Fallout: Portraits on Nuclear Children
- Submitting institution
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University of Winchester
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 33GM1
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Multi-component output
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The audio pieces are a response to the question of how to maintain the authenticity of testimony utilised in verbatim and community theatre practice whilst serving the needs of a campaigning organisation to reach audiences beyond those invested in the specific issues of the organisation.
Unstructured interviews (in the form of controlled conversation) were carried out with descendants of nuclear test veterans (nuclear children) and with experts from other disciplines. These were recorded and transcribed. The testimonies were then theatricalised using composition and sound design and (building on the poetical film/theatre work of Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage etc.) placed with a lyrical poetic narrative. Creation of mp3 files allowed the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association to release the work through their website, exhibitions and memorial sites. The work is also shared among the nuclear community through social media and has been the subject of BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4.
The audio pieces revealed that the descendants felt themselves to inhabit a unique temporal and spatial relationship with the world which is generally unseen by themselves or by the medical profession. The audio pieces both describe and analyse this embodied state.
An academic article uses more traditional scholarly methods of analysing the process of creating the audio pieces and what they reveal about the state of the descendants. Part one places their creation among current discourses on verbatim theatre and museology, part two is a critical look at the content which draws on the Joseph Masco’s (2006) concept of the nuclear uncanny, to further articulate the embodied state of the descendants. It seems that this form may be utilised in places where traditional live community or theatre work may not reach wide enough audiences, but the combination of theatricality and authenticity is vital to articulate the issues at hand.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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