What am I thinking?

Audience:

I think there’s very little theatre made in these parts (Gloucestershire) that stands up and says:  You’re here, we’re here, in 2011, in this contemporary culture, in this very room, and what we’re going to do is explore an idea that’s relevant to all of us.  Yes, you’re going to be part of this – and it probably won’t be easy.  It won’t be a relaxing ride for you, because we’ll be asking something of you too and we’ll be asking for it directly: not as characters who speak to the audience, but as ourselves.

Don’t forget this moment of your life.  I know you can’t hold on to all of them, but grab this one, breathe it and know you are alive.  Hold on to the pictures you see through your eyes, the feelings, the sensations.  Boredom is valid.  Amusement is valid.  So are anger and frustration that this moment isn’t quite what you hoped it might be.  We understand all that.

To celebrate being alive we might do a silly dance, we might listen to sounds, we might play a game, we might lie.

All we want from you is to play the game with us – to take the mental step from where you are to where we are: to join in the game of being here and now. You might well refuse that invitation, which is ok, but you’ll lose the game, and the game will carry on without you.

Performers:

You probably need to do less than you think (apart from learning lines - sorry).  Let them see the spaces in between… just be there.  I mean, here.  Perhaps it’s a bit scary?  Perhaps it feels a bit empty or purposeless?  But the best way to demonstrate being here now is actually to be here now, to lead in the game. Like, hide n seek or sleeping lions.  You’ve played the being present game so often that you know all the tactics.  You know you can’t lose.

We all came from different places.  There are tectonic shifting lines between us, and the audience will see that.  That’s fitting, I think, for the most imperfect of all arts: theatre.

This is an experiment.  This is a laboratory.  It’s not supposed to be an object that’s finished and highly-polished and complete (and dead).  It’s still breathing.

Ok, we do cheat.  We cheat with blocked moves and rehearsed lines, but that in itself is part of the game.  What fun is a game without a bit of mischievous cheating?

For Myself:

I could say it came to me in a dream. I could say it’s my passion. I could say this is the piece I’ve always wanted to make and let me tell you why.  But it’s not.  That’s why I love it.  Because I sat down to write it and what came out was a game, inspired by all the improvisations and unconscious improvisations of a frustrating few days of devising.  It celebrates imperfection.  It celebrates being here now.

Speaking to an arts administrator last night, she said ‘Ah you could do this scheme that [another arts administrator]'s setting up, we could bend the rules and count you as an emerging artist.’  I hurried off to rehearsal thinking, ‘but I am an emerging artist – and that’s what I will always be.  Once the emerging has happened, it’s over.’

Are You Here Now?

Are You Here Now? 

Or are you somewhere else?  Drifting off, in a daydream, lost in thought, in a fantasy, in another world?  Are you gone, oblivious, numb to this moment?  Are you cashing it in for a better time past or future: for one that will never happen or never quite was?  Could you perhaps let years of your life slip by in dreamland? Or are you hanging on in here with us, in this gritty awfully-boringly-wonderful moment, trying to make something of the irksome imperfection of being alive?

If you would like to answer ‘yes’ please come to our meeting.

Absentees Anonymous hosted by Foulisfair Theatre

(Dates coming soon)

Are You Here Now?

New title.  New Direction.  Not so much about hard/cold disappearance but the shifting boundaries of absence and presence.  The audience are unwitting attendees of Absentees Anonymous.  It might go something like this:

Possible Sections/Ideas (no real order)

Hello, my name is X, and I am here now.

Introduction to AA:

Brief history and aims… that is, AA is formed/led by those whose addiction to being absent has resulted in damaging or devastating consequences.  They recognise the human desire to be absent at times (like having a tipple with friends) but for them it got out of hand and they are trying to abstain completely.  (One tipple may lead to break up of family, huge debts, WW3?) They therefore advocate complete presence and aim to guide others in being as present as possible in their lives.

Facts, Figures and Theories about absence and presence:

A pottage of personal, mathematical, philosophical definitions.  No doubt with dramatic illustrations.  Anyone understand Derrida?

Socially Acceptable Absence:

Where is the line?  It’s ok to daydream about cheese but wrong to fantasise about shagging your neighbour’s wife? Demonstrate different situations and use a clapometre or sliding scale to classify absences from harmless to abhorrent

Reasons Why People Become Absent (and their excuses):

Eg: ‘I couldn’t take it any more/I got distracted/I took my eye off the ball/ I just can’t help fucking up’ – sequence of direct address?

Conveyer Belt of Boredom – to be explained later!

How We Came A Cropper:

Members/Founders explain/dramatise their past obsessions with being absent and the depths to which it led them.

Demo – what to expect at an AA meeting:

Possibly using audience member as someone to be inducted.  Run through format, tea and toilet breaks (these are challenging sections where presence should be upheld) and reward certificates…. (or whatever… could hand out certificates at end of show)

How to stay Present:

From ‘focus on your breathing’ to ‘lie on a bed of nails’, ’feel your face’, ‘repeat the mantra I am Here Now’ or ‘Do everything with great focus and intensity because this moment will never exist again’ – some of these can be demo’d.

FAQs

(The panel give answers to frequently asked questions and possibly some from the audience)

Reflections/Conclusions

Here or earlier the positive aspects of absenteeism seep out: escaping convention/humdrum existence, breaking the mould, making a new start, reminiscing, jumping into the unknown, ‘I have a Dream’… finish by revelling in absence – or maybe AA members getting increasingly out of control in their absence with the final moment a sober realisation that yet again they have fallen off the wagon.

Another Quote (more back up)

'Bloody Mess is composed in a spirit more akin to that of painting, choreography or even late night channel hopping.  It's about the collision of different worlds and personas - collisions at which sparks fly, collisions that can be both comical and disturbing...

For us, the mess and its structured exuberance is something of a manifesto; an insistence that theatre can be be more than a drab story or literary rhetoric, that its heart lies in play, in liveness, and in the event.

Something happens.  Something unfolds.  And you're there to join the dots and enjoy.'

Tim Etchells

In Good Company

In 1967, an anonymous woman, confused and frustrated after watching a production of one of Harold Pinter’s earliest plays, The Birthday Party, wrote a letter to the playwright:

Dear Sir,

I would be obliged if you would kindly explain to me the meaning of your play The Birthday Party.  These are the points which I do not understand: 1. Who are the two men? 2. Where did Stanley come from? 3. Were they all supposed to be normal?  You will appreciate that without the answers to my questions I cannot fully understand your play.

Pinter responded to the letter with the following:

Dear Madam,

I would be obliged if you would kindly explain to me the meaning of your letter.  These are the points which I do not understand: 1. Who are you? 2. Where do you come from? 3. Are you supposed to be normal?  You will appreciate that without the answers to these questions I cannot fully understand your letter.

Three Positives

1. We are making work slowly because we don't have the time or the money to make it quickly
2. Nobody in this town (or even in this county) is making work like this
3. Performers from different backgrounds with different comfort zones are helping to create this

( I used to think of these things as disadvantages)

New Beginnings?

Dawn:        [speaking into a microphone] Ladies and Gentlemen, would you kindly switch off your mobile phones, ring-tones on pagers, key fobs, electronic dog-whistles, ipods, NHS panic buttons and anything that might mean you can still communicate with the outside world.  Despite the nature of this performance we would like to reassure you that you are very likely to still exist once the show has finished.  Thank you.