“And so with this understanding that we are under constant surveillance, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, we start adapting our behavior to it.”
Nehal El-Hadi wants you to know that you’re being watched.
With her journalistic and academic background, Nehal’s research has focused on data collection and space-making. Through the Residency program with The Theatre Centre, her project The Observer Effect turns that interest in surveillance back on the audience, and asks us whether we really know what happens to our data.
The Observer Effect follows an urban history tour set 14 years into Toronto’s future, commemorating 2028 riots against the city’s creation of a biometric database, which tour-goers soon realize was more insidious than official narratives suggest.
Our marketing and communications Intern, Lia Iannarilli, chatted with Nehal to chat more about her project and experience working at The Theatre Centre.
The Theatre Centre (TC): Has coming from a background in environmental journalism and academic research influenced your creative process for this project?
Nehal El-Hadi: Definitely. Everything that I do–even creatively–is very heavily research-informed. The iteration of The Observer Effect that we workshopped a couple of years ago, almost everything in it had happened in the world at some point related to surveillance and technology. What was made-up was the story and the setting. I have a very research-intensive practice, and that comes out of both being a journalist and an academic.
TC: What is the current status of this project?
Nehal El-Hadi: Right now I am working on a site-specific audio piece. Not being from theatre, I wasn’t necessarily interested in privileging a stage space. What I wanted to do was to have it in public space because of how so much spectacle and performativity is in public space too.
I wanted to have people have this moment of realization that being in public space meant that they were being surveilled and recorded and monitored and watched. I wanted to have no separation between performer and audience, no separation between performance space and the real world. I wanted that to start challenging people’s idea of what was real and what was orchestrated for the duration of the performance.
One of the things that went really well [during the workshop] was that the audience members would look around and not know if somebody walking across the square was part of the performance or not. They would start to doubt and question what was happening around them. I wanted to change people’s experience of space, too. I wanted them to, every time they went there, to have it re-enchanted. In the performance that we did, the final moment of it turned the audience into performers in that they walked around the square in protest, so people were now looking at them.
Nehal talking about The Observer Effect at The Theatre Centre Residency Showings
Photo by Duane Cole
TC: What does the project’s title “The Observer Effect” convey in the broader context of your research into privacy and technology?
Nehal El-Hadi: I grew up in South London and, in the mid ’90s, CCTV was being installed throughout London. I have very strong memories of Oxford Street before the cameras were installed and then what installing the cameras did and how certain aspects of street life were eliminated through surveillance and policing, specifically Black street life. So I knew that surveillance could change the nature of a space.
Ostensibly, it was for crime fighting, but what it did was make the street more consumptive, less experiential, more generic, less alive. It removed elements of the unexpected, enchantment, [it] became very bland. At the time, I was a young adult, and I didn’t theorize it. I was just like, “oh, it’s not the same anymore.” But that was where I would say my interest in surveillance, in technological surveillance specifically, was piqued.
The Observer Effect is, in scientific research, how the very act of observing a thing changes the nature of the thing itself. And so with this understanding that we are under constant surveillance, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, we start adapting our behavior to it.
TC: How did being conscious of surveillance factor into your conception of the project or what you wanted The Observer Effect to portray?
Nehal El-Hadi: People are becoming increasingly savvy, but in general, a lot of people, myself included, don’t know what information about them is collected, gathered, stored, and used to inform decisions about [their] life. If you walk down a street in downtown Toronto, you have no idea how many cameras have captured your image. You have security cameras, you have dashboard cams, you have police traffic cameras, you have people just filming and you’re in the background.
All of that is being gathered. A lot of those are on live feeds. You don’t really know who’s collecting your information, what they’re doing with it. And because of that, I was really curious about what kind of information was being collected, who owned that information, and whether people had access to their own data or not.
Before I did The Theatre Centre residency, I gave a public talk called Performing the Dataset, and it took from the psychological theory of “acting as if,” which is if you want to be something or if you want to correct a behavior, act as if you are that thing or as if you’ve resolved that behavior. For example, if there was a bus route that was being cut because it was “underutilized,” but communities relied on it, what activists should do is mobilize people to ride that bus to generate the ridership data that would ensure that the route would be kept.
My argument was that it’s never ever about the information, it’s just used as an excuse. If [the city] wants to cut the route, they’re going to cut the route, regardless of what you do. But if we’re going to believe that these are data-informed decisions, then we should start learning how to perform data that would lead us towards a more just world.
“I’m seeing that less and less here. There’s less street life, there’s more security. There’s less spontaneity or the possibility of chance encounters.”
The Observer Effect Workshop Presentation
Photo by 852Tangram
TC: You refer to spaces being de- and re-enchanted. What does that mean to you in terms of re-enchanting places for the audience?
Nehal El-Hadi: It’s about a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around you. I think that both because of phones… or because of media, people don’t engage in public spaces as much as they used to. They’re not as playful, especially in a place like Lisgar Park, where I spent hours and hours and hours just observing it. [People] go to work, they come back from work, they go out for the evening, they walk their dog. It’s more of a passageway than a destination or a place to hang out and be.
I found that my own experience of public space was happening less and less. It’s not like in Europe where people go to plazas or they’ll have a pint after work on the sidewalk, and they occupy and live in space in a very different way. I’m seeing that less and less here. There’s less street life, there’s more security. There’s less spontaneity or the possibility of chance encounters. I wanted people to experience public life as something that could be really provocative of curiosity, that a public space that people just crisscross through could hold stories that could invite them to notice things, that there’s so much to just look at and watch and witness.
TC: You’ve mentioned that theatre is out of your comfort zone. How have you found adapting your creative process coming from a journalistic or academic background?
Nehal El-Hadi: I think that where it has pushed me the farthest is that there’s so many other people to consider in theatre. You have your performers, of course, but then you also have everybody who’s supporting it. And then you also have to consider your audiences, what you’re saying, getting across. Are you able to communicate it to your performers? Are you able to communicate it to your directors? Are you able to communicate it to all of the supporting technicians and stage managers and costume designers? You have to communicate the same idea over and over and over again. I think that what I’ve learned is that for you to be able to do that successfully, you have to be so clear in a way that no other medium that I have worked in has ever demanded of me.
The Observer Effect Workshop Presentation
Photo by 852Tangram
The Observer Effect Workshop Presentation
Photo by 852Tangram
Any thoughts about what you’d like to pursue going forward?
Nehal El-Hadi: Now what I’m working on is kind of pushing it more into the realm of speculation. Whereas [The Observer Effect] was really, really research informed, my next question is what happens to all of this information?
Let’s say the database happened and biometric data was collected, so you have all of this information for 3 million people. You have their genetic data, you have their health data, you have their education data, you have their insurance data, you have their police data. What if all of these data sets are brought together? Now, everything is correlated and it’s being sold.
One of the other things that’s happening right now is the conversations about AI becoming sentient. So what happens if there is an AI that becomes sentient where the data set it’s built on is all of the information about people in Toronto. What would that AI say if it were to tell a story? What and how would it do it?
One of the comments, and it’s a very, very valid one, was, why is [The Observer Effect] set in the future, if everything in it has already happened? Why are we dealing with the future? Why is it not in the now? The technology changes so quickly that when I started this [project], it was futuristic. And now it’s almost historical. So then how do I make it relevant? How do I not date it? These are all questions that I’m thinking about. But in the meantime, I’m like, if this happened, if an AI gained sentience, what would Toronto’s AI identity be? And that’s been such a fun and generative question to ask.
The Theatre Centre Residency Artists at our 2025 Residency Artist Intake. Photo by Jae Yang.
The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program is generously supported by:
