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.