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?
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Bear with me
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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...
