Reflecting back and moving forward

After performing the first 17 minutes of One at First in 3 at Northern Stage on Thursday 7 March I found myself hoping that everyone else thought that went as well as I did. It wasn't perfect - that's not what Scratch is for - but I didn't cough (bloody thing kicked off 10 mins before hand) or throw up (food and drink on stage plus nerves make for a potent cocktail), which was a good start.

I got some laughs in the places I hoped for them but more importantly it felt good to be up there. I like the more live arty moments, the more dark and surreal. I like the fact that a lot of the text plays on more than one level.

Like I said, it wasn't perfect. There is a lot to be learned. I messed up on some audience interaction. I picked on the first person I saw and unfortunately she was someone who works at the venue. She was also clearly uncomfortable and in the moment I didn't do enough to help her. I could almost hear Kate Fox's voice in my ear... It was played too much to the room and was too general when some of it could have been used to really talk to people. Some of that was nerves and all of it can be learned from.

The tapes are clunky but I hope not too distracting. I still believe they are the right thing to have. They tie in to a certain nostalgia. They are imperfect and fit in with the idea that I am in control of my environment; that I have everything I need to populate my world. But I also need to be able to flip that idea and bring the audience in. I don't want to keep making the same point. 

It will be very interesting to read the feedback. To see what people saw, liked, wanted more of and no doubt some of the stuff they didn't. I hope the majority of it is as positive as I felt coming out of the show.

Lots to think about. 

A post show dissection with Ellie Harrison on Friday and I was still feeling good. I'm at a place where I feel I can stop retreading the same ground and move on. This hopefully means I can try something totally new at Transform in April, which would be riskier but more useful to me. I think I am past the making stage and can now look forward to structuring, rehearsing, molding, learning and polishing. It feels like a I am entering a new phase in the project.

No strings attached - workshop with Liz Walker

On Thursday 14 February I travelled to the wintry wilds of Holmfirth to spend the day with Liz Walker from Invisible Thread, in her barn on a very steep hillside.

The best thing about working with Liz, and what I really needed at the time, was that right from the offset she wanted to DO, to try things. I showed her what I had brought: my laptop, notebook, tapes, cassette players, a bouncy ball, some sand and other things we might use. We also had access to the incredible treasure trove of items in Liz's workshop. And so we played, quite unlike I have played so far in this process. I almost felt like a child again.

Obviously Liz's strengths lie in puppetry and visually articulating ideas using objects and a whole host of media. When I first started thinking about making One I had thoughts of invisible friends, sex dolls, substitutes for real relationships that cover the gaps in our lives. I was concerned about inhabiting a space alone and wanted to look into object manipulation to create other characters to play with. But things have changed quite a lot along the way and while I still worry about my ability to fill a stage I am also sure that I don't want to put things in place just to have something to hide behind. I had to finally let go of some ideas that have been with me from the start because they now feel like part of a different show, that I am no longer making. And even though I sort of knew this before I got there, I was adamant that I wanted to at least try them before I gave them up.

RIP Barry the Man(p)illow.

The show is developing a real identity, themes are beginning to emerge and in the end that is what Liz and I focused on. How the space might be defined and structured. What my relation to the space is. How the different elements/props cross the space and if they can cross 'barriers'. Ways of making a physical distinction between what is memory and what is in the present.

While I worry that Liz may have felt her real skills were not being put to use, I had a very positive day and came away feeling that I was moving in the right direction. Her input and constant questioning was incredibly useful in helping me work through some of the decisions I had made. To re-think some and to solidify others. And I would like to thank her for her energy and generosity.

Head Scratching - thinking about my work in progress

Last week (Wednesday 28 November) I was lucky enough to have the chance to scratch 'One' again, this time at ARC, Stockton Arts Centre where I am a member of their Artists' Network ARCADE.

It was an interesting experience for a number of reasons.

1) I think the work has started to take a new direction, more tangental than barking up a new tree I hope. This means that everything I showed was very new and freshly put together, incomplete and perhaps not as brave as I would have liked to have been. I hadn't had chance to take the ideas as far as I possibly could yet. The knock-on effect is that I wasn't sure how I felt about the material yet. This also meant I wasn't able to tech properly as I wasn't quite on top of all my text when I arrived at the venue.

2) I was also concerned that the text I had provided in advance about the show might not accurately reflect what I was about to do. It's that age old issue of writing copy for unfinished works. Or perhaps in my case incomplete ideas? I feel I am only now beginning to find the nugget at the heart of this idea of being alone and being OK.

3) I think that Scratch events are contradictory in nature. While I appreciate the chance to try my 'stage-legs' and get real reactions to the work, it does skew the intention a little. Everyone says that Scratch Nights are supposed to be for sharing work-in-progress and no-one minds if it is rough around the edges... but of course, you want to be liked. You want the audience to think the work is good, no matter how incomplete. As such, I found myself worrying about how polished mine would seem in comparison to the other performances (as it turned out, not very) and rushing to make the piece make some kind of sense for the audience.

4) Technology is evil. Even the most primitive. And so the old adage "What can go wrong, will go wrong" was very much in play. I forgot music cues, and a blank tape turned out not to be... DIS-ARSE-TER DAHLING!

I was a little disappointed with my offering over all but hope I at least managed to lay out some of the themes and motifs for the show going forwards from here. I was also reassured by my producers Little Mighty that it is not so far removed from the initial material I scratched back in June/July. Which is a relief. I really liked bits of that and hope to hang on to some, if not all, of it.

Some of the issues I had were down to late preparation and procrastination. ie. MY FAULT. Some of this was nerves. Some of this was the nature of the Scratch beast. All I can do is try and learn from it and hope to make the piece even better in the future. Who knew screwing up could feel so positive. It's kind of exciting.

The sound of loneliness?

I'm thinking about sound for this Scratch. In particular the sound of loneliness.

Is it the lack of something or someone? Or is it the sound of the thing/person that you are separated from? Is it the noise inside your head when you can't stop thinking about someone you can't have? Or is it a noisy room full of laughter when you feel so sad?

Where are we most lonely and what does that place sound like?

In my first Scratch during Emerge I talked a little about the loneliness of being on a stage alone for the first time. At First in Three (Scratch number two) I talked about the use of tape and documentation/playback during the process and as I get further in to it, spending more and more time alone in big echoey rooms I've been thinking more and more about the sound of the rehearsal room and the empty space I am supposed to fill...

Today I've got toys and ways of capturing that. Now as Scratch number three approaches I'm thinking about playback, sound quality, presentation and aesthetics.

New publicity shot?

Today I am back in the rehearsal room. Playing with tapes... thinking about originals and copies, about mix tapes and long distance love, about sound quality and hours spent alone in my bedroom as a teenager.

I'm also thinking something like this might make quite a nice publicity image for the show. What do you think?

Source: Uploaded by user via Jaye on Pinterest

Diamonds In The Rough - A Post Show Analysis

So in the aftermath of my second Scratch (for anyone stumbling across this who doesn't know; a Scratch is a showing of unfinished performance work) performance of One, at Northern Stage, I am left with the arduous task of sorting the wheat from the chaff...

First thoughts are that it was definitely a useful experience. Useful to try the same material on a less familiar audience to see how I navigate having fewer shared points of reference. In Leeds I built my confidence by directing certain comments to friends knowing they would be easier to draw in to a kind of dialogue as there was a pre-existing rapport. The piece has direct points of contact built in which, I hope, break some of those barriers with a more unknown quantity so it will be interesting to see the written feedback and how the audience felt we were 'getting along'. They certainly gave off a very friendly vibe.

And yet I was actually disappointed with myself in this section. I didn't find my feet quite as well as I had in Leeds. I fluffed some lines and got a couple of bits the wrong way round. I tried to keep it fresh for myself by interjecting new information but this just served to unsettle me a little.

The totally interactive and majorly improvised new section about Imaginary Friends at the end went surprisingly smoothly despite my utter fear at throwing it so open to the audience (something I have never done before). I've already had some useful feedback on how this could be more inventive and democratically playful for me and the audience, allowing more people to have input in a slightly 'safer' space. So I won't say too much about that here. I have no idea if it will even stay in the show but it was great to just give it a go, to take a chance in the space, and have it embraced so generously. This should be what Scratch is for, right?

I had mixed feelings about the cassette tape section at the beginning. It had no natural place. Though I like it as an idea I didn't like where it sat. I had to put it at the beginning out of necessity rather than desire. But the tape/player itself has become quite important as it resonates quite deeply with me. Now I need to work out how it weaves with rest of the fabric of the show. Though at this point I do not want it to dictate anything. I wonder about the next Scratch at Emerge in September and whether that should be entirely tape based? Hmmm...

What is clear is that documentation is becoming more and more important to the piece both as a tool for making and reflection but also the presentation. This makes me wonder about who my collaborators should be at this point and if there are significant changes to be made (and here I apologise to my producer Gloria for the kittens this may give her)?

My thanks to the team at Northern Stage, who made me so very welcome for two days in their building.

What Might Be In The Show

When Rabbit Damage were making the show in Berwick we made a video called What Isn't In The Show and it was just a bit of a giggle and an attempt at viral marketing... since the show wasn't finished and we didn't want to give too much away.

Today I am rehearsing for One and mostly thinking about what might be in the show and trying not to get too boggled. On Thursday I have a scratch showing at First in Three at Northern Stage and mostly I am looking forward to trying out what I already have (what I did at The Carriageworks for Emerge in June) on a different, slightly less partisan, audience. But I'd also like to share something new and this is where my problems begin. I feel like I have spent so long shelving things to come back to later that I don't know where to start.

I guess this is where a collaborator would come in handy. We would discuss the merits of each and see which sparks the most interest. We could vote on which we would prefer to get stuck in to. We could play Paper, Scissors, Stone or have a thumb war. We could agree to take one idea each and try stuff out on each other... But there is no-one else here (Yes, Jaye, who's stupid idea was that then?).

So here I am, with a long list of wonderful things to play with. What to do first?

This show may contain: sex dolls, memories, cassette tapes, love letters to long distance lovers, Bros, the charts, my Dad, CCTV, video diaries, dancing, audio archaeology, Pillowman, internet dating, dining alone, desert islands, the zombie apocolypse, games, Chobitz, monophobia, Bridget Jones and imaginary friends.

What we're going to do right here is go back, way back, back into time...

Loving the retro experience of playing with tape again.

Been listening to Blondie and the sound quality is awful. I think we forget how bad it was. But I love the whirring sound of the machine, the number counter, the tedious process of 'fast' forward and rewinding to the exact spot, the sound of the record button clunking on and off caught forever on tape.

When I came to play with it I remembered that you either needed to leave the 'pips' in or cover the hole up with cellotape so you can record over it and I don't have any cellotape with me but luckily there is a tape with Coldplay (BLEUGH!!!) that still has the pips in so I can still play...

It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do and is taking me back to my childhood. Mum still has the tape I made when, aged 6, she was decorating our flat and to keep me occupied she told me to record myself reading stories and singing songs including such classics as Tiger Tiger and The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Then there were the many, many, MANY Sunday afternoons in my teens spent glued to the charts trying to catch the songs JUST RIGHT to avoid getting too much of the DJ's voice, and finally the anguished taped love letters sent to my boyfriend back home when I went to work for a touring theatre company aged 18.

It's pretty evocative stuff and I hope it will find it's way in to the show somehow...

There is something here about the layering of sound, the imperfection of it, the direct address, of the 'liveness' of a recorded voice in a pre-Skype era and the disembodied voice reaching out to connect over distance.

(Big thanks to Third Angel for the equipment!)