The Audit (or Iceland, a Modern Myth)

Andrew Westerside, Proto-Type Theater

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786824677
• eBook ISBN: 9781786824684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: Social Sciences

The global economy is a mess. The crash has landed, the tide's swept out, and it's taken our hope with it. There's less in our pockets and more to be spent. The rich have got richer, the middle's squeezed tight, and the poor are being dragged ever downwards. With the true value of money and the human cost of greed firmly in their sights, Proto-type Theater tell the story of how, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crash, the nation of Iceland raised their voices in protest and railed against the currents. Using original text, performance, film, music and animation, The Audit is about finding strength, overcoming a world designed to keep us docile, and how collective power can move a mountain – even if only a little.

Upstage centre, a pop-up screen for front projection, turned portrait, flush to the floor. All text marked ‘S’ appears here, as well as additional video and image material selected at the discretion of the director. Sometimes the screen images might support or give colour to the spoken text, at others they will perform alongside it, or juxtapose it. Left and right of the screen, two black chairs. Downstage left and right are lecterns, facing downstage. To the outside stage edge of each lectern, an attaché-style briefcase, closed. A is sat on the stage-right chair, B on the stage-left chair.

(A moves to downstage centre.)

A: Money

Means anything you like

That’s what’s so great about it

It means tax breaks and savings and trade deals and rent hikes.

It’s a solid a liquid and a gas. It gets me out. It gets me in. It’s a golden handshake and a get-out-of-jail free pass.

It’s million-dollar smiles and Wall Street tickers, while down the road a candle flickers, in the house of a woman who can’t pay for the leccy, to run enough power, so she takes a cold shower. To wash the dirt off, the stink off, from selling her pink off.

To feed her kids, to teach them phonics, and in places of learning it’s called economics. Which is a nice way of saying, that the national debt, for which you’re paying, can’t have anything to do with corporations or businesses selling off nations, but if we go to war and they pay reparations.

When they lose, which they will, ’cos they’re hungry and angry, and they’ve had their fill of tyrants and butchers. But a Starbucks sounds nice, said a bloke just opposite me, so why don’t we take ’em a bit of democracy.

It’s a good idea, round here there’s plenty, with a back-alley joke about the G in G20 which is probably for governments but likely for gangsters or pranksters or pawns for investment banks that companies use to finance tanks.

And thanks (again) for bailing us out at the moment when we had a chance, to stop this mess and level things out, but a level’s the Devil to the men with the clout who shout about taxes and rents and fucking austerity and I sit there and wonder where they get the temerity to chase folk for years for a little overpayment when I know in my lifetime I won’t see arraignment for the hucksters in suits that financially rape yer by filling yer head with that shit in the paper that derides and divides.

For so long.

For so long they’ve gotten away with it.

Behind this veneer of culture and civilisation, because the free market’ll give you stabilisation, no hyperinflation, no excessive taxation, but a global market to save every nation, which is funny when they start to look like plantations.

Plantations? No, isn’t slavery over? Go and look in the tunnel between Calais and Dover, and come tell me then you’re economy’s booming when poverty strikes and UKIP are looming and even your kids can feel the tension, never mind yer nana who’s just lost her pension.

So yes, this, it’s all about money, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not being funny but money, well, it’s a bit… And it’s really hard to rhyme anything with neoliberalism. So I won’t.

And we could have used capitalism but they’re not the same, and it’s hard when we don’t know the rules of the game have changed (massively) without people knowing because yes, seriously, yes, capitalism is fine with a state-funded NHS.

And trains for that matter, the state can work wonders but remember this world is run by the funders.

Well I’m done with it sorry, and I know the song remains the same, and fair enough I’m not Robert Plant but this rant which I’m on can’t go away because I won’t let the 1% tickle my belly not on the radio, the papers, or on the telly.

I feel really overwhelmed and out of touch, and when I try to speak about anything it all gets too much because money, see, it isn’t a thing, but the thing that connects things to things, like the breath you take when you’re about to sing, and without it I know we don’t get all this but we’re not the ones taking the piss. We’re the ones who are seen as expendable ’cos all the rules are so fucking bendable. The rules bend, and we’re broke.

And no, I don’t think I can change the world from this stage but maybe, maybe I can turn just one page, or say something clever about...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Cast
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Characters
• Chapter
• By the same author