to choose when to apply their professional ethics.

If you take a Kantian approach to personal freedom then so long as you do no harm to yourself or others you are free to do what you will. A more modern, entertaining take on freedom of expression online can be seen in quarterlife, which at times raised questions of conflict over the protagonist broadcasting her opinions of people to an online community. How “harm” is interpreted will, of course, affect what different people do, but ultimately the law is there to help prevent harm deemed significant and anything else is painted in shades of grey.

The disctinction between personal and professional blogs has been somewhat diminished by mainstream media adding blogs as part of their sites. As this article from mlive.com indicates businesses can gain a lot from embracing aspects of the online world like Twitter, Facebook and blogging.

I can see the pros to this use of social media, but there are also cons. The idea that the media need to be directly competing with independent and/or personal blogs, for example, I find a little petty. But my main concern is that by utilising things like blogs, professional and personal standards will come into question a lot more.

I think the real question this issue poses is that in such an open medium, where anyone can search for your personal information, how do you separate your work life from your personal life?

Watching the web

 

"Anyone has the opportunity to make great content and get it seen" - Jeff Koenig on the potential of web series

 

The internet is changing the way people produce creative work. In the past year I’ve heard journalists, film and television producers, writers and comic book artists all say that the internet is an effective way to get your name known and explore the endless possibilities of a medium fast becoming part of everyday life.

Last year I wrote about web series in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald. It  focused mainly on established professionals exploring how traditional forms of entertainment could be adapted to work online, but also mentioned the possibilities for emerging artists.

But pigeon-holing the format to one purpose limits the unique style of web production. Web series creator Jeff Koenig says web series have the potential to go a long way and develop into more than a trial space for new shows.

“I think the original web video industry will grow in stages,” he says.

“For the next few years I believe it will act as a cheap development outlet for networks and studios; the best web shows will get picked up and evolve into another medium.”

Koenig, who is launching a website  about the format - Broadcast Assassin - started out looking at web series as a way of learning about film production,

“I’ve always been fascinated by the filmmaking process. However, it’s a very geographic industry in the states,” he said.

“Wanting to tell stories through a camera and not being in L.A. is a bit like standing outside a great restaurant you can’t afford to eat at; the door may as well be locked, but you can smell all the good food inside. I was drooling to film something.”

After years of thinking about online entertainment possibilities, and extensive research into how web shows could work, Koenig co-created, co-produced and directed The True Rules, a web show exploring the male psyche through a mix of unscripted discussion and vox pop questions.

He says Broadcast Assassin is focused on rallying the online community and give people the skills and knowledge to create successful web series.

“We’re at a point now where “capital B” Big Business is starting to notice the web as an outlet for original entertainment, but the rules haven’t yet been written.

“To me, the best part about a filmmaker having access to the web is that literally anyone has the opportunity to make great content and get it seen. I want to give independent producers the tools to make great shows and a place for them to start a dialogue with each other, so that their voice doesn’t get lost as the industry grows,” he says.

The launch of Broadcast Assassin on March 1 comes at a time when web series are popping up all over the news sites, television networks SciFi and NBC are utilising webisodes as additional material to shows like Battlestar Galactica and Heroes (respectively) and more and more web-based productions are being launched on an almost daily basis.

But it doesn’t stop there. Last week technology blog Digital.Mix commented on the release of a Nielsen report showing an increase in American viewing of video on TV, online and on mobile devices.

According to the report internet viewing is highest among 18-24 year olds, who watch an average of 5 hours and 3 minutes every month. This is closely followed by 25-34 year olds, with an average of 4 hours and 14 minutes of viewing online.

Unfortunately there’s no information on the percentage increase for online viewing over the last year, but if anything that suggests web series may finally be getting enough attention to be included in these types of reports.

With these viewing increases on what Digital.Mix aptly calls “the Three Screens”, it will be interesting to see what types of people begin creating video content for the online world and where the medium is heading.

Job jumping traits of Gen Y may save them financially

Getting more than one job may not be the end of the world

Photo: tlkativ

The global financial crisis has sprung more uncertainty than anything else in the past decade, and it’s more widespread than any other situation in my lifetime.

People are worried about losing investments, losing money and losing their jobs, but what about the vast number of Gen Yers who don’t yet have a secure job to worry about?

I think if anything people are going to have to learn how to hold down more than one job at a time, particularly when it comes to industries like hospitality and retail, because less and less employers want to invest in full-time staff with financial situations just barely hanging in balance. Plus, these industries are the ones that often need workers, especially part-timers and casuals.

Although the recession worries me, I find this aspect of the situation riddled with irony.

As The National Business Review reports, it’s a commonly accepted fact that Gen Y often move from job-to-job to get what they want out of work. Job jumping (as I like to call it) has been skewed as a negative trait of this generation, but it could be an important factor in surviving tough economic times.

The diversity of skills that come from working in more than one industry, and the desire to work in different environments, might just make Gen Yers adaptable enough to deal with working harder to pay the bills.

This time last year the idea of having three or more jobs would have seemed insane to almost everyone. Even during the onset of the economic crisis there were people both older and younger who thought it ridiculus.

In October last year the editor of News.com.au, David Higgins, asked me to write an opinion piece in response to recruitment agency Talent2 accusing Generation Y of being “untrustworthy” in the workplace. Their stance revolved around research that showed a significant amount of young people access social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace while at work, and divulge information about their employment.

My response covered a variety of issues with the research which I won’t go into again here, but one of my statements was that I had four jobs and was a full time student. A response from one young person, “Emily” to that statement was that I must be stupid because of all the tax I’d have to deal with (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea).

Four jobs sounds extreme, I know, but they were a combination of seasonal work and contracted work that didn’t take up a lot of my time. They did, however, prepare me for working more than one job as a graduate. Now, more than ever before, I think people will have to start thinking about working more than one job at a time.

Sure, the tax might seem bad but maybe, just maybe, it will stop so much job jumping from Gen Y.

On sharehouses

So long and thanks for all the sh*t

Photo: Amazing Amazone

In the last three years I have lived with an average of nine different people a year in sharehouses around Brisbane, and in that whole time I’ve never written all that much about them. I thought John Birmingham said it all pretty well in He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and that Richard Lowenstein’s film adaptation showed it all. Turns out there’s an endless amount of stories and angles you can deal with, so I’ve got my five cents’ worth to add.

It all revolves around house work.

Things might start with the dishes getting to a stage where they devour the benchspace in the kitchen, move on to the garbage and recycling spilling foul-smelling unidentifiable watery stuff on your clothes and escalates from there. Maybe you have to cut the hedges at the front of the house with little pink stationary scissors because no one else will organise to get it done. Maybe you have to throw out the rotting pile of fruit that’s claimed the floor adjacent to the dining table.

Sure, you get that all the time. It’s part of the Great Sharehouse Experience, and it makes up half the funny stories you can tell once those days are behind you.

What I didn’t know was that moving is just as much a part of this Great Sharehouse Experience. I’ve never heard much about it before – I suppose because in sharehouses you often get people coming and going in between lease renewals. So when my last sharehouse got sold I got the full moving fiasco without warning.

It starts small enough, like the dishes. Someone accidentally takes something that’s clearly yours and brings it back, no problems. Then you realise that they’ve also left behind furniture, plants, rubbish and, oh? Is that a bean bag filling up our garbage bin so we can’t put anything else in there? Wonderful.

It’s even more fun in a big house. Play clean-ups and find the giant box of skank clothes left by one girl, or the broken outdoor seat that someone brought home and no one wanted to claim after they realised how unfixable it was. Plus, if you have an owner overseas, enjoy finding stuff he’s hidden away like that giant, scary metal lamp behind the hot water system.

My favourite, by far, is the endless masses of cardboard boxes, bike parts, car parts and other rubbish – usually found in, or adjacent to, the garage. This is always more rubbish than you could fit into two giant garbage bins and more than enough recycling material for two of those wheelie bins. Imagine a pile of cardboard and rubbish so big it starts to take up a third of the reasonably-sized driveway, and comes up to your knees in height. Now imagine trying to squeeze that into a compact two-door car.

Now imagine realising you don’t have anything to do with 90 per cent of that crap. Bike? What bike? No one who ever lived here ordered a new bike – oh, wait, our housemate’s sibling got it delivered here. Our housemate who is conveniently out of town while we’re here slaving away in the sun, ripping up stupid boxes we aren’t responsible for so we can have a better chance of getting our bond back.

We stood there, hot, sweaty and tired. A day before the lease runs out and seriously pissed off that we have to deal with this stuff at our old house, even if it is only to let the $800 cleaners in and get rid of the crap. Fuming at our (friends) housemates for ditching us with so much crap and swearing as cardboard cuts our fingers and dust clogs up our airways.

I was pissed off, doing the work with my two current (and thankfully amazing) housemates but feeling like even a barking dog would set me off on a crazed, hissing rampage.

Enter the real estate agent, a day before the lease expires, with a bitchlook at us for being there and a glimmer in their eye promising us bond hassles.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

In 2008 I read a lot of short story collections – both anthologies and author collections. What draws me to author collections in particular is the way that you can tell so much about a writer from their short stories. Much more, I think, than you can from reading novels.

Some might argue that if there are a lot of novels to an author’s name, they can tell a lot about that author, but even so I think short story collections are unique in their potential insights. Where authors take us in a short story, how they compose it and how they write it with such a small number of words (compared to novels) gives us insights into how their minds work, how their stories work and how engaging they can be when it’s 20 pages instead of 400 or more.

King’s newest short story collection, Just After Sunset, is one of my favourites because it encompasses all of the skills I have come to value and respect in his work. In “The Gingerbread Girl”, for example, he explores how loss and grief can affect someone so profoundly that they are compelled to change their life in drastic and extreme ways.

Tied in with that underlying theme are twists and turns and raw human terror that I consider “classic King”. The sheer endurance of Emily, heroine in this story, brought to my mind many characters from King stories and many more stories from real life. What we will do when the stakes are high (life, for example) is, in itself, almost unbelievable.

In the past there have been looks of shock and even cringes in the past when I’ve told people I read Stephen King. True, most of those people are readers who avoid the speculative branches of fiction, and so thought that King was a legend of horror. I see him as more an explorer of the human condition in circumstances often unusual and unlikely but very, very believable. Sometimes his work isn’t that far from life as we know it, either.

One such example is “Rest Stop”, the story of an author who adopts his pseudonym’s personality to deal with a violent situation at a highway rest stop. Far from being about horror (there’s gore, yes, but that to me is secondary to the characters), it’s about knowing one’s limits. In this case, one half of the protagonist felt he couldn’t handle the situation and let the other half take over for a while. I’ve seen people do the same thing, and it’s fascinating to read about it from another perspective.

The second King novel I read, Firestarter, overwhelmed me with the strength and surety in the imagery. I found the same thing again in “Stationary Bike”. King’s imagination and attention to detail evoke a sense of reality in the reader’s mind. Imagination is a powerful thing, and the irony in this story is that it could very well be one of the most powerful – and dangerous – tools we possess.

The stand out story in this collection, for me, was “A Very Tight Place”. The story revolves around Curtis Johnson and Tim Grunwald – two rich middle-aged men vying for the same land and using as much money as possible to get it. Somehow King manages to stoke sympathy for both characters (who are not very nice men), creating a situation so horrible and so real that someone nearby asked if I was feeling OK when they saw my expression when I was reading this story.

I’d be hard-pressed to think of other stories I’ve read that so effectively explores human endurance and the will to survive. The tension in this story is woven throughout and, even though I hated Johnson, I wanted him to survive. King’s magic was at work in this one, and it’s a story that will stay with me even if I never read it again (which I no doubt will).

Just After Sunset is a collection of stories I would recommend to people not only familiar with King’s work, but also to those people who have cringed at his name in the past. It shows him to be more than a horror writer and much, much more than a speculative fiction writer. The scope of this collection shows all of his colours (and then some) and, while by no means my favourite King work (that is yet to be determined), demonstrates his skill as a storyteller. Writers and readers alike will find something interesting in Just After Sunset – an invaluable title for anyone’s book collection.

Dreamcatcher

There’s a dusty, cluttered lot of bookshelves in my Mum’s house filled with Stephen King books. My older sister left them there for safeguarding and I always seem to gravitate towards them when I visit. Sometimes to read the stories that have stuck with me, old friends like Bag of Bones or The Stand. This time I picked up Dreamcatcher, and I won’t deny there was a bit of scepticism wandering around as I turned to page one.

The premise surrounds four men, friends since boyhood, meeting for their annual holiday in a cabin in the woods. When a lost hunter stumbles across their cabin, all muddled up and ill, things take a turn for the worst. What ensues is a fight between humans and aliens, between the past and the present and between minds.

I’d caught a glimpse (about half an hour) of the Kasdan adaptation when my sister watched it years ago, and left after a while because I wasn’t engaged. And I prefer to read originals before going to the movies with a text (a lesson very much reinforced by Fight Club). So when I picked up King’s Dreamcatcher I set out to prove my scepticism wrong.

For some reason I often feel that plots involving aliens coming to a modern-day Earth in books is unengaging. I read a lot of science fiction set in the future, or in different worlds, where aliens are part of the stories, but something about the use of aliens in our own world has always deterred me. Perhaps it initially had to do with my ability to suspend disbelief, which can be a bit harder when you’re reading something set in a similar time to “now”.

That perception has been blown out of the water with Dreamcatcher.

King’s masterful use of tension and informative but friendly style of narration effectively presented the aliens in Dreamcatcher as both believable and disturbing (and at times even sympathetic). The plot, however, was secondary to the strong characters. Even the more minor of these were very, very real, and I think that assisted in suspension of disbelief.

Especially interesting was the way the narrative would change depending on which character’s perspective it was written from. Although written in third-person, it had a personal quality to it which I would normally associate with first-person narrative. The use of rhymes, for example, when Henry’s perspective is explored, allowed me to relate to the character as I would someone I talked to in everyday life. Similarly, the religious phrases and dark, cynical humour (or was it honesty?) of Kurtz meant I was able to identify narrative focusing on him instantly.

I found this book a compelling, engaging and essential read, primarily because of the well-drawn characters and secondarily because of the way the plot unfolded. King challenged my preconceptions and left me pleasantly surprised and more open to the throes of speculative fiction.

Since reading Dreamcatcher I decided to revisit Kasdan’s film adaptation. The one thing that had struck me during that first brief excerpt was that the acting was amazing. I’ve since become more familiar with Damian Lewis (in the BBCs series of Shakespeare Retold to name just one remarkable instance), and have always respected Morgan Freeman’s work as well.

Second time proved the charm in this case. I was both engaged and intrigued by the comparison with the book. Kasdan brilliantly conveys the friendship between the four friends – Jonesy, Pete, Beaver and Henry – and that would have been enough for me. But it goes further. Lewis as Jonesy and the creepy Mr Gray is amazing – both creepy and sympathetic, at one stage bringing to my mind part of the book where Jonesy and Gray talk.

The one change which interested me the most was that Duddits was another alien, destined to fight Mr Gray. I appreciate the wonderful twist and the way this change fits in with the original work, and I liked it in the film. But what I liked about the resolution in the novel is that the struggle was more internal – it was about perception, support and belief in oneself. It didn’t discredit the idea that human beings could be truly gifted without having an alien past.

However, I think both texts have their own merits and purposes. I’d recommend reading the book before watching the movie, but I would also recommend both because they are complimentary and comparisons often provide insights that nothing else can.

Why blog?

Antony Loewenstein's The Blogging Revolution

A few years back, around the beginning of 2006, I began reading blogs by friends and family as a way of keeping in touch with them. From there I realised how many people across the world are actually utilising this form of communication and expression. I began looking for blogs by people in the arts industry – namely film, television and theatre. When I started regularly reading Stargate:Atlantis executive producer Joseph Mallozzi’s blog in the first half of last year, I also found another purpose for blogging.

Joe not only writes about what’s going on for the show he executive produces and writes for, but also about the film and television industry, about writing for screen, about the crew and cast, and also about other things which interest him – books and food spring to mind. He does an almost-daily “mailbag” question and answer session, effectively cutting out the middleman (media) and giving his responses directly and eloquently. While a lot of the questions are about Stargate (I believe he’s worked on all the Stargate projects save the original movie), a lot are about his other interests and the industry he’s working in.

What struck me then (and still does) is the fact that blogging can put a personality to a name and face that people may know. It’s also a great way to give people answers to questions they may have that the mainstream media won’t ask. Science fiction is a good example of this lack of media attention because is general it is not deemed “mainstream entertainment” (and why is a whole new topic which I won’t go into here). Being able to read blogs by people directly involved in the film and television industry can provide information that the relevant media parties may miss or be unable to report on.

Before I move on, I’d like to mention Joe’s book club. Every month or so he picks, or asks readers to choose, three books people can read and then discuss. It started towards the end of last year and has been a great success. Joe’s even been able to get authors like Lou Anders (also a prolific scifi editor), Jeffrey Ford and K.J. Bishop to drop by and answer questions from him and the other readers about their relevant books. Each book is given a week’s worth of discussion before moving on to the next. In itself, I think this book club not only gives readers a chance to ask well-known authors about their work, but has also created a great community of intelligent, interested speculative fiction (scifi, fantasy, horror) readers. It seems blogging can be more interesting and useful than I first thought.

One of the main discourses on blogging that I’ve heard about recently is the apparent threat it might pose to mainstream forms of journalism. I’ve often seen it referred to as a form of “citizen journalism” or, as the ABC might say “a type of User Generated Content”. Axel Bruns, a “casual observer” of journalism, says in this article that traditional forms of journalism are being overtaken by new forms like news blogs and other websites offering “citizen journalism”. Bruns’ thoughts shed some light on the fear many media organisations have when it comes to the internet and blogging.

As I’ve said here and here, I don’t necessarily think traditional forms of media are necessarily threatened by blogging or at risk of being lost, however, blogging does need to be looked at more closely by the media.

A good place to start might be the recently published book by Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, aptly titled The Blogging Revolution. Based on two years worth of travel and research, Loewenstein’s book investigates the democratising processes blogging can provide, especially for countries often viewed as politically repressed. Focusing on dissidents and bloggers in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China, the book provides and in-depth look at how citizens, or perhaps more aptly “netizens” in these countries use blogging.

In his introduction to the book, Loewenstein expresses a frustration at the mainstream, Western media’s lack of interest in blogging as a way of providing voices for these countries. He writes that very few Western countries have had coverage of the Iraqi war without a “Western journalist’s filter”. It seems despite a journalistic obsession with balance, much of the Western media has not looked further than “official” statements, while blogs from citizens in these countries, experiencing these events first hand, lay forgotten in the online world.

His book highlights the importance of blogging for countries that don’t get a lot of Western media attention. It can be a way of showing the world what people experience, and how they feel about their countries. Western society may often make assumptions about countries seen as repressed or oppressed but, without hearing from people there, how do we really know? Loewenstein’s book provided insights and information into not only blogging, but also the way citizens in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China feel about their countries and their leaders – what life is like living in these countries. It’s more than food for thought, The Blogging Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in the opportunities the internet can provide and the state of the world today.

There may be no definite way to define the purpose of blogs, but it’s apparent they can be invaluable tools in providing insights, forums and context globally. Maybe that’s enough.

I am the water

I am the water
Without me you die
I rush along through a world unknown
I laugh, I sing, I dance along
Belonging to all,
But always alone.
I quench your thirst
Give gifts of rainfall
And majestically journey
Past the great and the small.

Why then do you hurt me
The substance you need?
Giving poisonous gifts
To support all your greed.
Hiding sewery secrets
Below shores of my seas,
Spilling venomous rainbows
On reflections of trees.

Is it selfishness that helped spawn this seed
In the minds I help most,
In humanity?
This plant does not thrive on all of your need
It survives to hurt and kill purity.
The thing you call money,
I call it a weed
It suffocates animals that live around me
It wraps us in darkness
Until we can’t breathe
And hides all the treasures of nature’s beauty.

I am the water
Without me you die
I rush along through a world unknown
Sometimes I laugh at the joys that I pass
Sometimes I see all the damage and cry
But remember, while it is pain that you cast,
I am the water
Without me you die.

I wrote this poem for an environmental awareness exhibition when I was 12 years old. I found it again this year and was surprised by the depth and relevance of it.

The photo is one I took last year of the Bellinger River on the mid-north coast of NSW. It’s the river I wrote this poem about.

New World Order

Ryan J-W Smith in New World Order

I sat in the dark theatre, hearing an American soldier share his story of violence, terror and injustice. How he had given the order to blow up a building then witnessed the devastation it caused an innocent family.

The reality of war hung oppressively in the air when the lights came up on a stage bare save for a man sitting on a chair, wine bottle in hand and tears in his eyes.

Few performances I’ve seen have been as gripping, touching and perceptive as New World Order. The one-man play from award-winning international playwright, actor, director and producer Ryan J-W Smith, deals with empire-building from the perspectives of three characters – The King, The Joker and The Veteran.

Political subterfuge and terror are a plague in today’s global society, and influence socio-political relationships both locally and globally. It’s daring to try and encapsulate the situation in a one-hour performance, but Smith pulls it off beautifully. The play combines details of contemporary conflicts with more general attitudes and theories to deconstruct an issue that has been relevant to civilisation throughout history.

Smith’s use of iambic, rhyming verse has previously earned him the title “The Bard Mark Two” (BBC), but while Shakespeare’s influence was clear, the theatrical conventions and the story went beyond that realm and into a brave new world. His masterful manipulation of language adds a timeless quality to the play that marks this work as a sophisticated, intelligent and emotive performance different to anything else being created today.

It’s rare to find a one-man show that’s engaging, entertaining and insightful, but by playing all three characters Smith highlights the common element between them – they’re only human. The simple staging contrasts with the complex characters and creates the perfect balance for us to think about what is being said. Having one person show us three different perspectives is a refreshing reminder of our basic human nature and the expectations that comes from our place in the status quo.

Transitions between the three characters are so smooth it’s easy to forget there is only one person on stage. Adept use of physicality and vocal nuances mark each character and compliment the depth of the text. Suspending disbelief is an almost unconscious act from start to finish.

Smith’s conviction is overwhelming and enlightening, generating critical thought on the state of things today. The use of diverse sources transform current war and terrorism discourses into something rich and strange. New World Order is an outstanding piece of theatre that opens the mind and calls for more discussion on an issue that is ages old but still starkly relevant today. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the state of our world and our humanity.

Ryan J-W Smith’s New World Order was performed at the Judith Wright Centre as part of the 2008 Brisbane Writers Festival.