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 Does 'Alone Time' Mean To You?

Time spent by yourself can be a precious, enjoyable and indeed necessary thing.

Some of us spend more time alone than we would like and others not enough, so what is it that we do with these snatched moments of 'me time'? What does 'alone time' mean to you?

Time to reflect
Time to recharge
Time to listen
Time to plan
Time to create
Time to cheat
Time to indulge
Time to pamper
Time to work out
Time to sweat
Time to hurt
Time to strip back
Time to be naked
Time to examine
Time to mend
Time to prepare
Time to scrub and polish 
Time to play
Time to fantasise
Time to reorganise
Time to analyse
Time to be weak
Time to break down
Time to rebuild
Time to be free
Time to just be

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!)

Embracing my inner child

It's funny how everything has changed, in the most subtle ways in some cases.

Being on my own in my own space, talking to myself in my own space. These things are fine. Here? It's is different. It's difficult. But then it was supposed to be. Isn't that the point?

Even just playing ball. Everytime the ball hits the floor it gets dirtier so everytime I catch it my hands get dirtier. This bothers me more than I would like. When I was a kid I would be doing this in my Grandma's back yard, the side of Dad's house, the back of my Mum's best friend's house, the street, at school - not a recently cleaned studio. So what's wrong with getting a bit mucky? All the best things in life involve a little bit of mess. I am not a neat freak. I can do this.

Hang on a sec, must just go wash my hands again...

Meet my Imaginary Friend

In preparation for my show One, I am thinking about loneliness.

• I am thinking about how to populate an empty space, how to bring more than just myself to the stage.
• I am thinking about my childhood, being an only child.
• I am thinking about Imaginary Friends and why we invent them.

I never had one so I am thinking about collecting stories of other people's Imaginary Friends.

Please tell me about an Imaginary Friend you or someone you know has/had. If you didn't ever have one as a child, what would your imaginary friend be like if you invented one now? What would they look like? What special skills/powers would they have?

At this point I am unsure exactly if/how this might be used but anything you do choose to tell me may be referred to on this blog and/or in the show. If you would prefer me not to use your name please tell me and I will make sure that I do not.

Please email all responses to: jayekearney61@googlemail.com and please feel free to forward on to others.

Thank you.

Let's start at the very beginning...

A very good place to start.

So here I am. At Northern Stage on Day 2 of Title Pending. This is the beginning.

Today is the first day of rehearsal ever, for my very first solo show called One.

I'm in a meeting room above Stage One in Northern Stage, I have an array of drinks and tasty snacks to fuel me and I'm feeling pretty good already. Hell, I feel amazing!!! I'm buzzing with excitement, at the possibilities, at the fact that I have stopped talking (OK, OK, not entirely) and started DOING.

And so I wanted to mark this moment. As I will be marking much of this journey, here.

This is where is starts.