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Yesterday an Incident Occurred ... by Mark Ravenhill

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BBC Radio 3, 30 April 2008
 

Yesterday an Incident Occurred …, recorded in front of a live audience in Liverpool, took as its subject the media’s response to an unprovoked attack on an innocent man in a local shopping centre. The man was out with his wife buying clothes when he became the victim of a frenzied murderer wreaking revenge on society as a whole. The man subsequently died in hospital. Writer Mark Ravenhill satirized the media’s response to this incident; enthusiastic presenters encouraged listeners to submit their reactions “via e-mail, text, or through the web” without actually taking much notice of what they had to say. In the high-tech world of contemporary broadcasting, the medium assumed far more instance than the message. The play’s subject matter is familiar, having been covered in films such as Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976). Ravenhill invested the subject with new meaning through this play-for-voices, wherein the radio presenters adopted mock-sympathetic tones in the hope of attracting higher ratings, while the victim’s widow worried more about her media image than her husband. The play made a conscious pun on the term ‘branding’ which not only referred to media image (the idea of creating the right ‘brand’) but defined a physical act, as the listeners voted to brand – i.e. permanently scar – an unfortunate witness to the crime who failed to report it to the police. Like their ancestors over six decades ago, the listeners were inherently fascist in orientation, favouring violent solutions rather than negotiation. Yesterday an Incident Occurred … was performed by a competent cast including Sam Kelly, Kathryn Hunt and Gerard Kearns, and directed by Kate Rowland.