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?

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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...

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.