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

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.

Emerging and Re-emerging

On gaining one of the Emerge Mentored Commissions 2012

Life is very exciting and scary and full of possibilities at the moment. Having spent over a decade doing ‘proper jobs’ I am now making a commitment, to being a performance maker, the likes of which I have never made before.

In terms of my creative career I'm a little older than what most people think of as an emerging artist, which is why the Emerge Mentored Commission is so great. What the organisations involved are most interested in is genuinely helping artists to move to the next level and it's not restricted by any arbitrary age limit. In the last couple of years I have made work with other people. Last year I collaborated with Ellie Harrison to create and tour The Reservation, which was a site-specific piece co-commissioned by Emerge. Now with their support I am working towards my first solo show so this feels like a nice, natural progression.

The term emerging also feels appropriate for where I am in the process of making 'One', as I am very much still at the beginning. I’m making slow and steady progress and having a year-long scheme to support that process is going to be invaluable. Not to mention the access to other artists and people who are willing to help raise my profile. Already rehearsal space and support, in the shape of Dick Bonham, have been made available to me and with the work in progress showing on Wednesday 20 June* I get to try it out and get that all important audience reaction. The piece I am making is about solitude and the loneliness we all feel at times and how we cope but it is also about being present in a theatre space and the desire to connect so I need an audience to really test it out. At least, I think this is what it is about at the moment. I am open to the possibility that the creative process is rarely linear and that rich material is found in the tangents…

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

*I wrote this peice for the Leeds Inspired blog before I did my scratch performance, though it didn't get used which is why I am posting it here now.

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!)