The fading economy aside there remained a general feeling of national confidence and the end of the Cold War provided a further "feel good" factor.
The Manchester "baggy" music scene was making waves across the world as were the newly privatised British companies.
(above information: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9411629/Britain-in-1989.html)
People worked hard, played hard and made lots of money. One of the main ways in which people played hard was by attending acid house parties and other various raves at which they would buy the go to drug which was ecstasy (MDMA). This was an easy drug to hand out because it is in the form of pills and allows individuals to become lost in their own world, the pill allowed individuals to dance all night and stopped the body from needing to urinate. This allowed the youth of the 80's to relax and dance right through to the early hours of the morning.
The drug's side effects included a constant thirst (due to dehydration) and so at raves, those who attended would constantly have bottles of water by their side. There was also very little hanky panky at raves because ecstasy reduced interests in pleasure or sex. This is most likely because of the significant reduction in brain activity that the drug caused. People would also sweat and have involuntary jaw clenching and teeth grinding.
Ecstasy was the perfect drug because it allowed individuals to partake in vigorous amounts of activities for extended amounts of time. The drug is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream in less than an hour and affects the metabolism. Despite the drug being extremely popular to the youth of the 80's, it wasn't the only largely and widely used drug. Acid also had a huge impact on the lives of Britain's youth.
Acid (LSD) (also in pill form) has some similar effect to ecstasy such as dry mouth but also other side effects such as tripping which includes mood swings and hallucinations.
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| https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/margaret-thatcher-war-on-rave-acid-house-boys-own |
"I suppose you could say that people maybe wanted to escape the negativity of politics at the time, or that they'd just fucking given up." -Cymon Eckel
"Rave was more about unity...rave did a lot of good things to make the racial divide less of a divide."" -Gavin Watson
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| https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/margaret-thatcher-war-on-rave-acid-house-boys-own |
Thatcher's children were the youth of the late 70's, 80's and early 90's that fought back against the social norm and chose to be themselves and seek a freedom that hadn't previously been unlocked.
The summer of 89 was known as 'The Second Summer of Love' and included many illegal raves that were top secret. The venues of the raves varied from fields, woods and warehouses and invitation was open to all and spread via flyers. After the police caught wind of this, raves became top secret and invitation eventually was revealed via coding, phone lines that were only available at certain times or pirate radio stations. There was always one thing that was certain, the youth would get their moment to let loose.
Modern alterations:
Measure for Measure was first performed in 1604 but now that we're performing it in 2017 we are making our own alterations. However, this is not the first time that a modern version of Measure for Measure has been performed. In 2004 'Cheek By Jowl' created a Russian version of the play which was produced in Moscow. This version highlighted the social and political issues in Russia and so its audience (being a Russian audience) were able to relate to it completely despite it being a Shakespearean play. The amazing reviews are definitely inspiring and make our '1989 version' more exciting because it counts as evidence that we could potentially create a really fun and relatable piece of theatre. The 'Provost' character appears to take up the role of a policeman but it isn't completely clear as there is little information on characters other then the 3 main ones. However, the Provost in this version compared to our own don't actually differ that much and yet create the same effect of relatability.
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