Writer in residence - workshop with Kate Fox

On Friday 1st February I spent a day with Kate Fox. All part of my grand plan to learn from other artists, to bring fresh energy in to the rehearsal room and to explore other processes in the making of One.

Kate has recently turned her writing and comedic talents to making theatre and I was interested to hear how/if her process had changed much as a result.

We spent some time on creating material from stream of consciousness, how applying an attitude (we worked with the seven deadly sins for a while) to a perfectly ordinary situation can create humour. We played with 'it's worse than that' and took ideas to the absolute worst case scenario. Just so you know, if the show bombs and I damage my reputation so badly I can no longer be a theatre maker and I end up as a cancerous prostitute, living in a doorway... I told you so!

Exaggeration is fun and freeing. I really think there may be room for this in the piece in order to soften the blow of the more melancholy aspects of being alone.  

I was also interested in her experience of stand-up and how she felt this enhanced her theatre performances.

We talked a lot about autobiographical material and the risks/fears involved. What we felt we could and couldn't share. I am particularly concerned about revealing personal things about myself that may lead to me being judged, or worse pitied, by the audience thereby tainting the rest of the show.  But I am also aware that for a connection to feel real and for the work to have impact I need to be honest. Kate suggested that if I held anything back the audience would be able to tell.

I think this is where her experience in stand-up comes in. She had strong opinions on the liveness of the live experience and offered a particularly painful example of a performer losing her trust by referring to another audience member's physical appearance making it clear they weren't really looking at or talking about them at all. She couldn't understand why and I can totally understand her dislike of entirely scripted interactions that could be shown to any audience in any location and never change. What she and I both love is a genuine connection, acknowledgement of the current shared space. To quote open space technology, "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened". A little more freedom to be real and responsive. To be truly live takes confidence that you can control your audience. Perhaps that is the gift of the comedian?

We spent some time watching a selection comedians entrances, noticing how most acknowledge the audience directly, often refer to the room or city and make comment about someone in the room. As if to say, "Yes, I am really here. With you."

This has made me very conscious of my audience interactions because as a frequent attender of small studio spaces I know how quickly we can tell when we are being talked at or near rather than to. I don't think I am in danger of making a piece of performance that could happen anywhere and that members of the audience will feel that they might as well have not been there but how much more rich might it feel for them to feel it was specific to them. That their experience, even if part of a tour, was unique. I wonder if I can produce that in my show? I hope so.

I'd really like to thank Kate for her time and generosity, and Annabel at ARC for making it happen.

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.

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

Proximity And Connection

Pickering Castle at dusk

[Saturday 28 July] I've just been to see Slung Low's final part of the Converging Paths project called Story Book. It was a promenade performance and took place at Pickering Castle (which midges aside is a gorgeous venue for a piece of site specific performance) and I am left thinking, unsurprisingly, about audience interactions.

You see we were each given headphones and a receiver so we could hear the backing track and the performers clearly in am outdoor space. I understand that this is a very practical solution to roaming work where the audience may not always have the best vantage point but means they don't quite miss out on the action. Having the words spoken directly in their ear creates a certain sense of intimacy with the performers - they are all speaking directly to you. It also allows the company to control the audiences environment so that the only information they receive is what is fed to them.

I experienced something very similar once at Latitude Festival and it made a little more sense there in that context. We were intentional voyeurs, viewing at a distance without interacting in any way, dipping in and out of the stories of other 'festival goers'. And while it made sense to me I found the whole experience rather cold. It was sort of like watching an outdoor television show.

As a technique, I don't enjoy it. I don't like how it isolates me from my fellow audience members. I feel penned in to my own body and my own little cocoon. Even though I know others are having the same experience as me I feel restricted and cut off which, while it doesn't really detract from my experience of the story, does go against one of the fundamental reasons why I go to live events. I spend enough time in my own head. I go to the theatre to be amongst other people. To feel a part of something bigger than myself rather than a passive spectator. I can do that at home. Perhaps I could reach out to others but I am wary because of the headphones. I might speak too loudly and embarrass myself. Of course, you say, this is a performance, why would you be talking? That is the festival context though isn't it? We are free, free from seating, walls and the 'normal' theatre etiquette aren't we? The rules are muddled here. I am not sure of my place and so I am doubly cautious.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy Story Book at all, just that it confirmed for me what I place most importance on in performance work and the bearing this has on my own practice and I wanted to unpick that a little.

24 reasons to be happy

 Yesterday I went to Contact Theatre to participate in 24 Arty People and I...

1) I met 23 amazing artists I had never met before
2) I was given open access to an extraordinary venue and the support of it's dedicated staff
3) I was given space to play, time to think and explore new ideas
4) I got to ride on an old Routemaster bus
5) I was fed and watered
6) I was never bored
7) I was constantly challenged
8) I got to play musical statues (and even better WATCH musical stratues) and pass the parcel
9) I was pushed beyond my limits
10) I got to work with three people I might not have naturally picked to create work with
11) I made some friends
12) I was given a rich theme of Wasted Hours within which to play
13) I was always treated with respect by my team of artists
14) I managed to stay awake until 11am when I had an hours sleep (incidentally 24hrs since I had got up)
15) I never felt the least bit intimidated or uncomfortable
16) I laughed alot (some of this may have been hysteria from lack of sleep)
17) I had a chance to shine
18)) I got naked and tied up in a bathroom
19) I got to play with an iPad
20) I got to see the look on Steve's face when I threw him out of our piece
21) I had fun 
22) I was genuinely proud of what we made
23) When I came home I had the best nights sleep I had had in weeks
24) I would totally do it again

Thank you to everyone for their spirit of adventure and generosity, especially @24contactmcr and Contact Theatre who made this possible.

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!)