Guest Blog: 'The revolution won't be televised, but coded by a 14 year-old'

Writer Tim Price set just one rule for staging his new play Teh Internet is Serious Business: "You can’t use screens. Otherwise, all bets are off."

In 2011, Lulzsec, an elite offshoot of the wider online activist group, Anonymous, comprised of six of the most skilled hackers, coders and mischief-makers on the planet went on a 50 day online rampage. A heady mixture of activism, security exposing vigilante-ism and maverick satire, Lulzsec took down Fox News, hacked ATMs, and even took on the FBI.

Three years later, post arrest, court dates and service, two of the most prominent members of the group, Jake Davis (or Topiary online) and Mustafa Al-Bassam (or Tflow) are standing at a meet and greet at the Royal Court, explaining to the 15-strong cast of actors and dancers exactly what it feels like to "hack the planet."

Through conversations both online and in real life with former Lulzsec members alongside a wealth of research, Tim has captured the story of Anonymous' origin, its politics and impact, in a play which delves headfirst into online culture. The company have now been riding the rocky sea of the internet on the good ship Lulzsec for the past five weeks.

Staging the bright, bold, vulgar anarchy of the internet without a digital object in sight has meant that director Hamish Pirie has been constructing metaphors, smashing together disciplines and creating a whole lot more dance numbers than you’d expect. The internet, sans screens, turns out to be the most theatrical space possible.

– On 4chan, a ‘pretty girl thread’ is basically a trick, or a 'click bait.' You click on it expecting…well, pretty girls… and you get…
– Rick Astley?
– If you’re lucky.

One of the biggest challenges of the play is staging 4chan – a frenetic online message board. '/b/', or the "random" board, is a mixture of gore, a colourful variety of porn, many of Jennifer Lawrence's nudes, and sharply unforgiving humour. It is also the birthplace of Anonymous.

Choreographer Emma Martin has been turning the visceral energy of the board into a 3D reality, devising movement tropes to capture the surreal yet addictive quality of /b/. New ideas, like memes, are proposed, tried, grown and disbanded. The internet, like our rehearsal room, is a place of limitless creation. Designer Chloe Lamford has captured this by turning the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs into an irreverent playpit for the imagination.

'All of the hackers are bright, exciting and thrillingly young'

The presence of the hackers themselves is invaluable. The boys feed in buccaneering, rock-star anecdotes alongside stark, complex technical information. The actors playing them talk often. Kevin Guthrie, playing Jake, arguably spends more time on stage as "Topiary", Jake's online persona.

Marrying these clearly exceptional young men with their online personae is sometime challenging. The real Jake seems a far cry from the nihilist personality of "Topiary" – the same deft wit, articulacy and charisma, but a lot more gentle and strikingly moral. Mustafa stops the rehearsal room one day by casually completing a Rubik’s cube in under a minute. He smiles as he explains to the dazzled company that he memorized the algorithms.

Darren Martyn (or Pwnsauce), played by Kerr Logan, turns up to rehearsal with two extension chords sticking out of his pockets, and later ends up in the pub downing pints and teaching Kerr how to pick locks. Each actor wrestles with how much to draw from real life, the script and their own instincts. Actress Natalie Dew has an even greater challenge – she is playing AVUnit, the member of Lulzsec who has never been caught. They still manage to converse – but online, and heavily encrypted.

All of the hackers are bright, exciting and thrillingly young – the most striking thing about them, both in real life and in Tim Price's play, is their disregard for the outdated and arbitrary structures of the world we know. Online, the privileges of age, class and race get overtaken by enthusiasm, skill and moral drive. Online protest is fast becoming the last power in the people’s hands and the old guard are tripping over themselves to catch up, shut down and limit such activity.

As Hamish readies the chaos, extremity and possibilities of the internet for the Royal Court stage without a pixel in sight, it becomes clear that whilst the revolution will not be televised, it turns out it might be coded by a 14 year-old from their bedroom.

And best of all, the Nyan cat theme will play as Rome falls.

Debbie Hannan is assistant director on Teh Internet is Serious Business and the Royal Court’s trainee director

Teh Internet is Serious Business is currently in previews at the Royal Court, ahead of opening on 23 September. It runs until 25 October.