Review: The Process at The Bunker Theatre, London

By Donna Williams

What do you get if you transplant Victorian poorhouses and debtor’s prisons to a future society ruled by a totalitarian, cost-obsessed government, sprinkle in some ignorance, add some disregard for the value of life and stir in ethical challenges regarding deaf people and BSL with more than a hint of dark humour?

You get The Process, a brilliantly-conceived and executed play shown at The Bunker Theatre from 11th January to 2nd February. 

The tone was set by a deliciously unsettling introduction by Brian Duffy explaining that the aim of the play was that everybody would experience it differently. Whether we were hearing, deaf, fluent in BSL ot not, everyone would see the show in different ways. And this was correct. 

Not everything was signed and not everything was spoken and I found that this worked well to replicate everyday life, where so often signers and non-signers are left out of each other’s conversations.

It also served to accurately depict ‘deaf paranoia’ – sometimes justified and in this case, definitely – that hearing people are talking about us and making momentous decisions for us without our being able to access what is being said, much less have any input.   

Watching Jean St Clair’s initially confident Jo bounce from one situation to the next, never leaving the stage or getting a chance to have a breather really drew one into her world and increasing desperation as she used every resource and wile at her disposal to try and get what she wanted and eventually just to survive.

She was ably supported by an ensemble cast of deaf and hearing actors, who switched characters seemingly as easily as a quick change of outfit, some characters more sympathetic than others (and a few that I would have cheerfully thrown something heavy at). 

The clever set design which maximised the space of what was really a fairly small stage and the visual details, both in the aesthetic of the outfits and the set all enhanced the dystopian feel of the play and the careful attention paid to the direction and choreography of the physical placements, movement and BSL really showed. Much kudos here to the director and BSL consultants. 

This play may have been set in a dystopian future but to me a lot of the situations portrayed were all too familiar.

Casual ignorance mixed with a willingness towards violence is something I’ve experienced personally, having been pushed, punched and hit with a shopping trolley merely because I didn’t hear an ‘excuse me’ – at least I generously assume there was an attempt at politeness before the physical assault.

Funny how the same people who are happy to hit a stranger apparently recoil from politely tapping them on the shoulder first. I digress. In America, this ignorance plus tendency to violence has been taken further, where deaf people have been tazed, shot and sometimes killed by police for failing to respond immediately to verbal commands. Casual ignorance mixed with authoritarian power is a dangerous cocktail indeed and this was fully illustrated here. 

It was interesting to see how the various interpreting and translation scenarios played out. Genuine, qualified interpreters found themselves either discomfited by the antics of their hearing non-signing peers or dragged into the spotlight where they stood, blinking, frozen by doubt. The interpreters here may have wanted to be allies but found themselves with their own backs to the walls and forced to comply. The reaction of the in-vision interpreter to the final announcement embodied the dark humour of The Process. 

The play also showed what can happen if unqualified people are asked and trusted to provide impartial translation  just because they can sign a little, something that happens all too often in real life. Quite apart from it being a total violation of privacy and ethics, as we see here, they can get it very wrong or worse, spectacularly throw someone under a bus. 

Someone thinking this kind of disregard for life in the pursuit of perceived savings couldn’t or wouldn’t happen and needs a modern day example need only look as far as the rollout of Universal Credit and the changeover from DLA to PIP of recent years and the bodies left in the DWP’s wake.

To me, the seeds of that dystopian, authoritarian, efficiency-crazed government have already been sown. As for the technology portrayed, that is also already here – Apple’s Siri and Amazon Alexa are ‘always on’, listening for their names, waiting to be summoned and over in China, the ruling party is running experiments with ‘Social Credit’ based on CCTV surveillance of its citizens.

I saw on twitter someone comparing The Process to  Black Mirror and I completely agree. The Process holds up a very dark mirror to all of these things and shows us what is possible. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that The Process is not so much a theatre show as it is a prophetic warning. 

This show needs, deserves, a tour. It makes you think; about barriers to communication, about the direction technology – and politics – is taking, how it will affect all of us, deaf and hearing alike and about how we may be forced to adapt. Because one way or another, whatever our language, we’re all part of the Process.