Pablo Pakula
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  • About
  • Performance
    • Performance (intro)
    • ellipsis
    • INOCENTADA: inocentes, inocentes
    • FISTMASS
    • (untitled lament)
    • No place like ___
    • UNPRECEDENTED
    • a necrology: REQUIEM - DONA EIS - PROBASTI ME - TINTINABULATION - DELINEATUM EST
    • Thy light, thy flight
    • ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS
    • ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse)
    • BARLOVENTO y SOTAVENTO (un réquiem refugiado)
    • 20 x 20, swings x roundabouts
    • ANGELUS: Angels de Beer
    • YES NO BLACK WHITE
    • RAVE vs RAGE
    • Bride of Brexit
    • UNNEGATIVE
    • Masculine Expressions of my Creative Prowess >
      • About this project
    • No More These Sounds
    • HEAVY LIGHT
    • Lines and lines and lines and lines...
    • Now You Can Go
    • The Speed of Reason Produces Warning Hallucinations
    • S.o.S.S. (Sisyphus on Salisbury Sands)
    • VIDEO PIECES
    • LAND PIECES
    • MAIL PIECES
    • COLLABORATIONS
  • Pedagogy
    • Pedagogy (intro)
    • WARM-UP TO PERSONA
    • ghosts in the m-AI-chine >
      • ChatGPT-Pina
      • ChatGPT-Kaprow
    • Arte en Acción
    • GALERA PERFORMA
    • Stomping Ground!
    • Live Art for the Green Heart
  • Producing & hosting
    • Producing & hosting (intro)
    • Deep Trash Escoria
    • Theatre, Interactivity, Democracy
    • Pot Luck
    • Lifting the Curtain: On Audience and Authorship
    • Lifting the Curtain: Theatre Research @ Kent
    • Grotowski: After-Alongside-Around-Ahead
  • Publication
  • CONTACT

​YES NO ​BLACK WHITE 
​
(a Snowflake Sonata)

​ "YES NO BLACK WHITE hones in on the questions of what causes us
to take offence, how offence itself
has become weaponised, and what we can do about all this. (...)
We begin to understand
that it is our own individual responses that are really being put ​under 
the microscope – and indeed whether we are honest enough with ourselves to recognise this. (...)
in this rare ballooning space, wrought with uncertainty and introspection, we may begin to ask more searching and sincere questions of ourselves than the more familiar vociferous ones which tend to come with built-in answers:
​yes, no, black, white."
 
Picture
Aidan Bracebridge,
A Younger Theatre ★★★★


Images by Nick Hynan
The work premiered at Camden People's Theatre on 5th November 2019.
A second, updated version was then shown at SHOUT Festival on 6th November 2021.
​The piece was invited to be performed at the University of Worcester on 19th November 2022.

​
​
​SHOUT Festival, 6th November 2021, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Images by Nick Hynan
​In years gone by, the old criticised the young for being reckless and rude. Nowadays, the young stand accused of being over-sensitive and lacking resilience, too quick to take – and too scared to give – offence.
   Should we resist a world of trigger warnings and no-platforming – or welcome it? Are we more sensitive to ‘micro-aggressions’ – or just less willing to tolerate them?

YES NO BLACK WHITE takes these ideas to task from a uniquely Queer angle, teasing the audience and refusing easy answers. As an audio-visual, lo-fi spectacular the performances elevates clicking through a PowerPoint presentation to an art form, interrogating the nature of offence: What offends you? How? Why? Ultimately asking, how will you respond?

Following the structure of a five-part sonata and choreographed to a pumping classical-electronic soundtrack, YES NO BLACK WHITE serves as a kind of ink-blot Rorschach test for your personal offense-taking mechanisms. This audio-visual, lo-fi spectacular won't tell you what to think or feel, but it will test your buttons. Prepare for a cognitive, moral, and sensory attack on your psyche.
​

The piece is a continuation of my ongoing investigations on the dramaturgy of lists, musicality, and the exploration of strategies to problematize meaning-making processes.
​
Camden People's Theatre, London,  5th - 6th November 2019
Images by Orlando Myxx.

​​This special zine accompanying the piece extends the performance experience (available free here).
​(The first public version was unveiled at the premiere on 5th November 2019 at CPT.)
​(A second updated version 
was unveiled in the run up to the performance at SHOUT Festival, 6th November 2021.)
© COPYRIGHT 2025. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
  • Performance
    • Performance (intro)
    • ellipsis
    • INOCENTADA: inocentes, inocentes
    • FISTMASS
    • (untitled lament)
    • No place like ___
    • UNPRECEDENTED
    • a necrology: REQUIEM - DONA EIS - PROBASTI ME - TINTINABULATION - DELINEATUM EST
    • Thy light, thy flight
    • ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS
    • ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse)
    • BARLOVENTO y SOTAVENTO (un réquiem refugiado)
    • 20 x 20, swings x roundabouts
    • ANGELUS: Angels de Beer
    • YES NO BLACK WHITE
    • RAVE vs RAGE
    • Bride of Brexit
    • UNNEGATIVE
    • Masculine Expressions of my Creative Prowess >
      • About this project
    • No More These Sounds
    • HEAVY LIGHT
    • Lines and lines and lines and lines...
    • Now You Can Go
    • The Speed of Reason Produces Warning Hallucinations
    • S.o.S.S. (Sisyphus on Salisbury Sands)
    • VIDEO PIECES
    • LAND PIECES
    • MAIL PIECES
    • COLLABORATIONS
  • Pedagogy
    • Pedagogy (intro)
    • WARM-UP TO PERSONA
    • ghosts in the m-AI-chine >
      • ChatGPT-Pina
      • ChatGPT-Kaprow
    • Arte en Acción
    • GALERA PERFORMA
    • Stomping Ground!
    • Live Art for the Green Heart
  • Producing & hosting
    • Producing & hosting (intro)
    • Deep Trash Escoria
    • Theatre, Interactivity, Democracy
    • Pot Luck
    • Lifting the Curtain: On Audience and Authorship
    • Lifting the Curtain: Theatre Research @ Kent
    • Grotowski: After-Alongside-Around-Ahead
  • Publication
  • CONTACT