Day nine - structuring and scary first sharing

We begin the day gently by finishing the footage review. Looking over everything we've filmed is quite time consuming but it's a necessary task. Perhaps I could have undertaken this activity alone but had I waited until after the rehearsal to do this the four hours it took to go through everything would have meant that I would have had to stay up until the wee hours. That would probably have rendered me pretty useless for the following day.

Laura reports that she has really benefited from watching the footage so it seems that there is some value in sharing this activity. I certainly thought this could be the case and I had noticed that Laura and Kus were very engaged with the watching. There were lots of 'oh, I can see why that works now' kind of comments. It was a way of reconnecting the performers with the energy and feel of the material we generated earlier on in the process. We've tried to re-create some of the material and it hasn't felt the same. Now we can establish which kind of dynamics need to be brought back in.

Whilst watching Anna and I list all the material we've generated. Then we make an individual post-it note for each segment and lay out all the post it notes on the floor. From these we select the strongest material and think about how it might be structured into a satisfying through-line of action. Simple but effective. It's very rewarding to have a running order written up on big paper.

Anna has also kept a note of all the themes and a 'to try' list that we wrote on day one (which was actually less of a 'to try' list and more of a conceptual wish list of moments - such as 'sensationalise the banal and find the ordinary in the extraordinary'). Anna locates all the themes and our 'to try'/wish list in the structure we've laid out. We're confident that we have everything covered and again it's quite amazing how our plans have materialised despite often feeling that the process has a mind of its own (Cathy speaks of 'sculpting fog' - I wholeheartedly agree). It's as if seeds have been unknowingly planted and then sprouted up unexpectedly. 

We work through all the practicalities, what's needed when and where and set up for a first stagger through of the proposed structure. We're pretty happy with the raw material, unrefined as it is.Lots of detailed work is needed to make it as engaging as it could be, to tackle parts which have less of a logic (there are some clumsy transitions where material has been put next to other material that wasn't originally generated at the same time). It needs what I call 'fine work' (where we tighten the meaning, motivations, logics and align the action with the sound 'text') and also 'pinning' where the flabby raw material is stretched out so that it has energy and pace and shades if light and dark.

Anna and I give notes and set up again for a second run which is shared with Dick Bonham and Peter Reed. I am incredibly nervous about sharing the work. I'm happy with what we've made but there is niggling criticality in my mind which scrutinises every aspect of it. I recognise this position but it defiant make it any less nerve wracking.

So I'm very relieved that feedback is encouraging with Dick saying 'you're on to something there.'

Day eight - enlightening review of footage and sound work

Looking back at the footage from only a couple of days ago, it's clear to see that the museum of terrifying example is gradually forming itself. It's quite amazing actually. I feel like this is a journey and a process that I only have a certain amount of agency in. So much of it is simply happening around me.

I made a note to find ways to minimise the risk involved with this kind of work. I'm not sure if it's actually possible to avoid the risky factors of this kind of work but I will be asking a few established artists that I know if they have any strategies.

The emotional rollercoaster is something I was prepared for and I think I'll get more and more familiar with this kind of sensation. I'm more concerned with finding ways to get good results from the outset, so that's the risk management element I'm curious about.

We began to do some sound work today and this brought a whole new level. The world we're creating is very much a museum now and hearing that museum while we work is really helping. The performers realise how much they're supported and enabled by the sound. Some of their expectant/anxious energy subsides.

Laura comments that for the first time she feels like an exhibit.

I have a eureka moment which I won't expand on here because I don't want to spoil the surprise (expectation management - it's only a small surprise).

We explore how to interact with sound and play with this a bit. Jonnie is briefed to set a few things up for work next week.

Having the sound in the room and working with Jonnie who was part of the Elephant in the Room team puts me back into a comfort zone. I feel like I'm reconnecting with my own practice after running with Julia's and Cathy's.Though of course I am permanently transformed and influenced by the work I've done with them.

Day seven

Mentoring on day six brought about a shift and an urgency to consolidate the material generated in some way.

Establishing what the contract is between performer and audience has become a primary concern. I too can see the elements of the work which are problematic (as highlighted by Cathy) and having this kind of criticality in mind makes pushing forward tough.

I have to stick to my guns on some of the decisions that have been made. The museum is an alternate reality and this sets a president that I can not do anything about now. Cathy flagged at the outset that putting a museum into a theatre space raised questions and relied upon the audience subscribing to a pretence. Perhaps i didn't listen closely enough to Cathy's alarm bells or perhaps I was not ready to really hear her. But problematic or otherwise I have to embrace this alternative reality and work with it.

The team continue to believe in the material generated and our designer, Lucy reviews the footage and relays her confidence in the work we've begun to create.

Lucy proposes a design concept which helps to rationalise things. We decide to get rid of the seating in the theatre space at The Mill and using the space for an installation.

To an extent this alleviates the contracting issue. We are actually presenting something like a museum now with curated objects. Our performers can now also be objects.

We're also alleviating the expectancy that comes with the typical 'end on' theatre layout and taking the pressure off the direct address required in that context in the absence of narrative ( which remains absent despite this being a fictional world of sorts - are you beginning to see the challenge here?)

The subtleties of the contract are yet to be established and I remain uneasy about these given that we've committed to working in an alternate reality. But I'm not going to let the process get very snagged up on this. There are too many positives to focus on.

We spend a bit of time at Leeds museum and I find myself very inspired by the texts which accompany the exhibits. I photograph them and transcribe them and we look at making them work as performance. We don't quite achieve the right connection with the words at this stage, looking at it first as direct address and then as something more incidental, though we all enjoy certain qualities of the text. Again, the fine tuning of the contract could be what is needed to make this work.

Lucy picks up lots of ideas while we're in the museum. She sees ways to set up a museum easily and quickly.

It's a tough day. It feels stopped and started. I suppose there will always be days like these.

Day six - mentoring and lots of questions about form

Am writing this on the bus. The journey takes longer but there's greater opportunity for reflection than on the 10 minute train journey. I was very, very tired last night so couldn't order my thoughts.

Cathy Naden from Forced Entertainment came in yesterday (Cathy has been mentoring me for past year or so) to have a look at the material we've generated. It was really useful to put it in front of a fresh pair of eyes, those of someone who has not been party to the logic and meaning making that the team are all party to.

We've really enjoyed being creative and exploring where our impulses have taken us but when presented to Cathy questions are raised.

Cathy considers the work from the position of considering only what is immediately in front of her. When you look at what we're doing from this stand point, at its simplest, our action can be taken as two mysterious performers (we haven't given any context whatsoever) undertaking various strange activities with tights, tape, packaging and string for no clear reason.

Of course we have our logics and reasoning but Cathy highlights the need for contextualising, something formal, a contract between the performers and the audience. And it's worryingly apparent to me that I don't know what these are or what they could be. I am laid bare in a way I've never felt before. This is the leap from the precipice of narrative lead to non-narrative work. I am so acutely conscious of my training and background in fiction and story telling right now. Am feeling very de skilled indeed.

On a lighter note, Cathy demonstrated how to drill down on the material we'd generated to get more out of it. We generated a lovely 10 minute sequence that we were very pleased with, strangely illogical as it is...

Another discovery of the day followed on from Julia's steer to simply keep trying things to see what happens. We began the day by taping Laura to a wall and Kus to the floor. Although the material is beautiful it seems unusable (mainly because of practicalities) but the journey the performers and myself and Anna went on was very insightful. The performers were giving themselves over, relinquishing autonomy, becoming 'objects'. We got a flavour of what this might mean from trying these things.

Cathy flagged the lack of autonomy on the part of the performer as problematic. Yesterday I agreed and freed the performers from this constraint. Today I feel more open to putting them back in this position as its likely that the sound will play a part as an external agent as it has in previous Northern Creative work and its something I'm instinctively attuned to. This means that either convention (ie autonomous or not autonomous) may have to be broken which may continue to be problematic. Though perhaps having the overarching external influencing factor - the sound - will negate this?

Today we'll explore framing. We'll see where we get with finding some kind of contract and logic for the material we've generated. We'll also meet the designer and explore her ideas. I'm wondering if some of the materials we've been using can be substituted for things that might be found in a museum instead. Though constructing a fictional museum is in itself problematic when considered using the base starting point that Cathy uses - ie 'what is happening immediately in front of me?' The answer would be 'people pretending that this is a museum' which goes against Forced Entertainment's policy of non-pretence and highlights a significant tension between my practice and instincts as a playwright and the fundamental building blocks of deconstructed contemporary performance.

I embarked on this mentoring and on this R&D with 'what if' questions around clashing play writing and aesthetics of contemporary work with a view to giving myself over to these new ways of working which seemed more relevant, but something in me is holding on tight to features of narrative.

Day five - exploring opposites

We're working in Leeds this week (we'll be at The Carriageworks starting from tomorrow). Fresh from our weekend off we have quite a remarkable day of high energy activity. We try out numerous ideas which were put on the table during our workshop with Julia last week. We're looking it despair by exploring the opposite to it (one of which we decided was beauty) and we're creating a sense of futility by engaging the performers in impossible tasks.

It's all about doing and trying and not worrying or thinking about the end result. Surprising things are discovered by simply trying things out and when they don't work, finding ways to make them work.

I won't go into too much detail because the work we created today is so good that a large part of it is likely to go into the showing. But I will say that a huge amount of fun and creativity can be had with four pairs of tights (which cost a tiny £2.40 from Leeds Market) and I will hint at an awkward moment when one of the performers had been put into bondage using packing tape and the window cleaner turned up outside.

We worked hard today and achieved a lot. 

Lowry residence Oct 2012

This is a photo of Studio 2 at The Lowry where we spent the week last week working on the beginnings of our Museum of Terrifying Example. (Kus Kamau who is one of the performers took this shot - thanks Kus). The river and outside the vast window was a constantly changing landscape. It rained, the sun shined, boats passed, bridges raised up and then down again (though we never actually saw this happen - though there was no other way the boats could have passed). The walk to the building from our converted warehouse hotel was a treat with street art and contemporary architecture all around us.

The Lowry is a very creative place to work. J.S. Lowry the artist famous for depicting working life in Salford/Manchester whom the building is named after was a theatre fan and the complex includes an impressive gallery of his works. It is truly inspiring to see the breadth of Lowry's talent housed in one collection. The vibrancy and colour with which he paints his subject matter (though I realise not everyone sees Lowry's work that way) brought an energy to the whole building and the Salford Quays beyond it. It was such an exciting place to be. 

Further creativity and inspiration came in the form of tickets to see the RSC's 'Julius Caesar' (one of the cast members was staying in our hotel so organised discount for us) which was on while we were there. Lucky us!

Thanks to Porl Cooper for having us.

Identifying the 'story impulse'

These are the notes from the point during our residency at The Lowry where I explained to everyone why Museum of Terrifying Example would not be 'a play about...'

Anna kept having what I described as 'story impulses' in response to the material being generated. Her imagination kept taking her on tangents that had story logics.

Every time Anna did this the performers visibly relaxed
as if they were on territory much more familiar to them. So I would have to come in and make sure these trajectories were nipped in the bud. I felt quite mean doing this. I don't like to clamp down when people are being creative and imaginative but especially at the beginning I had to make it crystal clear that Museum of Terrifying Example was not about story.

I explained as follows :

For me story impulses or logics that we're conditioned to recognise through being exposed to story from birth can be rather restrictive. Story structures filter meaning and association and a lot of the work is done for the viewer/reader/audience by the author when crafted in this way. There's nothing 'wrong' with a story, putting these notes down I'm realising that by doing the meaning-making work for the viewer/reader/audience the author is creating a framework for a wonderful imaginative journey and putting the viewer/reader/audience in an open and receptive position which is generous and lovely. But that's just not what I do. I don't 'speak' in stories. I don't really want to tell stories, I want to share experiences and resonances and bring about insights and understandings that are transformational in some way. Stories can do these things, yes. But that's just not how my brain is wired. I don't experience life in a linear story-structured way, my experience is wonderfully abstract, strange and elliptical and very much inspired by the information flow of 21st Century life, fast, fragmented, bombarding, multi-faceted, multi-media, simultaneous, sophisticated, repetitive. I'm making associations and meanings constantly that I don't even understand yet, and everyone around me is doing the same on some level. We take in information and experience in new, ever advancing ways and that's how my brain is constructing information and making meaning.

I believe that audiences are very sophisticated, even if they don't realise that they are. I've had quite a lot of feedback from previous performances which began with 'I didn't understand it' and conclude with a reasonable accurate summary of exactly what I was trying to communicate. I'm aiming for a polymorphic read, where each audience member comes away with their own personal insight. The performance should be a stimulus for that, an inkblot test upon which they can project their own thoughts and feelings. Though, saying that, for me, a play with a story is also a polymorphic read with every audience member also having their own unique experience. (At this point I started to ponder how I could really differentiate the audience's experience - but that's another blog post entirely). So really I'm not so far from the original. I'm just doing it in a different way.

The story impulses have been written down and put in a drawer for future use. It may be that they come into play further down the line. I do feel that when the team has a strong shared logic for the work, the resonance is stronger and clearer and it may be that these story logics come into play as directorial interpretations of the constructed material at a later date.

The fact that these story impulses keep occurring and the performer's reactions to them (of relief, recognition) suggest to me that there's more work to be done on my part of bringing everyone onto the same page.

Day four - text work and then exploding everything

We review some of the footage from the previous day and transcribe it into workable notes.


We had made lots of lists of 'I didn't, I couldn't, I haven't' and 'because' and we also transcribe these into workable notes.

We match up some of the text with the verbatim body language from some of the footage. We try to undermine the excuse making, with the body language giving the wrong signals to the words spoken. We take away vocal resonance to see if the words are more or less convincing.

There is a little bit of pressure in the room as we know that someone is coming in to look at what we've been doing. Perhaps this is why we moved to text today. Moving to text is definitely my impulse when I think that I/we're in need of something sure and solid.

Julia Wilson, a performance artist, my former university lecturer and a friend of mine joins us for the afternoon. I brief Julia and quickly fill her in on some of the challenges we're experiencing. We agree that we'll spend the afternoon working with some of the tools Julia uses in her own practice. Julia pretty much takes over, sharing her practice by doing and showing, exploding everything.

Firstly Julia levels off the playing field. Anna, Kus, Laura and myself are all from very different disciplines. I have an instinctive connection to the kind of work I want to create but I hadn't fully clarified the right terms. Julia put Kirby's Acting/Not Acting continuum on the table to clarify exactly what I meant when I asked Laura and Kus not to use their emotional memory but to represent it, or asked them not to 'go into themselves' but to just be themselves.

Here's a diagram of Kirby's Acting/Not Acting continuum :

With this in mind Julia suggested that we could use the 'not acting non-matrixed performing' end of the continuum to work on task based action rather than fictional action. Then Julia helped us explore how we might find the most appropriate tasks to try based on the themes and ideas of the premise. And then Julia showed us how to put these tasks up on their feet and how to interrogate them to create resonances that would stimulate the desired effect in the audience. We could create the emotional experience that we'd like the audience to have by presenting action that brought about that emotional experience (eg, fear and anxiety created through watching someone do something daring, the sense of nurturing and caring experienced through watching someone tenderly nurse someone else etc.)

Really these new tools unlocked everything. Initially I felt very de-skilled and destabilised. This kind of activity is so far removed from the play writing I'm trained to do. But this is why I invited Julia in to work with us. Instinctively I am grasping for these new ways to connect with audiences. I am very excited to work in this way and I am very, very excited about where this line of enquiry will lead. 

For more information about Julia you can have a look at her website : http://juliawilson.vpweb.co.uk/Home.html