Arthur Darvill as Dave in The Antipodes at the National Theatre (Photo: Manuel Harlan)

‘I just wanted to remind all of you that what you’re doing is important. We need stories as a culture. It’s what we live for. These are dark times. Stories are a little bit of light that we cup in our palms like votive candles to show us the way out of the forest.‘
Sandy, ‘The Antipodes’

I recently saw Annie Baker’s excellent play ‘The Antipodes’ at the National Theatre, London (until 23 November).

Baker’s writing is thoughtful, funny, full of nuance and intrigue. She seems more interested in character than narrative; in atmosphere than plot. Her dramas unfold naturally, in their own time, enigmatically. Critics have called her work ‘slow theatre’.

‘The Antipodes’ is set in a brainstorming session amongst a group of creatives trying to come up with an extraordinary story. No medium is specified.

Most of us recognise the large characterless conference room with its grand glass table and carpet reminiscent of ‘The Shining’. There is the industrial quantity of mineral water, the obsession with food – ordering it with great ceremony, eating it with quiet intensity. There is the reverence for authority and process, the dominant masculinity, the awkward silences, the vainglorious Boss. There is the arrogant veteran, the patronised PA, the eccentric knitter, the selective note taker. The participant who is ‘disappeared’ half way through the process. There is the mythologizing of the company’s Golden Age. The lanyards and the NDAs. The liberal use of ‘awesome’ and ‘genius’. The swearing.

It’s all painfully familiar.

‘The most important thing is that we all feel comfortable saying whatever weird shit comes into our minds so we don’t feel like we have to self-censor and we can all just sit around telling stories. Because that’s where the good stuff comes from.’

Of course, only the Boss is allowed to use his phone in this brainstorm, and he is constantly leaving the room, distracted by domestic concerns. A conference call with senior management begins with a chat about the weather and then lurches uncomfortably into technical difficulties. Despite promises to respect participants’ time, as the project proceeds the sessions become longer and later, until finally the creatives are sleeping in the conference room.

‘The stories we create teach people what it’s like to be someone else on a visceral level. As storytellers we know how to shift perspective and inhabit different viewpoints. Imagine what would happen if everyone in the world could do every once in a while what we already do on a daily basis. It would be revolutionary.’

Baker seems to be asking us to question the value of storytelling and its relevance to contemporary issues and anxieties.

We all know that stories make sense of the world. They teach our children about cause and effect, freedom and responsibility. They enable us to articulate our brightest hopes and darkest fears. They provide understanding and escape. They help us walk in other people’s shoes. They bind communities together.

But we have turned storytelling into an industry. We classify and codify it. It is a course we can take at college, a craft we can learn, a process we can teach. It’s a commodity, a business, an algorithm.

Baker quotes Christopher Booker’s 'The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories.'

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Rebirth
6. Comedy
7. Tragedy

Baker wants to remind us that storytelling is not entirely benign. Stories can mislead and distract, exaggerate and embellish. Stories can obstruct truth and defer action. And our individual ‘journeys’ can be contrived and self-deceiving. One of the characters expresses concern that personal experiences shouldn’t simply be translated into material for storytelling. Surely some episodes are too precious to be broadcast.

‘I guess I’ve always felt like my personal life is the part of my life that I don’t want to turn into a story.’

We become aware that, while the creatives are struggling to invent the greatest story ever told, all is not well in the real world beyond the conference room. There seems to be an escalation of storms and natural disasters out there. Towards the end of the play the Boss questions the relevance of stories to a world facing existential crisis.

‘I think maybe there are no more stories. Not that we’ve told all the stories. Or that there are only six types of stories or something. But I think maybe it’s the end of an era. Or maybe it should be the end of an era. Like maybe this is the worst possible time in the history of the world to be telling stories.’

So where does this lead us?

Well, despite the compelling provocation posed by ‘The Antipodes’, I still believe in the power of stories to convey understanding, to create community and to inspire change. I still believe therefore that they have a role in tackling our current concerns. But I also think we need to protect the intimacy and magic of storytelling from commoditisation and industrialisation. We need to ensure storytelling prompts action rather than postpones it. And we need to be cautious about the ends to which we deploy it.

‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’
Joan Didion

'But if you disguise
What these things are doing to me,
If you criticize them,
I'll know that you can see.
Until you realize,
It's just a story.
Until you realize,
It's just a story.’

The Teardrop Explodes, 'Treason (It’s Just a Story)’ (G Dwyer / N Michael / J Cope)

No. 257