Sami Ibrahim: Brexit reflects our obsession with needing to choose

Sami Ibrahim is a 23 year-old Almeida creative board member and has been working as assistant dramaturg on From the Ground Up. The immersive production from the Almeida Young Company looks at the battle between public and private personas and the need to belong.

After a good few centuries of stability and precedent, on 23 June, British politics decided to chuck it all in. And, instead of anything coherent, we were all dropped into a power vacuum, in which random catastrophes take place, punctuated by more random catastrophes. Politics has become a big mess of nothing – and now we’re stranded trying to figure out how we got here, and how we move on. Clearly, we need politicians who don’t lie and governments that actually care and all those other things that are impossible – but, perhaps there’s something more fundamental that we need to recapture.

Brexit split us down the middle – a single poisonous question that made enemies out of us. But, however extreme, that split reflects a wider obsession with needing to choose: we’ve become numb to the process of picking a side, all too happy to set up dividing lines and will an opponent into defeat. Compromise has become a distant memory, and instead we pick sides constantly – from immediate, instant-review tweets to immediate, one-in-a-lifetime referendums. And, each time we do this, we divide ourselves from others, define ourselves against others – before moving on. Are our identities what we privately think, or what we are willing to let others think?

It’s worth spending a moment to interrogate our choices

From the Ground Up began as a piece of interactive theatre – squeezed into the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall – which was designed to let an audience wander free, to remove the pressures of traditional theatre and put the audience in control. But as the show developed, bit by bit, we found ourselves removing that feeling of control: instead, the show decided to utilise the social pressures found in any large group – From the Ground Up may let you, the audience, dictate the show, but it constantly reminds you that every choice you make, every choice which defines your identity, is public. If, when you’re asked a question, your response is noted down and interrogated, does that change the way you respond? Will you twist your identity under the force of public scrutiny, the presence of a loved one or family member? The show never removes that feeling of being judged and is obsessed with those questions we’ve been talking about – what happens when you’re overloaded with choice? When each choice you make divides you from others, with no middle ground, just a decision: yes or no. No compromise.

With that sense of judgement in place, by forcing the audience to answer these questions, perhaps we’re getting somewhere close to solving our original problem: at a time where we’ve become numb to all the everyday choices that divide us, it’s worth spending a moment to interrogate those choices. More than that, it’s worth having someone else interrogate those choices: it’s worth letting our binary decisions be judged, in the hope that we’ll remember just how much we miss the grey areas, those moments of compromise that we’ve managed to misplace.

And so, with all that in mind, one final decision: will you buy a ticket?

By Sami Ibrahim

From the Ground Up runs at Shoreditch Town Hall until 6 August.