Deeptime Atomic Waste Pleasure Party

Edinburgh fringe – The Space

Nuclear power has never had a better soundtrack than with Elastic Fantastic’s Deeptime Atomic Waste Pleasure Party, where activism, hedonism and techno meet. Written and performed by Jake Mace, Deeptime Atomic Waste Pleasure Party is a rollercoaster of a story. 

The show tells the story of Rey (Jake Mace), a denizen of the far-off future whose reality is informed by the policies around nuclear waste management of our present-day. Against the backdrop of techno music and nights out full of events that confuse the senses in a whirlwind of light, sound and energy, they receive a mission from a mysterious source and are tasked with crafting a message about The Danger. It’s not always clear what is going on, but there are broad-stroke scenes and messages that signpost the plot and general thematic direction. It’s not initially particularly clear that the events of the story are set at some point in the future, because there is perhaps a familiar enough mundanity that is a red flag in itself of just how real and urgent the situation is that is being described. But we kind of have to re-contextualise a few points ourselves in order to catch up to the rest of the story.

There’s a little bit of a chicken and egg question here; is the writing so intense to replicate these high-octane, bright, disorientating events, settings and emotions, or do these emotions, settings and subsequently the tech of the piece match the vibrancy of the writing? Because there is an energy that flows into each word, each movement, into the entire piece to recreate these polarizing extremes of any emotion; feelings of uncontrollable ecstasy, euphoria, frantic confusion and panic and even a poignancy that runs oceans deep.

“a rollercoaster of a story”

The writing has a little bit of a Shirley Jackson-esque tick to it, the idea of the dystopian horror short story – similar to The Lottery – that focuses on a nameless society in the future; they have their own social norms,  culture and structure, but where only bits and pieces are explained, enough to provide context but not enough to satisfy our curiosity and to answer the multitude of questions that inevitably arise. The more we hear, the curiouser it becomes to the point where an accompanying novel to this show is needed. It is deliciously frustrating to hear Mace only hint off-handedly about this future society when they paint such intense, vivid pictures of just about every other piece of the show.

The tech is quite heavy-handed in this show, layers of layers of lighting and sound design to really create an entire world within the four walls of the room. It’s a multimedia show, where snippets of recordings are interspersed in the spoken-word aspect of the piece, to give context to the debate and some of the themes explored. The tech is mostly used to provide context, to move the action to different places, replicate settings. Occasionally the writing falls into the trap of tell not show, but only momentarily before correcting its course and replicating Mace’s words onstage soon enough. This is mostly noticeable at roughly the midpoint, because the scene in question feels like a moment where the technical aspects are a little thin and don’t quite match the intensity of Mace’s words.  

It’s an energy intensive show, and Mace seamlessly switches between scenes and characters to build up this world. There’s a clear arc that we can track throughout their performance, not only because of how the script is written, but how it’s performed gives us an idea of its progression. Mace is our emissary to this world, and a proximity is created to the audience by their performance. It feels like we are able to experience some of what Rey does, and Mace facilitates that by breaking down the 4th wall. Mace speaks in quite a regular rhythm and cadence that repeats itself, rhythms that replicate based on the particular emotionality of a scene. It occurs enough for there to be some predictability. There are also a few places where Mace trips up on their words, and if they didn’t backtrack to correct themselves and instead just keep going, it wouldn’t be as noticeable.

Deeptime Atomic Waste Pleasure Party is an energy-intensive show, and because there are moments where it is so confusing and unsettling, we’re constantly listening out for the smallest piece of information to help us logically explain it, or just to have some comfort in knowing what is happening. It’s certainly a surreal experience, in that everything is so alive against the backdrop of this existential threat. 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo Credit: Kya Stewart