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!