Revelations
In 2003, Playwright Judith Adams enlisted the help of Leo Warner and Robert Sharp of digital design company FIfty Nine Ltd, to help her to develop a scripting method that would open up some of the other dimensions in which Judith wanted to work.
They introduced her to HyperText Markup Language or HTML, (the basic language used to encode web pages), which provided her with a simple system to create non-linear connections between modules and fragments of text. This not only answered the structural issues of the present but revealed a whole new context for Judith’s past career. Without knowing it, she had been writing hypertext all along - her compositional instincts having found more logic in non-linear structures, disrupted time and space, and biological/nerological constructs. Web technology turned out to be a perfect model and metaphor for her natural writing style. She was now able to create literal webs of written material with complex connections, and still maintain an overview of the structure.
Later, when the play began to become more tightly honed, 3D models of the garden were constructed, which enabled Judith, Leo and Rob to map character movements and scene locations onto the space in which they would ultimately take place.
Because technology had been so integral to how the script took shape, Judith also started to find it was becoming central to the dramatic content of the play itself. The dichotomy between the wilderness of nature itself and the tightly imposed structures of gardening set up a dramatic opposition in Adams’ play between systems of control and forces of anarchy. This theme found a counterpart in the characters that Judith had (part-) unearthed and (part-) created. Loosely based on historical and mainly Victorian personalities, Judith’s women all found expression through gardens and nature in a world where their femininity and energy was ruthlessly repressed by society and culture.
On top of the garden - under the control of Mr Smith The Showman (based loosely on “Mammon” or “God”, the script tells us) Judith built a huge, structured network of technology and surveillance. Every part of the garden is under his observation, and his control.
Under the garden she planted a red demoness - a wild force of nature whose presence has been divined and is now controlled by the Showman.
Rob, Leo and their colleagues at Fifty Nine helped to construct the showman’s “system” in Pitlochry. Surveillance equipment was set up, which fed back to the central control from where he monitored - and increasingly proceeded to meddle. Other Audio-Visual elements were built into the production, including most notably the women’s glimpses of Eden towards the end of the closing section, and the grand finale, played out through shadows, silhouettes and projection.
In 2004 Leo and Robert approached Judith to see if she would be interested in collaborating to publish an interactive version of the script online, where the project would be able to accommodate and embrace input from a far wider range of potential collaborators. Keen to explore the possibilities of new technology and new collaborators, Judith collaborated with the team at Fifty Nine to put together a project that would include collaborative input from school and community groups, as well as professional artists, designers and filmmakers.
In Spring 2004 the Arts Council England (Yorkshire) and the Scottish Arts Council awarded Fifty Nine two substantial grants to facilitate the production of an “interactive online publication” of Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden. Work began on the project in Summer 2004.