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.