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.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Reflections
Things are definitely winding down after a few hectic weeks. There is much to think about, but I am looking forward to doing that thinking in foreign places to bring a new light to them as I go off for the holidays.
The images above are from mine and Tania's film installation at the Trinity Buoy Wharf exhibition last week which I think went quite well. We had a mixed response - generally positive. I think people enjoyed the imagery and the postcard element which encouraged an active participation. The site related footage also went down well - in fact, it seems that the shot of the boat moving across the water towards the viewer with a bit of the text, was all that was needed. The primary message given in the feedback session was that there was too much going on, too many images, combined with all the text overlaid, the postcards on the wall and the voiceover, ultimately resulting in a withdrawal of the viewer. I think this is something to take in consideration generally with the final project, for this film was a research exercise that we hope to fold back in to the performance in september. We actually have a lot of really good ideas for our piece, it is just a case now of paring them down and focusing on the strong ones. It will be a good challenge to see how Tania and I cope with compromising on ideas to leave one true voice - but then that is the task of the dramaturg! I met with the dramaturg Elyssa Livergant last week and she definitely echoed this view of the dramaturg as basically a selfless participant - the communicating of the essence of the piece the primary task.
My work with Rich in the Centre for Drawing last week was a productive exercise. 'Sounding Character' was a two day experiment with scriptwriting between the dramatist and the dramaturg and I think that Rich found it useful for developing more of his script for his play. We will have a feedback session soon. I think the most useful aspect was just to have conversations about the piece, with a period of time devoted to this, as working on our individual projects can be a bit isolating at times. At different points throughout the two days, I did feel like a bit of an imposter though, but I think that this is down to lack of experience as a dramaturg which is understandable. I felt like I needed a resource of tried and tested playwriting exercises to fall back on, and part of my research at the moment, is talking to dramaturgs about the way they work, and the methods they use for encouraging creation. As I am discovering though, there is no one way of working. But I don't think that conversation is something to be looked down upon - I know from personal experience that some people work better when they have another person acting as a sounding board for ideas, and maybe a large part of my personal dramaturg model will be this.
I just want to mention Punchdrunk's 'Faust' which I saw last week in Wapping, which was an incredible experience. The atmosphere was quite simply electric, as audience members had a safe anonymity behind their masks, free to laugh with a degree of hysteria or to be absolutely terrified by the enormous set and frequent points when one would find themselves alone in a huge dark room full of smoke and eery fern trees. The budget must have been huge but I believe that Tania and I can definitely take something away from this performance, in terms of a richly visual piece, with not much dialogue at all - the atmosphere was created by a free moving audience, where one would often be running to catch up with a performer as they swept through rooms and jumped across walls. It was about a personal experience within a collective, and to achieve this in our much smaller scale garden piece would be magnificent!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The state of things......
How time rushes by, and how much things have moved on......
I was forced to define my practice and the place in which I feel most comfortable in this whole devising process. In doing this I have been guided towards dramaturgy, it being the predominant role I took on (unintentionally but naturally)in the collaborative project, and thinking about the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre. Hence, this has become my research project. It is a rich field for study and one that is very current in British theatre today. At present I am organising to meet various dramaturgs to talk with them about their work and how they define their role individually within a company.
And so to the final show....
I have posted an extract below from Calvino's Invisible Cities which is for me, the main inspiration behind the piece. I am concerned with places that contain our memories, and a sense of home. I want to convey this sense of place to the audience, that which compares to the hearing of a piece of music or song that instantly transports us to another time or place. Tania and I have secured a site for our final performance, the garden of Southside House in Wimbledon Village, and I am very excited about this. The next step is to document the site throughly through photography and film footage, as a tool to be used in rehearsal. A major question to answer soon is whether this is a site-specific piece or a site-sensitive piece?....
An issue that arose over the last few days was the concept of me performing in the final show, which had been the idea since the start of discussions with Tania. But now that my research is specifically about the role of the dramaturg and this is the role I intend to take on, I do not think that this is possible. The whole nature of dramaturgy is to bring an outside eye in to the process, to be able to see things from a removed perspective. How can I do this if I am also performing?
There are two characters.....the second character could perhaps be a more virtual realisation, represented through projections, voice overs, or text, which would directly link up with Tania's research which is about the use of text and graphics within performance.
The Garden Scene
KUBLAI: I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden.
POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of the leaves. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence, though I continue, without a moment’s pause, moving up a river green with crocodiles or counting the barrels of salted fish being lowered into the hold.
KUBLAI: I, too, am not sure I am here, strolling among the porphyry fountains, listening to the plashing echo, and not riding, caked with sweat and blood, at the head of my army, conquering the lands you will have to describe, or cutting off the fingers of the attackers scaling the walls of a besieged fortress.
POLO: Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadow of our lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped: you, from raising dust on the fields of battle; and I, from bargaining for sacks of pepper in distant bazaars. But each time we half close our eyes, in the midst of the din and the throng, we are allowed to withdraw here, dressed in silk kimonos, to ponder what we are seeing and living, to draw conclusions, to contemplate from the distance.
KUBLAI: Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East around them.
POLO: Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan’s palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which is outside.
Monday, January 29, 2007
A View From The Shore
On Friday I went to see chereographer Jacky Lansley's dance piece 'A view from the shore' at the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House. It was quite pertinent to my own research, as it was a site-specific piece devised whilst on location on the Cornish coast, aiming to translate this experience to a theatrical space and audience. It was interesting to hear the chereographer and performers talk afterwards about the process. The performers stated that something of that original experience of playing on the rocks, wading in the sea, standing on the edge of a cliff, definitely stayed with them whilst performing. Lansley talked about the natural sense of play one has as a child, and about how she wishes to reinsert into through her dance pieces. I asked her why bring this originally site-specific piece indoors, and what is added to it by putting it in a theatrical space? She was keen to stress that she has done many outdoor site-specific pieces prior to this, but in this case, she wanted to hold the experience of an outdoor location close, internalize it through dance, and then share it in an urban environment, especially at this fragile time in our culture. This process is something that I am thinking about greatly. For me it is human experience of the outdoors that I am interested in - but do I want to perform this with the outdoors as the backdrop, or do I want to highlight it, hold it up in an indoor, theatrical environment? Something to be explored in workshops.
I feel there might be a place for dance in my piece, but with limits.... I think contemporary dance can often be far too long. However there is nothing quite like dance for expressing instinctive reactions to place and spaces. But I feel that often it is only a sequence of a few gestures or movements needed. Keep it simple and (hopefully) touching.
The lighting in this production was particularly beautiful. As well as lamps above, free standing lamps were positioned at the dancer's height and bathed them in a warm yellow as they danced against an intense blue backdrop. The projection behind was faded in and out tastefully, never detracting from the performers, however it was a little too mundane to be of much interest - a sea slowly lapping, but without much emotion or colour, or definition.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Thoughts after my presentation
Feedback from my presentation given last week confirmed my own recognition that I need to channel my ideas, work out what it is that really gets me, and where I position myself within this project.
-What do I mean by nature? Is it nature that really interests me here? I don't mean using natural materials so much, it's more about the importance of place. Do I mean site-specific performance? (look at Nick Kaye)
-I talked about the bringing of the outside in - but why? Do I not lose some of the original magic? Is it a half-hearted attempt, based on the fear of what can go wrong with outdoor performance?
- Maybe it's the symbol of nature rather than nature itself.....the associations, and meanings it can convey, particularly the tree as a symbol here.
- Isn't this a nostalgic view of nature? What about it as a force to be reckoned with...
I think on reflection, that what really gets me inside, what I want to focus on, is all about the importance of certain places to human beings, the associations and memories this can conjure up, and trying to convey this feeling to an audience. For me "nature" as a theme came about after my time spent living in New Zealand last year. I lived in a very rural, quite remote community, on farm land. From my cottage, no other buildings could be seen. I looked out every morning to see sheep staring back at me, and turkeys slept the night on my fence. It was idyllic, but certainly at times, isolating. I developed a relationship with the land, my job out there as a grapepicker bringing me in to physical contact with it. Through this repetive, mundane action of snipping the grapes and dropping them in to a bucket, day in day out, for several months, in all weathers, I achieved a state of peace. It was in these times, in between easy small-talk with the other grapepickers (if only I could show you some of these characters!), that I would think about the next step, what I was going to do next. I remember the specific moment, the exact vine I was standing by, when I decided to do this course.
And now back in England, living in London, I have a completely different life - it's urban, jam-packed, fast-paced - I have not seen a field for months. It's another side of me. Looking back at a year ago, my personal space then, and the space I live in now are polar opposites, totally untangible. How do I recreate that feeling? How do I retain a sense of that space here in London?
"Birds flying high you know how I feel,
Sun in the sky you know how I feel,
Reeds drifting on by you know how I feel,
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me,
and I'm feeling good."
My research so far.....
Suzi Gablik’s The Reenchantment of Art, first published in 1991, and a follow-up to her seminal Has Modernism Failed? (in which she laid a scathing attack on the contemporary art scene), proffers a new direction for the arts, where a renewed sense of community is intrinsic, where a deeper sense of moral obligation is felt by artists, in contrast to the autonomy and isolation of the avant-garde artist, and which leads to the production of more meaningful work. Gablik suggests that at the time, the art world was coming to the end of a dominant patriarchal and Cartesian cultural paradigm, and that feminine principles of harmonious social interaction, with a greater awareness of ones place in the world, and understanding and appreciation of nature, would emerge. This is echoed by John Lane in The Living Tree: Art and the Sacred (1998), who writes that the hypermasculanized artistic canon ‘will be abandoned in favour of more participatory, communal forms, emphasising celebration, and the sacral mystery.’(p.34) For both Gablik and Lane, a human sense of interconnectedness, both with the earth, and with each other, is key, and works which harness ritual, myth and the spiritual are modes of restoring this sense of balance. Gablik sites the work of many artists, including Fern Schaffer, Rachel Rosenthal and Andy Goldsworthy, who all created, and are still creating works that deal largely with ecological themes, where a sense of place and the order of things is central. Some are cynical comments on human destruction of the planet, some use natural materials and forms to incite contemplation of the beauty of nature, and others use shamanist ritual to rediscover a basic sense of spiritual existence. There are plenty of examples of this “ecological art”, but Gablik is uncertain of the ability of the art world to achieve the cultural shift that she acknowledges as necessary.
So how much has changed since 1991? Have artists managed to reinsert the soul in to the arts? If so, how are artists reconciling this more socially aware work with the needs of the commercial art market?
In 2005, the artist David Buckland wrote of the work produced by fellow members of Cape Farewell, a project that has taken artists, writers, film makers and choreographers on several expeditions on board a ship to the arctic, that “we intend to communicate through art works our understanding of the changing climate on a human scale, so that our individual lives can have meaning in what is a global problem." In a project which involves many well-known names, such as Antony Gormley, Siobhan Davies, Ian McEwan and Rachel Whiteread, work inspired by the wide open spaces of the arctic, has been extensively exhibited recently at both the Liverpool Biennial and the Natural History Museum in London.
In 1998, the artistic duo, Christo and Jean-Claude carried out a project entitled Wrapped Trees, in which they veiled 178 trees just north of Basel with 55,000 square metres of silver-grey material. The couple maintain that their work contains no deeper meaning other than to simply make the landscape more beautiful, or to draw attention to an existing beauty, and in this work, the original character of the individual trees was maintained as the natural shape of the branches formed the shape of the material against the sky.
Jacky Lansley’s ‘View from the Shore’, a dance piece, which is soon to be shown at the Clore Studio in the Royal Opera House, aims to translate the human experience of the Cornish coastal experience in to the theatrical space. I am particularly interested in the bringing in of the outside, natural world, to the theatre or performance space. There is something magical about repositioning trees on to the stage for example, immediately imbuing the space with mythical, fairytale, or religious connotations.
I am anxious that this does not become a piece about land art however, for not only has land art been extensively investigated in the last four decades, but also I am interested more in the spiritual and ritualistic aspects of contemporary art (which can indeed be found in much “land” art), rather than the specific use of landscape. Instead, it is the marriage of natural forms and religious or spiritual language resulting in a moving and personal experience which grasps me. For this reason, the symbol of the tree has become something of a talisman in my research as it embodies a myriad of natural, mythical and religious references. As John Lane writes, ‘I have dreamed the Living Tree, an amalgam of life and the sacred.’ (p. xi)
Olafur Eliasson is an example of an artist deploying the landscape to generate quasi-religious experiences. Eliasson has been described as a modern day Caspar David Friedrich (a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century romantic artist who cast the German landscape in the role of the Christian altar), deploying a new kind of “techno-romanticism” which explores human perception of the world through the union between nature, art and technology. In Eliasson’s 2004 work ‘The Weather Project’ for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, a huge sun made up of hundreds of tiny lamps was seen permanently rising through the mist, and this, combined with a mirrored ceiling, created the powerful effect on the viewer that the artist describes as ‘seeing yourself sensing’.
In conclusion, although I am certain of the topic matter, I am not fixed upon the specific question I wish to answer. Perhaps it is a response to Gablik’s book, by investigating whether artists have achieved the “Reenchantment Project”? Is it enough however, to simply be describing the work of artists who harness the spiritual in their creativity? Alternatively, maybe this piece could be a response to the critical studies lectures, looking at issues of autonomy and social engagement specifically through artists that deploy an ecological subject matter thus making a comment on the troubled state of our environment, and therefore being socially engaged?
Performing Nature: Annotated Bibliography
Caughey, Liz, Virginia King: Sculptor, (Auckland: David Bateman, 2005).
- A monograph on the New Zealand sculptor Virginia King who largely uses natural forms and materials, to create works often inspired by spiritual source material - ‘a visual presentation of innovative sculptural works that carry echoes of history, the natural environment and mythology.’
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, (London: Vintage, 1997).
- Gablik refers to Calvino’s book which makes something beautiful out of the tension between the imaginary and the real. A potential source for performance.
Elkins, James. On the strange place of religion in contemporary art (London: Routledge, 2004).
- Since the renaissance, the artist himself became the primary topic in art and art historians have since distanced themselves from the idea of spirituality. Elkins argues that modern spirituality and contemporary art rarely work successfully together, but at the same time God is unavoidably still part of the language of art.
Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantment of Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991).
- Gablik argues for a new direction in art which embraces an enhanced sense of community, an enlarged ecological perspective, and access to mythic and archetypal sources of spiritual life, set against the autonomous, individualistic character of much modern art. Gablik’s book is engaging and positive in its hopefulness, but does not offer any answers
Goldsworthy, Andy, Time, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000).
Lane, John, The Living Tree: Art and the Sacred (Hartland: Green Books, 1998).
- John Lane, echoing Suzi Gablik, looks forward to a time when more universal forms of creative participation, rooted in the spiritual, have replaced the glittering consumerism of the entertainment industry and the isolation of the avant-garde.
The South Bank Centre, London, The Tree of Life: New Images of an Ancient Symbol, exh. cat., 1989.
-This catalogue has proved useful in listing numerous biblical references to the tree as a symbol and how these have since been re-appropriated by art.
Watney, Simon, Anya Gallaccio (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2003).
- Anya Gallaccio’s work frequently employs the effects of time upon elements of the natural world, displaying it as a beautiful cyclical action. Several of her works including ‘Beat’ and ‘Because I Could Not Stop’, are imbued with Edenic imagery using the tree or multiple trees as the primary focus.
Wilson, Robert, Wilson, Robert: 14 Stations (Munich: Prestel, 2000).
- In Wilson’s ‘14 Stations’ (2000), the artist reinvests the fourteen stations of the cross (the fourteen moments in time, the Via Crucis, that describe Jesus’ journey from condemnation to crucifixion), with new meaning. Wilson writes - “My work is an environment, an installation that brings together elements of architecture, theatre, sculpture, art, music and language. In a certain sense, it is a mental landscape. Call it an encounter of different cultural traditions…in which I have tried to invent my own language. It is like a mysterious journey that one experiences. If you don’t know anything about Christianity, it’s OK, but if you know something about it, you’ll see it in a different context.”
Wilson, Robert, and Trevor Fairbrother (ed), Robert Wilson's vision: an exhibition of works by Robert Wilson ; with a sound environment by Hans Peter Kuhn (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991).
Performing Nature - Intended Bibliography
Abram, David, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (London: Vintage, 1997).
Aston, Elaine, and George Savona, Theatre as sign-system: a semiotics of text and performance (London: Routledge, 1991)
Bachelard, Guy, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
Bronislaw, Szerszynski, Wallace Heim and Claire Waterton (eds) Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
Buckland, David (ed.) Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change (London: Cape Farewell, 2006).
Crouch, David, The Art of Allotments, (London: Five Leaves Publications, 2001).
Gablik, Suzi, Has Modernism Failed? ( New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984).
Heathfield, Adrian (ed.), Live: Art and Performance (London: Tate, 2004).
Kastner, Jeffrey, Land and Environmental Art: Themes and Movements (London: Phaidon, 1998).
May, Susan (ed.) The Weather Project: Olafur Eliasson (London: Tate, exh. cat., 2003).
- The Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson is the fourth artist to take on the challenge of the cavernous space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Eliasson has built an international reputation from the installations and sculptural works he creates that engage, amaze and disorientate the viewer. His work explores human perception of the world and the boundaries between nature, art and technology. His works have used light, wind, steam, fire water and ice, combining these elemental materials with modern technology in unexpected ways.
Murphy, G. Ronald, Owl, the raven and the dove: The religious meaning of the Grimms' magic fairy tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Ranciere, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (New York: Continuum, 2004).
Sessions, George, Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (U.S.: Shambhala Publications, 1995).
-Discusses the fundamental relationship between human beings and nature, and suggests an ethical and philosophical foundation for environmental protection in the next hundred years.
Tufnell, Ben, Land Art (London: Tate, 2006).
So how much has changed since 1991? Have artists managed to reinsert the soul in to the arts? If so, how are artists reconciling this more socially aware work with the needs of the commercial art market?
In 2005, the artist David Buckland wrote of the work produced by fellow members of Cape Farewell, a project that has taken artists, writers, film makers and choreographers on several expeditions on board a ship to the arctic, that “we intend to communicate through art works our understanding of the changing climate on a human scale, so that our individual lives can have meaning in what is a global problem." In a project which involves many well-known names, such as Antony Gormley, Siobhan Davies, Ian McEwan and Rachel Whiteread, work inspired by the wide open spaces of the arctic, has been extensively exhibited recently at both the Liverpool Biennial and the Natural History Museum in London.
In 1998, the artistic duo, Christo and Jean-Claude carried out a project entitled Wrapped Trees, in which they veiled 178 trees just north of Basel with 55,000 square metres of silver-grey material. The couple maintain that their work contains no deeper meaning other than to simply make the landscape more beautiful, or to draw attention to an existing beauty, and in this work, the original character of the individual trees was maintained as the natural shape of the branches formed the shape of the material against the sky.
Jacky Lansley’s ‘View from the Shore’, a dance piece, which is soon to be shown at the Clore Studio in the Royal Opera House, aims to translate the human experience of the Cornish coastal experience in to the theatrical space. I am particularly interested in the bringing in of the outside, natural world, to the theatre or performance space. There is something magical about repositioning trees on to the stage for example, immediately imbuing the space with mythical, fairytale, or religious connotations.
I am anxious that this does not become a piece about land art however, for not only has land art been extensively investigated in the last four decades, but also I am interested more in the spiritual and ritualistic aspects of contemporary art (which can indeed be found in much “land” art), rather than the specific use of landscape. Instead, it is the marriage of natural forms and religious or spiritual language resulting in a moving and personal experience which grasps me. For this reason, the symbol of the tree has become something of a talisman in my research as it embodies a myriad of natural, mythical and religious references. As John Lane writes, ‘I have dreamed the Living Tree, an amalgam of life and the sacred.’ (p. xi)
Olafur Eliasson is an example of an artist deploying the landscape to generate quasi-religious experiences. Eliasson has been described as a modern day Caspar David Friedrich (a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century romantic artist who cast the German landscape in the role of the Christian altar), deploying a new kind of “techno-romanticism” which explores human perception of the world through the union between nature, art and technology. In Eliasson’s 2004 work ‘The Weather Project’ for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, a huge sun made up of hundreds of tiny lamps was seen permanently rising through the mist, and this, combined with a mirrored ceiling, created the powerful effect on the viewer that the artist describes as ‘seeing yourself sensing’.
In conclusion, although I am certain of the topic matter, I am not fixed upon the specific question I wish to answer. Perhaps it is a response to Gablik’s book, by investigating whether artists have achieved the “Reenchantment Project”? Is it enough however, to simply be describing the work of artists who harness the spiritual in their creativity? Alternatively, maybe this piece could be a response to the critical studies lectures, looking at issues of autonomy and social engagement specifically through artists that deploy an ecological subject matter thus making a comment on the troubled state of our environment, and therefore being socially engaged?
Performing Nature: Annotated Bibliography
Caughey, Liz, Virginia King: Sculptor, (Auckland: David Bateman, 2005).
- A monograph on the New Zealand sculptor Virginia King who largely uses natural forms and materials, to create works often inspired by spiritual source material - ‘a visual presentation of innovative sculptural works that carry echoes of history, the natural environment and mythology.’
Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, (London: Vintage, 1997).
- Gablik refers to Calvino’s book which makes something beautiful out of the tension between the imaginary and the real. A potential source for performance.
Elkins, James. On the strange place of religion in contemporary art (London: Routledge, 2004).
- Since the renaissance, the artist himself became the primary topic in art and art historians have since distanced themselves from the idea of spirituality. Elkins argues that modern spirituality and contemporary art rarely work successfully together, but at the same time God is unavoidably still part of the language of art.
Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantment of Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991).
- Gablik argues for a new direction in art which embraces an enhanced sense of community, an enlarged ecological perspective, and access to mythic and archetypal sources of spiritual life, set against the autonomous, individualistic character of much modern art. Gablik’s book is engaging and positive in its hopefulness, but does not offer any answers
Goldsworthy, Andy, Time, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000).
Lane, John, The Living Tree: Art and the Sacred (Hartland: Green Books, 1998).
- John Lane, echoing Suzi Gablik, looks forward to a time when more universal forms of creative participation, rooted in the spiritual, have replaced the glittering consumerism of the entertainment industry and the isolation of the avant-garde.
The South Bank Centre, London, The Tree of Life: New Images of an Ancient Symbol, exh. cat., 1989.
-This catalogue has proved useful in listing numerous biblical references to the tree as a symbol and how these have since been re-appropriated by art.
Watney, Simon, Anya Gallaccio (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2003).
- Anya Gallaccio’s work frequently employs the effects of time upon elements of the natural world, displaying it as a beautiful cyclical action. Several of her works including ‘Beat’ and ‘Because I Could Not Stop’, are imbued with Edenic imagery using the tree or multiple trees as the primary focus.
Wilson, Robert, Wilson, Robert: 14 Stations (Munich: Prestel, 2000).
- In Wilson’s ‘14 Stations’ (2000), the artist reinvests the fourteen stations of the cross (the fourteen moments in time, the Via Crucis, that describe Jesus’ journey from condemnation to crucifixion), with new meaning. Wilson writes - “My work is an environment, an installation that brings together elements of architecture, theatre, sculpture, art, music and language. In a certain sense, it is a mental landscape. Call it an encounter of different cultural traditions…in which I have tried to invent my own language. It is like a mysterious journey that one experiences. If you don’t know anything about Christianity, it’s OK, but if you know something about it, you’ll see it in a different context.”
Wilson, Robert, and Trevor Fairbrother (ed), Robert Wilson's vision: an exhibition of works by Robert Wilson ; with a sound environment by Hans Peter Kuhn (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991).
Performing Nature - Intended Bibliography
Abram, David, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (London: Vintage, 1997).
Aston, Elaine, and George Savona, Theatre as sign-system: a semiotics of text and performance (London: Routledge, 1991)
Bachelard, Guy, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
Bronislaw, Szerszynski, Wallace Heim and Claire Waterton (eds) Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
Buckland, David (ed.) Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change (London: Cape Farewell, 2006).
Crouch, David, The Art of Allotments, (London: Five Leaves Publications, 2001).
Gablik, Suzi, Has Modernism Failed? ( New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984).
Heathfield, Adrian (ed.), Live: Art and Performance (London: Tate, 2004).
Kastner, Jeffrey, Land and Environmental Art: Themes and Movements (London: Phaidon, 1998).
May, Susan (ed.) The Weather Project: Olafur Eliasson (London: Tate, exh. cat., 2003).
- The Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson is the fourth artist to take on the challenge of the cavernous space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Eliasson has built an international reputation from the installations and sculptural works he creates that engage, amaze and disorientate the viewer. His work explores human perception of the world and the boundaries between nature, art and technology. His works have used light, wind, steam, fire water and ice, combining these elemental materials with modern technology in unexpected ways.
Murphy, G. Ronald, Owl, the raven and the dove: The religious meaning of the Grimms' magic fairy tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Ranciere, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (New York: Continuum, 2004).
Sessions, George, Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (U.S.: Shambhala Publications, 1995).
-Discusses the fundamental relationship between human beings and nature, and suggests an ethical and philosophical foundation for environmental protection in the next hundred years.
Tufnell, Ben, Land Art (London: Tate, 2006).
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