Tuesday 2 February 2010

Bowling with the sides down

I am really enjoying the new semester so far and I think a lot of it is due to me not being with my best friends. Of course I miss them but it's so nice being able to come home and talk to them about my day, letting them know what already I feel I am achieving and knowing that tomorrow they'll be coming back to do the same with me.

Today was a long long day. Lecture started at 9.15 and ended at 1.15 with a four hour break before returning to carry on with the devising process for our site specific performance currently titled Not Waving. The first session involved us visiting the site, a brook down the road from the uni, and exploring the area. The walk took over an hour and saw people fall down banks on their bottoms, mud splash up the sides of almost twenty pairs of wellies and people climbing in and up trees. It felt just like being a child again, having the freedom to explore and being aloud to get muddy.

The visit was truly inspirational and the entire group came away with a million ideas of things to bring to the performance.

After a quick break to recover from our muddy adventure we began devising some movement pieces in groups of five which were inspired by extracts from The Flood by Maggie Gee.

White flash of a wing where an arm
is swimming
dissolving, now to a ghost image blurring,
doubling in the haze of the future -
one last white curve would complete loves circle
the future bending to find the past
life from the end to the beginning


Our group experimented with lifts and flips as well as moving as one and mirroring.

Our task for next week now is to return to the site and adapt our piece to fit around and use the surroundings. This is why I love performing so much.. the possibilities are simply endless. As Sarah Kane once said "in theatre anything is possible".

After our lovely four hour break we met up again for a slightly less physical session. We worked alone mostly for this session, thinking about and listing the things, the people, the activities, the food, the drink, we would miss if we were to lose everything in a natural disaster. After picking four and talking honestly about them to the rest of the group we moved onto thinking about the different forms of water. A lake. A pond. The sea. Tears. A brook. A stream.

We then had to write about our chosen form of water. I wrote about the tear.

The Tear

The filling up of the eye, feeling the moisture build, bubbling as it reaches an uncontrollable level before spilling over and falling.

The feeling of the wet salty emotion making tracks down the cheek, constantly flowing from an unstoppable source.

So many things fill the tear. Love. Hate. Pain. Joy.

It glistens as it smoothly runs down your face.

The silence of the tear when you don't want anyone to know you are crying. The lump in the back of your throat where it centres and the puddle that builds on the bottom of your chin before it falls and crashes to the surface below with a gentle splash.


It's a bit rough but I'm thinking of perfecting it. Currently it is work in progress and just a simple example of the work I am so excited about being part of. I think bowling with the sides down was definitely the right decision.

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