My journey to the 2008 Adelaide Festival Fringe Part Three

Well my casting went well and I found exactly the person I am looking for. A young man from India of a Muslim background.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my composer and he played the initial inspirations he has produced from his reading of the script. I love them.

The poster has almost finished it's design and proofing period.

Today however I came across something that deeply saddened me and is very appropriate to my play. A young Muslim woman in England has been found guilty of a terrorist crime simply because of her ownership of material that encourages terrorism. There seems to be no actual proof of any connection with a genuine terrorist organisation although she did own copies of publications produced by Al Qaeda and the Mujahideen. She wrote pro terrorist poetry that she posted on a website under the name "The Lyrical Terrorist."  I reckon she is an impressionable and rather silly young woman who thought it would be cool to be considered part of this whole farrago.

Is she dangerous? Possibly, she might become one of those suicide bombers. Do we know for sure she is dangerous? Probably not. as I said she doesn't seem to have any provable connection with Al Qaeda. What will prosecuting her and sending her to jail (she actually hasn't been sentenced yet so might not go to jail.) actually do for relations between the British Government and borderline young Muslims who have not yet decided to join the ultra religious movement. It won't do it any good. It may in fact push some toward a more radical stance. I do not think it will discourage any of the ones who are seriously considering terrorism.

When I was young in the late sixties I owned a number of pieces of literature that were quite dangerous. Che Guevara's Guerilla Handbook was an banned book in this country. I owned books and tracts by Castro and I also had a number of samisdat documents which among other things taught me how to make explosives and simple explosive devices. I never made any it was just very cool that I owned them it impressed my friends and gave me street cred. I still own various works by authors like Thomas Paine and I own The Prince by Machiavelli. All very dangerous works. Would sending me to jail have done any good. I suspect not. I became a lounge chair revolutionary. If I had been sent to jail I suspect I would very probably have become the real thing.

Anyway. Onward to the fringe with a play that I suspect contravenes certain provisions of the anti sedition act that make critiscism of the Governments anti terrorist laws a crime.