Now this is something that does not happen often. As per the Guardian, a London based theatre is going to use hacked voicemail as an inspiration to stage six new plays at the Theatre503.

The venue is widely popular for its new and fresh presentations. The plays will be presented under the title ‘Hacked.’ Every play will be based on the messages obtained from the hacked phones.

Quite evidently, there is nothing illegal about all this. The six phones have been voluntarily offered by people who have agreed to allow the theatre to access their voicemails, knowing that their messages will be handed over to the six playwrights who will give it the form of a play. The volunteers have also given their consent to not force deletion or censorship of any of the messages.

Theatre503’s Associate Director, Derek Bond stated that the idea of staging short plays directly based on the hacking scandal didn’t seem great initially. He felt that a courtroom, verbatim approach is something any other theatre could have taken in the future, but not them. They wanted to show the actual reasons behind people’s outrage. It just wasn’t the celebrities who were at the receiving end; the scandal had left missing teenagers, grieving parents and many more casualties. What if you too were one of them?

The people offering their phones will be kept anonymous, even to the playwrights as all their names will be scrambled before handing over the recordings. The writers have been advised to use their imagination as much as possible and create good stories. Doesn’t seem strange? Does it?