The audio player on the right
features twelve short excerpts (one
minute each on average) from the rehearsed reading of The
Wold Wide Web by Actors and Writers
London in 2002, before a live audience:
Mike Goodenough stars
as Arac, the naive house spider
who struggles to make sense of the Wide Wold.
Andrew Heart plays
Nid, his assured, knowledgeable
mentor, friendly but deeply sinister.
The excerpts are organised into four groups that explore specific
themes within the play (without seeking to give an overview of
the plot). The clips in each group play continuously, with a short
pause between clips. This grouping is intended to focus attention
on specific areas for possible development of the project as follows:
The Spiders excerpts outline
the basic premises for the characters and the play. However
they also include some action based on the facts of spider life
(feeding, web-building, moulting, mating, etc).
Other Creatures illustrates
Nid's potential as an animated and engaging teacher of natural
history, which is leavened by Arac's confusion over abstract
concepts such as "crickets" and "bats".
The Internet shows how spiders'
webs provide an educational metaphor for teaching young children
about the world wide web.
Spider Philosophy explores some
of the wider philosophical issues raised by the conversations
between Arac and Nid (the nature of existence, the relationship
between the individual and the food s/he eats, etc).
