T+1 to Vaudeville!

What is Vaudeville?

Vaudeville is an experimental theatrical journalism experience, brought to you by the FT Alphaville blogging team of the Financial Times. Held at East London’s legendary Wilton’s Music Hall, the oldest grand music hall in the world, the evening will take the audience on a journey through our increasingly illusory, data-driven world, and will seek to bring to life the idea that The Entire Economy is Fyre Festival (we call this idea “TEEIFF” for short).

Like the Vaudeville of times gone by, our event will be a kind of variety show, featuring comedy, music, film, financial puppeteering, interviews, “influencers” and even a sermon from a pastor-turned-computer scientist-turned bete noire of the world of crypto (if you know you know). It will feature an exclusive collaboration with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, as well as a conversation with contemporary artist and cultural commentator Simon Denny.

We can also reveal a conversation with a mystery guest (to be revealed on the night) whose company changed everything or nothing at all (depending on whose perspective you take).

Other acts include finance Twitter grandee Frances Coppola, as you’ve never seen her before (mezzo soprano mode).

The man who could be Satoshi: Craig Steven Wright.

Comedian and part-time Amazon influencer Josh Weller.

PLUS an inclusive insight into the story behind the payments story of our time. (it’s not bitcoin but it may feature sock puppets).

There will be no online recordings due to the extreme signal-to-noise fundamentals of this event.

For those who haven’t booked, there are only a few tickets remaining. You can buy them here.

Some of the seats have a restricted view, but the ones in the back row really aren't that bad, and the ones in the balcony are actually quite splendid. Only the ones near the poles are truly horrific, and, if unsold, will probably be taken by FT colleagues who have been begging to be put on the “g-list” for the past three months or so (the poles being the pillars, not the family Kaminska).

For those wondering about food on the night, Wiltons has an excellent pizza kitchen that even caters for vegans, so feel free to gorge before the show, or during the interval. But if you want to do the latter, and this is important, you need to order it before the start of the show.

We’ll leave you with this, a sneak preview of the programme. See you tomorrow!

-------

A song, in a soprano key, laments the prospect of dystopia.

A clip, from an earlier generation, shows us the artifice in nature.

A poem, performed by an inanimate object, directs us towards the possibility of utopia.

A comedian, remembering a time of influence, exposes the nature of online artifice.

An artist, on finding the beauty in a web of corporate digital trauma.

A musical number, about the spiralling cacophony of beautiful solutions.

A sermon, from the pulpit, on the loss of truth in public discourse

A reporter, in conversation, on paying the price for truth.

A song on the impossibility of creativity.

A former chief executive, on how, when you zoom in, everything is not as it seems.

A film, on how, when you zoom out, everything is exactly as it seems.

A writer, on how the machines distort human behaviour.

A scene, on how human behaviour cannot be distorted.

A song, on all of the above.

-------