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...