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.