Colin Broom - Post-Human

Programme Notes
Post-Human was commissioned by Red Note for The End of the World show, a one-off site-specific theatre
& music performance to coincide with the supposed end of the world, predicted by many to be 21
December 2012.
Originally it was planned to take place in the Secret Bunker in the north of Scotland, a former
government nuclear bunker now open as a museum. Ultimately the performance took place in
Summerhall, Edinburgh. However it amuses me to consider that had the event taken place in the Secret
Bunker, and had the civilised world actually ended that evening, one would be hard-pressed to find a
collection of survivors more ill-equipped to rebuild our civilisation than a few composers, actors and a
string quartet.
The piece takes as it’s starting point a question posed to environmental writer Alan Weisman in an
interview about his book The World without Us – a book that ponders what would become of the world
were humans very suddenly to disappear.
The piece starts as a radio tunes through stations to finally settle upon the Weisman interview. At one
point in the interview, the interviewer asks Weisman “What man-made stuff is going to last the
longest?” This question and Weisman’s answer forms the starting point for Post-Human.
Performance Directions
Post-Human is scored for string quartet with prerecorded audio (“tape” as it’s still colloquially known).
The ensemble uses a click track to stay in time and in sync with the audio. Ideally, the string quartet
should be amplified in order to achieve a balance with the audio.
The audio recordings that the radio tunes through at the opening are all related either to the idea of the
end of the world, or to the date in question. They are:
Ella Fitzgerald – Get Happy
Douglas Adams – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (TV series)
Rush – Temple of Syrinx, from 2112
Olivier Messiaen – Quartet for the End of Time
Peter Gabriel & Robert Fripp – Here Comes the Flood
The Doors – The End