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.

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.

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!)

Feeling scent-imental

I am endlessly fascinated by the link between the senses and memory. No doubt someone cleverer than I has written much on the subject.

I started to think about the links between music and memory last year with a performance action called Memory Jukebox where I put my music library on shuffle and as pertinent songs came up I tried to draw or scribe the related memory and send it to the person included in it - the action of their reading it becoming a kind of remote performance. It is something I have considered revisiting but I think the idea needs work. The driving force behind it remains with me however as I am rarely without my iPod and the soundtrack to my life. It is the specifity that always surprises me. The detail of the memories invoked and the emotional impact of almost reliving the moment.

Scent is much the same, and brings me back to the inspiration for this post. I am on a train to Bridlington to see family. At Selby station I was hit by the strong smell of turps and was immediately reminded of the boy I had my first 'proper' kiss with. Adrian Deveril was two years older than me and I was 13, hopelessly innocent and a little scared by his attention. The day in question his friends announced he intended to ask me out and were to take me to him. So of course I ran away and hid. In the art room where I got black paint on my brand new ski-jacket. I was gripped with a brand new fear now. My Mum was going to KILL me! So some bright spark suggested we wash it with turps. Which is exactly what we were doing when the boys found me.

The paint never came off and the smell of turps lingered for much of our 2 month relationship. Therefore turps equals Adrian.

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