Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Thursday, August 02, 2007
A Walk Between - update
Following feedback from our scratch we have been thinking about what steps need to be taken next in the final five weeks before our show. Also, we are looking for a director and in order to describe what we are doing and what our piece is about, Tania and I have written a synopsis for A Walk Between.
A Walk Between - Synopsis
A walk between is a site-specific devised performance to be performed in the garden of Southside House, Wimbledon Common. The piece was inspired initially by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities in which the explorer Marco Polo describes all the places he has seen on his travels to the emperor Kublai Khan in a very visually rich language. It is in the Khan’s palace garden that all these places are described, coming together and are transported to an entirely new place. We were interested by the idea of bringing outside places in, in particular to a garden, a place that is neither outside or inside, surrounded by walls, but of a house, and in doing so, questioning what is real – the places we are in the present, the places we speak of – how can we adequately describe where we have been? That the places Marco Polo describes are seemingly far-ranging and diverse cities, but are in fact all descriptions of his home-town of Venice, is fundamental to the concept of the piece. How places can be contained in the mind, and transformed by each other through memory, and description is something we wish to explore.
It is a promenade performance where the audience are able to move freely throughout the garden and choose the length of time that they engage with it, and choose what they want to see, and how to interact with it – some might choose to sit for a while, and read some of the text that we have used as inspiration and put in to a booklet, some might want to engage with the various actors performing in various places in the garden.
There are two main characters. The traveller character is a character from the outside, a character of this time period, who has been travelling for a long time and in her suitcase brings stories of the places she has seen and the people she has met. All of these stories seem to link in to one another as the characters create a story – an old man waiting for letters from his daughter, the postman on a boat taking letters to the port…a letter to a mother in times of war. The traveller moves through the garden telling her stories at specific points, leaving behind traces – this might be objects from the outside or we have experimented with creating words that question her stories on postcards placed on the grass. We have talked about the possibility of her searching for something or someone from the past in the garden – perhaps she has been here before or perhaps she has heard of it somehow. It may be that she is searching for the garden character….. We need a thread to tie everything together so are wondering if the traveller is perhaps researching or writing about the history of Southside house and is therefore travelling there to see where all the characters from its history are located.
The second main character is going to be represented via alternative means to an actor. The garden character is inspired partly by the minotaur in Borge’s story House of Asterion (Labyrinths), who is trapped in the labyrinth, but according to him, by free-will and partly by a past inhabitant of Southside house who loved her garden so much that she would not leave during the first world war, despite the fact that the house was bombed twice, and her soldier son’s pleading letters to her to relocate to the countryside. We decided to represent her through alterior means other than an actor – i.e. through text (projected/printed) or the leaving behind of objects that hint at her present. We have also experimented with recorded sound on cd players and Dictaphones and are we are thinking this could all be the same voice spread throughout the garden to create a better sense of her. In our scratch it was felt that she was not evident enough throughout the garden but rather was located specifically in the temple area where a projection with dancing text, a pair of shoes and a voice recording speaking about her garden, came together. It is necessary that her presence is felt more for this piece to reflect our original intentions.
We want to develop the idea of the two main characters meeting somehow, not necessarily physically but the traveller’s awareness of her for example, and creating a tension between their contrasting time periods and locations.
In addition we also have devised a number of repetitive actions, some inspired by things one does in a garden and others by the stories the traveller delivers – for example, the de-petalling of flowers, the re-arranging of a miniature wooden city, the hanging of tissue-paper with handwritten text on a washing line. Four or five actors will perform these actions. These characters are meant as a link between the two worlds and the two main characters. They sit on the wall between the inside and the outside. Whilst their actions may be of a garden environment perhaps, an eccentricity gives an edge. Perhaps the actor arranging chairs and tables for a dinner party could invite audience members to sit down and eat with him. Perhaps it is through these characters that the story of the garden character is unravelled. Southside House has a great history where numerous important historical characters, kings and queens, the lovers of important militia men, actors etc. stayed, or were sheltered for various reasons.
We are thinking about a durational piece – maybe two to three hours, where the atmosphere becomes almost party-like, and the audience becomes relaxed enough to engage with the performers and with each other. It is about entering in to a world and feeling immersed in it. We would like the audience to consider the duality of the outside and inside worlds. How our memories of places affect our present experience, how new places can be created within another place through storytelling….
At the same time we do not want it to become so relaxed that any tension created by the narrative disperses. We have to moderate the behaviour of the audience somehow.
Things to work on:
- Finding the points of tension in the narrative to maintain the audience’s interest and it not to become just a pretty promenade piece. What is the audience questioning? What are we making them think about?
- Enhancing the sense of the garden character. Developing her story and the meeting point between her and the traveller. Creating a link between her and the actions – they might reference her somehow.
- Raising awareness of the wall as a partition between the outside and the inside. This duality of the outside and the inside is a key idea of the piece and we wish to convey this. The garden as an outside area enclosed by walls is something that needs to be emphasised.
- Finding alternative ways of inserting text in to the garden, rather than on white paper. In the scratch we placed fragments of a poem about a garden printed on to paper on the ground, near the flowerbeds, surrounded by leaves, but it was felt that this was too imposing and the audience didn’t really read it. Text as a visual is a key area of Tania’s research and this needs to be achieved somehow. We also want the audience to be aware of the texts that have inspired us and we have drawn from. We need to invistigate natural materials that text can be placed on or text as a sound – we used a Dictaphone in the scratch, recording speech and passing it around and response to this was positive.
- Thinking about the documentation – are we going to have an exhibition space at the beginning of the garden with the postcards and photos etc. displayed in an exhibition manner? This follows from out desire to make the audience aware of the collecting and research period to the project.
- Overcome an uneasiness about the traveller character just delivering a monologue. Maybe this is fine, but we want to investigate the possibility of her interacting with the other characters in the garden, as it is through them that she finds out about the garden character, and the importance of this garden.
A Walk Between - Synopsis
A walk between is a site-specific devised performance to be performed in the garden of Southside House, Wimbledon Common. The piece was inspired initially by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities in which the explorer Marco Polo describes all the places he has seen on his travels to the emperor Kublai Khan in a very visually rich language. It is in the Khan’s palace garden that all these places are described, coming together and are transported to an entirely new place. We were interested by the idea of bringing outside places in, in particular to a garden, a place that is neither outside or inside, surrounded by walls, but of a house, and in doing so, questioning what is real – the places we are in the present, the places we speak of – how can we adequately describe where we have been? That the places Marco Polo describes are seemingly far-ranging and diverse cities, but are in fact all descriptions of his home-town of Venice, is fundamental to the concept of the piece. How places can be contained in the mind, and transformed by each other through memory, and description is something we wish to explore.
It is a promenade performance where the audience are able to move freely throughout the garden and choose the length of time that they engage with it, and choose what they want to see, and how to interact with it – some might choose to sit for a while, and read some of the text that we have used as inspiration and put in to a booklet, some might want to engage with the various actors performing in various places in the garden.
There are two main characters. The traveller character is a character from the outside, a character of this time period, who has been travelling for a long time and in her suitcase brings stories of the places she has seen and the people she has met. All of these stories seem to link in to one another as the characters create a story – an old man waiting for letters from his daughter, the postman on a boat taking letters to the port…a letter to a mother in times of war. The traveller moves through the garden telling her stories at specific points, leaving behind traces – this might be objects from the outside or we have experimented with creating words that question her stories on postcards placed on the grass. We have talked about the possibility of her searching for something or someone from the past in the garden – perhaps she has been here before or perhaps she has heard of it somehow. It may be that she is searching for the garden character….. We need a thread to tie everything together so are wondering if the traveller is perhaps researching or writing about the history of Southside house and is therefore travelling there to see where all the characters from its history are located.
The second main character is going to be represented via alternative means to an actor. The garden character is inspired partly by the minotaur in Borge’s story House of Asterion (Labyrinths), who is trapped in the labyrinth, but according to him, by free-will and partly by a past inhabitant of Southside house who loved her garden so much that she would not leave during the first world war, despite the fact that the house was bombed twice, and her soldier son’s pleading letters to her to relocate to the countryside. We decided to represent her through alterior means other than an actor – i.e. through text (projected/printed) or the leaving behind of objects that hint at her present. We have also experimented with recorded sound on cd players and Dictaphones and are we are thinking this could all be the same voice spread throughout the garden to create a better sense of her. In our scratch it was felt that she was not evident enough throughout the garden but rather was located specifically in the temple area where a projection with dancing text, a pair of shoes and a voice recording speaking about her garden, came together. It is necessary that her presence is felt more for this piece to reflect our original intentions.
We want to develop the idea of the two main characters meeting somehow, not necessarily physically but the traveller’s awareness of her for example, and creating a tension between their contrasting time periods and locations.
In addition we also have devised a number of repetitive actions, some inspired by things one does in a garden and others by the stories the traveller delivers – for example, the de-petalling of flowers, the re-arranging of a miniature wooden city, the hanging of tissue-paper with handwritten text on a washing line. Four or five actors will perform these actions. These characters are meant as a link between the two worlds and the two main characters. They sit on the wall between the inside and the outside. Whilst their actions may be of a garden environment perhaps, an eccentricity gives an edge. Perhaps the actor arranging chairs and tables for a dinner party could invite audience members to sit down and eat with him. Perhaps it is through these characters that the story of the garden character is unravelled. Southside House has a great history where numerous important historical characters, kings and queens, the lovers of important militia men, actors etc. stayed, or were sheltered for various reasons.
We are thinking about a durational piece – maybe two to three hours, where the atmosphere becomes almost party-like, and the audience becomes relaxed enough to engage with the performers and with each other. It is about entering in to a world and feeling immersed in it. We would like the audience to consider the duality of the outside and inside worlds. How our memories of places affect our present experience, how new places can be created within another place through storytelling….
At the same time we do not want it to become so relaxed that any tension created by the narrative disperses. We have to moderate the behaviour of the audience somehow.
Things to work on:
- Finding the points of tension in the narrative to maintain the audience’s interest and it not to become just a pretty promenade piece. What is the audience questioning? What are we making them think about?
- Enhancing the sense of the garden character. Developing her story and the meeting point between her and the traveller. Creating a link between her and the actions – they might reference her somehow.
- Raising awareness of the wall as a partition between the outside and the inside. This duality of the outside and the inside is a key idea of the piece and we wish to convey this. The garden as an outside area enclosed by walls is something that needs to be emphasised.
- Finding alternative ways of inserting text in to the garden, rather than on white paper. In the scratch we placed fragments of a poem about a garden printed on to paper on the ground, near the flowerbeds, surrounded by leaves, but it was felt that this was too imposing and the audience didn’t really read it. Text as a visual is a key area of Tania’s research and this needs to be achieved somehow. We also want the audience to be aware of the texts that have inspired us and we have drawn from. We need to invistigate natural materials that text can be placed on or text as a sound – we used a Dictaphone in the scratch, recording speech and passing it around and response to this was positive.
- Thinking about the documentation – are we going to have an exhibition space at the beginning of the garden with the postcards and photos etc. displayed in an exhibition manner? This follows from out desire to make the audience aware of the collecting and research period to the project.
- Overcome an uneasiness about the traveller character just delivering a monologue. Maybe this is fine, but we want to investigate the possibility of her interacting with the other characters in the garden, as it is through them that she finds out about the garden character, and the importance of this garden.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Prague Scenofest
I have just got back from a week spent at the Prague Quadrennial scenography festival where I did a five day workshop with the French Scenographer Jean-Guy Lecat, who worked on many productions with Peter Brooke. Throughout these five days I worked with nine other people, all of different nationalities on a short piece that we devised together inspired by a news story about rubber ducks who were released in to the ocean after their container capsized in a storm, and spent up to fourteen years trapped in currents on the Atlantic before being washed up on shores all over the world. The international flavour of the story mirrored rather nicely the many different directions we had all come from to meet in Prague, and gave us an immediate potency to work with. Our performance mainly came from a box-like structure made from paper and bamboo (the only materials we were given) which we enclosed the "ducks" within, and with some beautiful lighting and piano music, we depicted the struggle to escape and then the fear of not knowing where to go with the new found freedom. A lot more could be said about the whole process and the performance itself but time is under pressure this week! But one of the things that stuck out in the feedback after the three performances (there were two other groups, who did some incredible work) was the neglection of words in all of them. We had all seemed to get rather stuck on some beautiful images and based our performances around them, which is reflective of our culture as a whole these days. For our group at least, we became somewhat trapped by the form of the ducks and not knowing how to give them words to speak, and so instead relied on sounds and movement but words are still the foundation of theatre. In Aristophone's The Birds which was one of the themes for the whole quadrennial, the birds speak quite naturally.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Squirrel Play
I had a great morning working with Elyssa today on the squirrel piece. Things have changed quite a bit since the first meeting.
Lou has decided to completely drop out which has meant that Elyssa had to totally reassess the piece and the narrative of it as she will now be the only performer. She has also wisely decided not to push the piece too quickly and cancel the performance this weekend and try and find another space, sometime in July, so that she can keep the motivation going and develop it further. I am excited about this as it means I can be involved after I get back from Prague.
It was really interesting to have a discussion about dramaturgy - of this piece and in general, in terms of how things change but how they often come full circle to the original origins of the idea, whether that be just a tiny part of it; i.e. in this example, it was Elyssa who was originally thinking about the piece, as a response to an article she found about grey squirrels as menaces in a magazine, and then thinking about them in terms of the 'other' and our attitudes to immigrants, and preserving our English identiy, whatever that is. Then after enthusiastic discussions with Lou, she was brought on board, characters developed and a love story between the squirrel and the jam making lady developed. However, things have now returned somewhat to their origins, but that process has not been forgotten. The character of the squirrel is still prsent. We had an interesting discussion about how the way you devise work, the strategies you take and the process you develop, can often or in Elyssa's opinion, always, inevitably become the dramaturgy of the piece itself. With hindsight, looking back at the nature in which the piece was conceived, it is clear that it was always going to be a one-woman show.
Things Elyssa needs to think about now in working on the final stages, as she has most of the elements in place:
-Identifying the three stages of the preserve-making, which I think we have almost really. Trying this out practically in a performance context, and working out where these are going to sit within the piece, as the tension of having something cooking on stage could be disastrous, if trying to focus the audience's attention on another element.
-Play with the squirrel mask as this will help develop the character - do we want him to be presented as a victim or a nuisance? This will effect greatly the message of the piece.
Lou has decided to completely drop out which has meant that Elyssa had to totally reassess the piece and the narrative of it as she will now be the only performer. She has also wisely decided not to push the piece too quickly and cancel the performance this weekend and try and find another space, sometime in July, so that she can keep the motivation going and develop it further. I am excited about this as it means I can be involved after I get back from Prague.
It was really interesting to have a discussion about dramaturgy - of this piece and in general, in terms of how things change but how they often come full circle to the original origins of the idea, whether that be just a tiny part of it; i.e. in this example, it was Elyssa who was originally thinking about the piece, as a response to an article she found about grey squirrels as menaces in a magazine, and then thinking about them in terms of the 'other' and our attitudes to immigrants, and preserving our English identiy, whatever that is. Then after enthusiastic discussions with Lou, she was brought on board, characters developed and a love story between the squirrel and the jam making lady developed. However, things have now returned somewhat to their origins, but that process has not been forgotten. The character of the squirrel is still prsent. We had an interesting discussion about how the way you devise work, the strategies you take and the process you develop, can often or in Elyssa's opinion, always, inevitably become the dramaturgy of the piece itself. With hindsight, looking back at the nature in which the piece was conceived, it is clear that it was always going to be a one-woman show.
Things Elyssa needs to think about now in working on the final stages, as she has most of the elements in place:
-Identifying the three stages of the preserve-making, which I think we have almost really. Trying this out practically in a performance context, and working out where these are going to sit within the piece, as the tension of having something cooking on stage could be disastrous, if trying to focus the audience's attention on another element.
-Play with the squirrel mask as this will help develop the character - do we want him to be presented as a victim or a nuisance? This will effect greatly the message of the piece.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Things are getting busy!
All sorts of opportunities have come up - which is great as they are informing my research paper but I'm finding I'm very busy!
Yesterday I joined the Punchdrunk design team at the BAC to help with decorating some of the rooms for the upcoming production of Masque of the Red Death. It all seems very exciting as they're taking over the whole building and there's a hell of a lot of work to do, but there's something rather beautiful about returning the building to it's original Victorian era, even if it is going to be very dark and spooky! It will be interesting to return in a couple of weeks when I get back from the Prague Quadrennial and see how things have progressed.
I also met up with Elyssa again at the weekend to see what she'd come up with so far. There were a few things to think about:
- How to introduce the piece. Elyssa had tried speaking to the audience as herself before then going in to character. Not sure if that works yet. A bit of time needs to be spent for the transition, building up the set for example, setting out the table of jam making equipment.
- She is thinking of having a live actress to play the radio voice, but where will she be positioned? Within the house too? Up on a shelf perhaps!
- Lou was playing the guitar, and possibly going to be wearing a squirrel mask but for me that wasn't quite working. I think her moving downstage continuously to interact and then moving upstage to sit on her tree stump was too jarring. But this makes the dream sequences complicated, if she is not going to be involved. How will the squirrel be represented?
Today I found out that Lou will not be appearing at all which I think in a way will solve some of these problems and give Elyssa the chance to just think about developing her own character, but some of these issues still remain. How for example are the squirrels going to be conjured up? All remains to be seen in rehearsal at CPT tomorrow.
Yesterday I joined the Punchdrunk design team at the BAC to help with decorating some of the rooms for the upcoming production of Masque of the Red Death. It all seems very exciting as they're taking over the whole building and there's a hell of a lot of work to do, but there's something rather beautiful about returning the building to it's original Victorian era, even if it is going to be very dark and spooky! It will be interesting to return in a couple of weeks when I get back from the Prague Quadrennial and see how things have progressed.
I also met up with Elyssa again at the weekend to see what she'd come up with so far. There were a few things to think about:
- How to introduce the piece. Elyssa had tried speaking to the audience as herself before then going in to character. Not sure if that works yet. A bit of time needs to be spent for the transition, building up the set for example, setting out the table of jam making equipment.
- She is thinking of having a live actress to play the radio voice, but where will she be positioned? Within the house too? Up on a shelf perhaps!
- Lou was playing the guitar, and possibly going to be wearing a squirrel mask but for me that wasn't quite working. I think her moving downstage continuously to interact and then moving upstage to sit on her tree stump was too jarring. But this makes the dream sequences complicated, if she is not going to be involved. How will the squirrel be represented?
Today I found out that Lou will not be appearing at all which I think in a way will solve some of these problems and give Elyssa the chance to just think about developing her own character, but some of these issues still remain. How for example are the squirrels going to be conjured up? All remains to be seen in rehearsal at CPT tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Grey Squirrel Project
Elyssa Livergant at Central School of Speech and Drama has asked me to be the dramaturg on a project she is working on for the next three weeks. It is all about Grey Squirrels invading a ladies home! Check it out at http://www.cptheatre.co.uk/event_details.php?sectionid=theatre&eventid=194
This is the first of my diary entries for it:
I met Elyssa and Lou from Rough Memory at Camden People’s Theatre to discuss the project they are working on for the next three weeks. It is called Kiss From the Last Grey Squirrel and is to be performed in mid-June as part of CPT’s performance festival.
Lou has had to take the decision to drop out as one of the main performers resulting in a radical rethinking of the narrative content. With Elyssa as the main performer, Lou may well appear in it as the musician/squirrel representative.
Elyssa went through the narrative structure established so far with me and we decided that there was a gap in the final scenes that needed to be fleshed out, so we re-jiggled things, bringing the scene where the protagonist receives a letter from an anxious friend nearer to the end, therefore becoming a primary motivation for the final dream sequence being more frantic and tense.
The idea of the lady making jams throughout the piece was a particularly strong one for me and I immediately had visions of her fortifying her house against the invading squirrels with hundreds of jam-jars, all gooey and red.
Elyssa has asked me to particularly think about the whole jam-making process, whether it should be one continuous jam-making session throughout the piece (which I think should be the case, as it will add to the tension, that the lady perhaps has to keep checking on the progress despite being terrified of the squirrels, and this is her main concern) or separate jams. For me, the making of the preserves is the key because, the state of it, i.e. whether she has accomplished her task, or failed/burnt it, whatever, determines the message given out about the feeling towards the invasion of the squirrels. Does the lady give up all that was previously important to her in order to fight the battle against them and protect her home?
Monday, May 07, 2007
Bringing together....
In preparation for our performance proposal presentation next week I am trying to bring together all our ideas, but no piece of paper seems big enough, so I will commit them to the endless world of cyber space.
After seeing a short piece at the BAC on saturday night as part of the End of the World event, I am thinking about the simplicity of storytelling - the use of humour to engage the audience and a silence at the end which gave real poignancy. Text was projected into a black box - at times only one or two words. It was kept simple and unpretentious....."You'll be ok"....."Don't Worry". A personal story of an isolated explorer, we connected with him as a 'storyteller' told us about his life. I am thinking more and more about the dramaturg being the storyteller. Leading the audience around the garden - not in a forceful way, but gently, giving them fragments of a story, simple words.
I am soon to see Kneehigh's 'A Matter of Life and Death' at the NT and am reflecting on the use of music to bring an earthy quality to a performance. The combination of traditional music and touching lyrics to enhance the story. Can we use this in the garden? I have something in mind.....
Kneehigh are also not afraid to bring the personal and semi-autobiographical to their work - Emma Rice dedicates their current show to her grandfather and the handbells are rung on stage for him. Why should we shy away from this? A member of the family at Southside has provided much inspiration....a woman who would not leave when all around her was collapsing, sons fighting in the war, bombs directly hitting her house - but she stayed for her beloved garden.
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