In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• High Rise eState of Mind:Love and Honesty in the Midst of London's Neoliberal Housing Crisis
• Katie Beswick (bio)

It is a miserable day in November 2020. One of an interminable string of miserable days since the announcement of the latest "lockdown" measures to combat the spread of Covid-19 in the UK during the pandemic. I'm in my bedroom, watching a live-stream of the hip hop theatre performance High Rise eState of Mind. The four performers who make up the company Beats & Elements stand in a square formation on the stage of Manchester's HOME, each with a mic and a chair. The chairs demarcate the high-rise block of flats where the play is set (as the story unfolds, we come to understand that the two chairs upstage indicate the first floor and the two downstage the twenty-fourth floor, more of which later). The performers are dressed in hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps as they rap about life under conditions of housing precarity and insecurity. Their London accents vibrate tinnily through my laptop speakers. I know the performers personally, having worked with the company over the past two years, attending shows, documenting rehearsals, writing about their practice, and interacting with them socially through this process. My phone rings. On the laptop screen/stage, the performer Conrad Murray has stepped out of character and is telling the audience he's calling someone who he knows is watching. I answer my phone and it's Conrad. He wants to know about my housing situation: where I live, and where I'd choose to live if all my dreams came true. "I'm from South London, but I live in Devon at the moment," I tell him, "but if I could choose, I'd go back to the 90s and live in New York."

"Who would you live with?" he asks me."An Afghan dog, and a hot man." [End Page 129]

Conrad nods at me through the laptop screen and hangs up the phone—David Bonnick Jr (known as Jr, pronounced "Junior"), a rapper and performer in the show, steps forward. He uses my answers as the basis for a freestyle rap,¹ weaving my housing dreams into funny and surprising lyrics ("Yeah, Katie / She's really pretty / Wants to be like those girls from Sex and the City").² For the first time since the November lockdown was announced, I feel connected to other people and part of something bigger than myself, existing in a world beyond the confines of my house. It is the familiar pleasure of theatre, albeit in a digital-live capacity, and it is a relief.

The pleasure and relief I describe above are where I am going with this article, which examines how the hip hop theatre practiced by the Londonbased company Beats & Elements might create possibilities for connection and affinity (or 'love') and for truth and honesty under conditions of post-truth and dishonesty produced by the prevailing neoliberal system. Like much (perhaps all) theatre, Beats & Elements' work responds to the pressing social issues of its time, and in London in the twenty-first century, there are few issues more urgent or pressing than the scarcity of affordable housing. High Rise eState of Mind is a Beats & Elements show that takes London's housing crisis as its point of departure. Before I dwell on the company and the performance in any detail, however, I will divert us elsewhere for a while, parsing the social and political landscape in which the company work in order that we might return to the practice with a clearer sense of its context and therefore of its stakes and implications.

London's Neoliberal Housing Crisis

On its British website, the media outlet Vice regularly publishes a satirical social commentary feature called "London Rental Opportunity of the Week." In this feature, the journalist Joel Golby selects a rental advert for a property in London, typically taken from a popular national property marketing website such as Zoopla, Rightmove, or Gumtree. He issues a caustic take-down of the property on offer, whose price often nears or equals the average monthly wage of all but the very...

中文翻译：

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高层 eState of Mind：伦敦新自由主义住房危机中的爱与诚实

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 高层 eState of Mind :伦敦新自由主义住房危机中的爱与诚实
• 凯蒂·贝斯维克（生物）

2020 年 11 月是悲惨的一天。自宣布在大流行期间抗击 Covid-19 在英国蔓延的最新“封锁”措施以来，这是一连串无休止的悲惨日子。我在卧室里，正在观看嘻哈剧场表演High Rise eState of Mind的直播. 组成 Beats & Elements 公司的四位表演者在曼彻斯特 HOME 的舞台上排成一个方形，每个人都有一个麦克风和一把椅子。椅子划定了戏剧设置的高层公寓楼（随着故事的展开，我们了解到，前面的两把椅子表示一楼，而后面的两把椅子则表示二十四楼，稍后会更多）。表演者穿着连帽运动衫和棒球帽，在住房不稳定和不安全的条件下谈论生活。他们的伦敦口音通过我的笔记本电脑扬声器发出轻微的振动。我个人认识表演者，在过去两年中与公司合作，参加演出，记录排练，写下他们的练习，并通过这个过程与他们进行社交互动。我的电话响了。在笔记本电脑屏幕/舞台上，表演者康拉德·默里（Conrad Murray）已经走出角色，告诉观众他正在打电话给他知道正在观看的人。我接了电话，是康拉德。他想知道我的住房情况：我住在哪里，如果我所有的梦想都实现了，我会选择住在哪里。“我来自伦敦南部，但我现在住在德文郡，”我告诉他，“但如果可以选择，我会回到 90 年代，住在纽约。”

“你会和谁住在一起？” 他问我。“一条阿富汗狗，一个火辣辣的男人。” [结束第 129 页]

康拉德通过笔记本电脑的屏幕向我点点头，然后挂断了电话——节目中的说唱歌手兼表演者小大卫·邦尼克（David Bonnick Jr，被称为 Jr，发音为“Junior”）向前迈了一步。他用我的回答作为自由式说唱的基础，¹将我的住房梦想编织成有趣而令人惊讶的歌词（“是的，凯蒂 / 她真的很漂亮 / 想像欲望都市中的那些女孩一样”）。²自 11 月宣布封锁以来，我第一次感到与其他人联系在一起，成为比自己更大的事物的一部分，存在于我家之外的世界中。这是剧院熟悉的乐趣，尽管是以数字直播的方式，而且是一种解脱。

我在上面描述的愉悦和解脱是我这篇文章的目的，它研究了总部位于伦敦的 Beats & Elements 公司实践的嘻哈剧院如何创造联系和亲和力（或“爱”）的可能性，以及在盛行的新自由主义制度造成的后真相和不诚实的条件。像许多（也许是所有）剧院一样，Beats & Elements 的作品回应了当时紧迫的社会问题，在 21 世纪的伦敦，没有什么问题比经济适用房的稀缺更紧迫或紧迫。高层 eState of Mind是一个以伦敦住房危机为出发点的 Beats & Elements 节目。然而，在我详细介绍公司和业绩之前，我将把我们转移到其他地方，解析公司工作的社会和政治环境，以便我们可以更清楚地了解它的实践。的背景，因此它的利害关系和影响。

伦敦的新自由主义住房危机

在其英国网站上，媒体机构Vice定期发布一个名为“本周伦敦租赁机会”的讽刺社会评论功能。在此专题中，记者 Joel Golby 选择了伦敦房产的出租广告，该广告通常取自热门的全国房产营销网站，例如 Zoopla、Rightmove 或 Gumtree。他严厉地取消了所提供的房产，其价格通常接近或等于除非常...