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.

New Comments

From trusted theatre-makers:

You no longer have 0 comments. Look there is nothing wrong with a story, it's just very difficult to find a good one - look at all the shit films that are made which have huge financial investments. You want a children's game - it would be worth connecting up with the Early Arts web site, they have a lot of practitioners doing stuff for that audience. Given that you are doing something on disappearance then you could play some kind of disappearing games hide and seek or they could watch you play it. Bring objects out onto stage that disappear under things, or behind things, or on top of things, or in things (eating). That's my lot. Lovely note book.

Read the post and you're absolutely right about not needing structure or through line. The audience will do it for themselves and you and the performers will find a rationality to it at some point too.

I know what you mean about lack of time and looking at creating a text/script as a way of planning it all out so that less time is needed with everyone together in the space!

I think this is why 'well made plays' are so appealing/popular. They're so much more of a safer bet.You can make the fragmented nature of the material a feature should you wish to do so! You could show it as work in progress.

It is going to come together and one night a week can be enough.

Bear with me

I am very impressed with the performers I am working with.  After each session we walk away with a few creative nuggets in our hands.  These practitioners are open-minded, committed and talented. So, a delight really.  Despite this there is a sense that both we and the process are (in management speak) finishing with 'forming' phase and moving towards the next expected one: 'storming'.

We talk about the need for an overriding concept, a narrative arc, a structure on which to hang our work about disappearance.  The audience expect it, the performer(s) are nervous we may end up with a series of unconnected fragments if we don't find it.  Imagine watching a series of fragments for an hour about disappearance without knowing or experiencing what the arc/narrative/structure is...

Mmm

I have been struggling to find one of these (they don't hang on the rack like desses in a department store unfortunately) but I have also been struck by what could be thought of as a radical thought: We don't need one. At least we don't need one yet.  Perhaps... we don't need one at all?

I am tired of theatre that is formulaic and contrived.  I am tired of seeing shows where the actors do their best to bring to life a carefully crafted script, a well made play, a masterpiece of exposition, crisis, denouement and resolution.  I am even a bit tired of stories (autobiographical, told through dance or delivered as a performative lecture) and the recent mode of dramatising fairytales with modern, upbeat twists... it seems to me too much like something you'd set a secondary Drama class at the end of the winter term to do (and I should know).

But all of this does not explain or excuse my stubbornness in not pursuing a through-line.  I know the exam board would mark me down.  I know I am liable to stand accused of creating a work that is undeveloped, incomplete and unfinished (especially by those who aren't familiar with contemporary performance practices that seek to create a real sense of dialogue with their audience).  And I do feel uneasy about leaving my performers to feel exposed in this, and yet...

• An arc/concept/through-line (coat hanger) should emerge through the process, not be imposed.
• The better the belief in, and the excitement about the ideas and resulting fragments we produce, the better the (coat hanger) will be.
• The real excitement of this piece will be the audience creating connections and interpretations for themselves.
• Before we stage the work we will have made our own connections- within, between and across all fragments.
• These connections not being made is impossible.

And yet... I wish we had more time.  I wish we had a solid month together to really explore and kick about disappearance; kick it til it had no life left in it.  It feels like we are skimming surfaces with our once weekly meetings and the scope is as wide as the ocean or outer-space. So the temptation to get that coat-hanger on which to hang everything is tempting, n'est pas?

So what, oh Dionysus, is the way forward?

*********************************************************************************
Bear with me

*********************************************************************************
I have just skim-read the working script of the piece which I set aside once I started working with my four new performers.  It strikes me by looking at it that something has been lost. I feel a jolt of recognition as I view my self/my work in an artistic mirror.  I realise I was wandering out of view (disappearing?)  Well, maybe that's a fitting act in this process, but in the script I see...

Bite and energy.  It stirs things up.  It is raw in places, gentle and sombre in others, heavily ironic with anti-performance twists ( a recorded voice starts the proceedings and the performer posing as the magician's assistant excuses away the fact that she's just pretending).  Most of all, it is heavy with the emotional weight of disappearance. There is no escape from it.

I suppose I have been pretending.  That is, I have pretended that in the time available to us the performers and myself can throw ourselves headlong into a devising process in which everything can be explored, played with, caressed, tossed about, then selected or rejected.  That would be marvellous, but the fact is we just don't have that luxury of time. 

So the artistic finger is pointing heavily in my direction.  Yes, ok - I do see it.

I am returning to my script as my inspiration.  It is an anchor from which to write more and yes, devise more, but within stricter limits.  I can't say quite that I have my coat-hanger yet, but I know we are looking at people and situations who are standing on cliff edges (real or metaphorical) from which the view is the gaping cavern of disappearance, of unalterable change... those gut-sinking moments, when through bravery or cowardice, wisdom or inexperience, the only tenable answer seems to be to leap into the unknown.

You could say such a leap is a bit like the theatre-making process really, but maybe in this case a little bit of what you have done before (but forgotten temporarily) does you good...

Thoughts about last night

Thoughts

What’s intriguing is that the performers’ memories are being warmed up.  They are starting to relate personal disappearances in almost confessional ways.

So, you left your life at 17 and moved to another country?

So, you used to disappear from your family for 3-4 days at a time just to go off into the woods and sleep under hedges?

You used to follow people and the game for you was never being seen?

You got on better and better with your mother the more she slipped into dementia?

I love these stories.  They add truth and depth and integrity to the work.  They add weight and intrigue.

They wring out the heaviness of disappearance.

Let's Play Disappearing Deviants - Welcome

1:         Hello and good evening.  Wow – what a turn out! Thanks for joining us.

2:         It’s amazing.  Thanks for coming. You’re all very welcome.

1:         Absolutely. It makes us feel that what we’re doing here is really – er – relevant, actually. You know, that we’re not just hosting this event for nothing; that it is really important. Um, we’ll get you to fill in some forms later if that’s ok?  Nothing scary, just basic details – but first of all let’s introduce everyone.  I’m (1) And this is (2)

2:         Hello

1:         And these two you’ll be meeting in a minute.  They’ve been members a long time.  This is (3) and sitting there is (4). So yes, welcome to Disappearing Deviants ( or DD for short).  We’re an organisation that’s been running for fifteen years now. I know that as you’re here you’ll no doubt have an idea of what we’re about but (2) will explain the work of the organisation in a bit more detail.

2:         Right.  Well, as (1) says Disappearing Deviants was created fifteen years ago, and its function really is to offer help and support to those of us who in some way or another become addicted to disappearing.  When people begin disappearing: (it could be running away from home at a young age or truanting from school or just getting really obsessed about playing hide and seek really) it’s often excused or explained away.  For example, Ronnie truanted because he hated the Maths teacher; Anna left home because she didn’t get on with her new step-dad, and so on.  The thing is, like any kind of addictive behaviour, disappearing can be a big turn-on to start with – it can seem quite sexy.  For example, a young male teenager may boast about the number of girlfriends he’s had (and dumped).  It can also seem exciting to be on the move constantly because that means we don’t have to deal with the monotony of long-term relationships or face up to consequences of the mistakes we make.  All this ties in with our very twenty-first century concept of freedom, the individual ego and the individual’s right to an independent existence.

           

However, disappearing can become extremely damaging, both for the person who is addicted to doing it and to those around them. We’ve all heard of serial monogomists, serial killers, splitters, heart-breakers, cads, slags, nomads and hermits.  We’ve all seen or experienced the irresponsible disappearances of others once the murder’s done, the affair is over, the children are in bed; before the bill arrives on the mat or the arrest warrant comes or the bailiffs or the mad ex-wife, screaming blue murder.  Disappearance wrecks lives –we know it – and yet we’re drawn to it.  We want to be in transit, blown on the wind, like a rollling stone, a shooting star, zooming out of space out of here and now forever, gone to oblivion, to pastures new, flying, up, up and away, into silver clouds and silver screen and oblivion, obliteration, intoxication, defenestration, over the rainbow where the sun never shines and up, up, up…

1:         Um, (2) have you taken your medication today?

2:         Shit, oops… I was doing it again, wasn’t I?  I’m so sorry. I did practise it.  Well, I meant to but something came up and… I meant to talk about the downs, you know… not the ups/ Like, the loneliness and isolation…

1:         No, (2) it’s ok, really. Come on.  It’s ok. Let’s move on. / Let’s just show everyone what a regular DD meeting would look and sound like.  Ok.  (3) perhaps you would like to kick us off.

2:         Sorry

3:         Just like a sort of regular meeting you mean?

1:         Exactly that

4:         Like we rehearsed earlier.   Oh no, but you weren’t here either were you?

3:         Welcome everyone.  We start by introducing ourselves like this:  My name is (3) and I’m a Disappearing Deviant. I last disappeared...

Improvise

• Date and circumstance of last disappearance
• Why you did it
• What the consequence was on you and others
• How and why you’re trying to keep clean
• Invite comments from other deviants

Ok - so it's like this

Ok - so it's like this.  You empty out the bag, you go digging in the back garden for old shards of crockery, you get a handful of pebbles and chuck them into a bucket.  Then there are the ones that just descend on you: if you are lucky, dreams in the night, bird shit on the window, a scrap of wind-blown litter...

You start with anything and everything.  Yes, undeveloped of course.  There's not much creatvity in developing it otherwise.  This fish-netting in creative rock-pools is my favourite of all times in the devising process because here you are utterly free and nothing can be wrong.  Wrong gradually creeps in on you like a cynical spector from the wings... the long-dead theatre-goer who was never satisfied with what she saw and casts a warty, long-nailed finger at you hissing 'when will you do anything that's any good?'  And the trouble is you can't help but believe her.

Yes, yes, I am tempted to look for that overall extended metaphor, the returning motif, that framework, an element of structure already - because time is precious and rehearsal rooms are money and my seventeen month old daughter's world rules my butterfly brain most of the time so mind space is at an all-time premium.  But hold on, hold on, hold on.  As Emma Rice once wrote, 'hold your nerve'.  The work must have time to breathe, to be slow, boring, dull, ridiculous... there must be time for the crystal to be found at the bottom of the bucket, for the balloon with its message of heart-ache to fall from the sky.  You can't make it happen at three minutes past eight tomorrow evening.  You have to dance the dance, fishing net in hand, get ready to dig, sing, play with all your might - and then of course when you are least thinking of it - it might just happen.

Quote of the Moment

‘I ask of each performance: will I carry this event with me tomorrow?  Will it haunt me? Will it change you, will it change me; will it change things?  If not it was a waste of time.’ 

Tim Etchells – Certain Fragments

Ideas to try out in devising sessions...

Reversal Striptease

Quintessential striptease music.  Performers act sexily, provocatively.  Gradually they begin to dress themselves in bin bags.  Voice over begins and increases in volume as music decreases… We hear information about murdered Ipswich women.  The monologue highlights that the emphasis in the media was that the victims were described as prostitutes first and human beings after.  Did the fact that they were sex workers make their disappearances more likely or had they already disappeared? Did their untimely end actually constitute a double disappearance – (who cares what happened to them, what family they had, their circumstances or dreams… they were only prostitutes anyway)

Clevedon Pier

I have footage… holding a camera on a pretty blustery, deserted day last spring I walked up and down Clevedon Pier – I let the camera lead the way and recorded my short journey.  I also took photographs of numerous plaques mounted on the seats and walkways: some inscriptions were humorous, some heart-breaking, some full of longing, some hoping to defy the absence of someone who once lived, or who was once theirs.  Let’s read these dedications and allow the spaces in between.  Let’s see if silence speaks.  Let’s invite the audience to create their own plaques… to write it on paper, on balloons we release from the window, to record it on a Dictaphone, to whisper it quietly, to think it as they blow a feather from their palm and watch it travel…

Disappearing Deviants

Disappearing Deviants (DD) is a group modelled on Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and is an organisation for those who are addicted to disappearing.  It is for those who can never commit to a relationship, hold down a job, stay in one place; those who get a kick from moving on and leaving others ‘behind’; those who (like Lenny Kravitz) are ‘always on the run’. Restless souls and restless feet are a very common phenomenon in twenty-first century western society and we gather an inflated sense of self importance from darting to new distractions which are ultimately disappointing.

For those of us at DD staying in one place and doing what you did yesterday is a form of cold turkey.  The thought of it makes our skin crawl.

The performers welcome the audience as new members of Disappearing Deviants and congratulate them on taking their first step (i.e. attending this meeting) towards a more satisfying life, presence and sobriety.  However there are pitfalls along the way and in this special meeting the board of directors (i.e. the actors) will demonstrate the numerous ways in which we are tempted to disappear.

Good evening.  My name’s Derek and I’m a Disappearing Deviant.  I last disappeared on 2^nd July 2009 when I left my wife for the fifth time.

Dragon’s Den

A few rich business people sit as a panel to desperate folk who want to escape their lives.  Who will they invest in/Whose disappearance will they assist?  The boy escaping an abusive home?  The Nigerian woman being brain-washed to leave her village and earn money as a prostitute in Europe?  The bored housewife who wants to escape to the circus? The penniless cancer victim seeking assisted suicide?  The failed dictator who hopes to wipe the slate clean and spend his retirement sipping cocktails on the beach? 

Monologues on Missing Persons

Possibly just a description of a real missing person’s photo, date of their disappearance and other known facts. More about them could be imagined.  A series of questions about what happened to them could be asked.  Their photograph could be projected on to a surface or the performer speaking.

Interviewing someone who isn’t there

Could be a famous dead person.  Reactions realistic as if interviewee is concretely there.  What is the question you’d most like to ask John Lennon?  Questions could be gathered from the audience before the interview takes place.  There could be a big build up to nothing.

Just A Perfect Day

Play 1: A and B in a domestic setting, getting along with their everyday morning/evening routine

Play 2: A in a domestic setting, getting along with everyday routine, but B is missing

Play 3: B in a domestic setting, getting along with everyday routine, but A is missing

Recent Responses

The comments below make me realise how vast, how sprawling the theme of disappearance is...  I'm not sure that it will always be the case, but right now in this process I want to hold on to the breadth of ideas.  The variety of individual definitions/circumstances of disappearance and the way in which they overlap (converge?) at some point in the distance draws me.


'Harrison Birtwistle is composing a requiem for moths that have become extinct. He said "It will be personal, anecdotal, and will be about beings that are no longer there." '

'I do like the reference between people disappearing and the idea of the magician’s assistant. This could act as a really exciting parallel, which the audience could easily relate to, taking them through the stages of excitement, anxiety, disbelief and resolution that the act contains.'

'This made me think of the elderlies that disappear without moving location/environment, ie into their own minds/memories, where the location is irrelevant.  They have already disappeared as the person you knew and have reappeared in several different guises since then.  You too have disappeared from their lives and reappeared as someone else, sometimes as some other relative of theirs.'

'A forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly imprisoned or killed by agents of the state or by another party, such as a terrorist or criminal group. The party responsible for a disappearance does not admit to having carried out the act, thereby placing the victim outside the protection of the law.
The corpse is disposed of in such a way as to prevent it ever being found, so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing the murder has deniability, as there is no body to prove that the victim has actually died.'

Disappearing: we all do it every day, don't we?

Yes: perhaps we leave the house, turn a corner, take steps that carry us out of view.  We play hide and seek or peekaboo.  We decide that a conversation is finished and so move on; we begin a journey somewhere; we are too busy to answer the phone.  On some days our disappearances (or the disappearance of others) are more dramatic: a relationship ends, school is over; there's an abduction, a missing person, a political hostage, the death of someone who has touched our lives in a lesser or greater way.

Or...

We never disappear.  Missing people often exist in a new location, a new life.  The hostage is painfully aware of their presence in a hostile environment.  Dictators survive because their acts of tyranny and torture are cloaked by their victims' supposed disappearance from society, whilst in reality their physical bodies undergo the most extreme assaults. Even the glamorous assistant who has been trained to perform the vanishing act convincingly is in fact still there - and soon she will reassure us with her reappearance. 

In death, in love, in fantasy do we really disappear?  Perhaps once the funeral crowds disperse, the passion has quietened, the dream has faded?  But perhaps these things too serve to make us more present, make our presence more powerful and lasting in our own minds or indeed in the minds of others...

These are some of the questions I am hoping to explore during our devising of Watch Me Disappear.  Some posts here will track thoughts about content and material, be interim mission statements a bit like this one.  Others will be purely notes on ideas and exercises we have tried out in the devising room. I hope to include video clips, photos and material from the performers as the process continues. 

Comments from all are welcome...

Group Movement Impro - notes on watching the video

The performers mime being relaxed in a cafe.  Surf Rider plays.  Every time the music stops they jump into action.  The first time they're teetering on the edge of a tall building, the second time they're being pinned to the floor by an invisible attacker.  The third time someone is trying to get them to show their face and they're struggling against it; the fourth time they are trying to speak/communicate but can't say a word.  The final and fifth time they are trying desperately to touch someone who is out of reach.

Notes:

• Contrasts in tension need to be greater between relaxed and physically tense sequences
• Defined, stylised movement to mark the transitions
• Does it actually need a narrative?
• Should they be inhabiting their own isolated world throughout?
• The mundame action could be more stipulated, precise.  For example, Uta is reading a book.  At times she is concentrating on the words and living in the world of the book - then her mind slips/skips to how she as an individual is feeling: alone, lost, panicking she will be on her own forever.  Or perhaps her mind is literally going back to that moment or forward to that fear that she will one day... throw herself off a building, be attacked/murdered, not be able to reach anyone she loves...

I should ask my performers 'In which solitary action do you lose yourself?'
Clean answers preferred

Making Someone Disappear

In our first proper session the performers were asked to deliver/improvise direct address on: apologising for disappearing in banal circumstances (eg going out to work, leaving the dog alone, getting on a bus).  They were then asked to make the switch to apologising for making someone else disappear.  The following text springs from one performer's improvised text on putting a parent into a residential care home - (in particular a line about curtains).

I am imagining that A is spoken by 3 performers, whilst B, the elderly parent is continually played by the same performer.  Maybe the A actors hold B central by a long cloth they all grip at the end.  Perhaps B is physically twisting the As, or the As are twisting B.

A and B are on separate trajectories.  They either cannot hear each other or don't want to hear:

A:         I mean, it’s not so bad here, is it?  You’ve got curtains.  The commode next to the bed is handy; should cut down on those embarrassing incidents for you.  And look, the bedspread matches the curtains: very smart.  Much better than what you had at home, with that mangy old headboard.  You’ve got a phone, too.  It’s not like you’re going to be cut off from the outside world.

B:         I’m spinning, I’m spinning – I can’t keep still. The house, me and everything I own is going round and around and around.  Twisting, twisting, twisting out my guts.  We’re up here dancing in the air, we’re safe.

A:         I bet they’ll get your medication sorted out as well.  I mean, I’m sure that’s why you kept collapsing or fainting or whatever you say it was.

B:         Spinning and twisting.  Then all of a sudden a thud: My eyes must have shut tight on impact, but when I open them…Jesus fucking Christ.  The whole world is shining – colours brighter than you can imagine - all the dreary sepia gone - like a star shining straight through my window.

A:         There’s a telly room downstairs.  I’ve checked it out.  Some of them are chatting.  They seem all right; not all got their heads in their laps.  I mean, you could make friends.  There might be some of your old favourite films on.

B:         Stripy legs buried under the house; mad monkey creatures and a woman with a green face.  Don’t turn nightmare on me.  I don’t want this dream.

A:         I really hope you don’t blame me for getting this organised.  I’m doing what I think is best – for you.  It wasn’t an option to stay as you were, you know that don’t you?  You’ll feel uprooted for a bit but I’m sure you’ll settle in.

B:         Stare blindly at the screen whilst the colours turn sepia?  I don’t think so, little pipsqueak too scared to come out of the curtains!  Get me a woman with a wand or at the very least my red slippers.  They must be in my suitcase, or my holdall or that Tesco bag.  Click, click, click.

A:         I do love you.  I do love you, Mum.  This is hard you know; as hard for me as it is for you in some ways.

B:         Turn it over.  Fred and Ginger are on the other side.  Flick the switch.  I’ve twisted long and hard enough for one day.  Give me my tablets. Close the door.  Turn up the lights before you go.

A beginning?  An end?  The performers deliver this text in direct address, most of the time speaking alone, occasionally in chorus.  Perhaps to start they are lighting matches in the darkness, then picking up torches to illuminate their faces, then gradually they are lit from above or even below...

Is this enticing?

It was a night just like this night

When we said our goodbyes

Our toodlepips

Bade our farewells

Auf wiedersehen pet

Ciao ciao bella

Adieu

We had a calling

To travel to pastures new

To venture forth into the unknown

To journey to a land far far away

To voyage to the stars

We made our excuses

We took a gap year

We made the break

It was time to take a hike

Get on our bike..s

Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more no more no more no more

We checked out

One by one…we discharged ourselves

We left the answering machine on

We left a calling card

We decided tele-transportation was the only way

We rode off into the sunset

We left you in the lurch

We left you in the pudding club

We jilted you at the altar

You were worried sick we’d had a car crash

(We had)

We resigned

(All of us)

(At the same time)

We forgot to clock out

It was a toilet break from which we never returned

We took early retirement

Incapacity benefit

Bribes

We got the hell out

(While the going was good)

We disappeared under mysterious circumstances

We thought sod it, let’s desert the sinking ship, there’s only rats here anyway

We crept away in the dead of night

We slinked off

Slunk?

It was time to abscond

Our numbers were up

We gave up the ghost

We passed on, we passed away, we kicked the bucket

We never stood a chance

We went boldly where no man had gone before

We gave you the slip

We flounced out

We’d never known a night like it and we didn’t fancy the journey home neither

We slung our hooks

We were evacuated, deported, extradited, ejaculated

We went into hiding

We melted into thin air

We were buried in mass graves

We were beaten to a pulp

We were burnt at the stake

We were dropped from planes

You can still find parts of us in the woods in shallow graves

We turned a corner just…

So we were just out of view

Just out of touch

We mosied on out

We abandoned ship

We executed the exit strategy

We were guillotined, quarantined, left for dead

We walked the plank

We bowed out

We left the building

We went into hiding

We hopped/ skipped/ jumped/ beat it

We scrammed, while our fearful heads were still on

We said we may be some time

We never left a note

We never said a word

Nobody knows what happened to us.