Hello third day of rehearsals. Hello rubbish campus coffee before we start and gentle chit-chat as we warm up. Hello linoleum-floored studio, smelling ever so slightly of feet and junk shops. Feeling good to begin a day of Postscript-building.
Hello a day of two halves:
To begin, we revisit a new piece of material from yesterday. Lines have been learnt. Rhythms are more familiar. The focus is palpable. Not yet there, but on its way…
Hello lamps, old friends. Extension cables plugged in. Bulbs spring to life – a field of lights in the dark. Workers out. Black out. A table, two chairs, a lamp. Rick and myself. Laura and Pablo place objects on the table in front of us. A miniature playground - touch, feel, play. A music box, a bottle, a piece of red fabric, a stethoscope (also the binoculars and knife; which are played with but later rejected).
Lights up. We play. That doesn’t work, that could work, there’s something there, try that again, and again in like this…
A story begins to form from the moment we both reach for the bottle at the same time… Try another permutation – we both reach for the bottle and I get there first. And again, we both reach, but he gets it and removes it. What is the story of each version? Which do we want to tell?
Lift the lid. The music box plays. I want to dance like the music box dancer (who incidentally isn’t actually there, just the stump where she once was…). Red fabric over my face. I stand on the chair and spin like a music box doll. I think of the part in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where Truly Scrumptious pretends to be a wind up doll…
We then revisit a piece of material from the work-in-progress of Postscript, also using Rick and myself (archetype - ‘the Lovers’). Are there correlations between this and the new music box fragment? We impose the red material on it. (A connection, an echo, a particle spilt out and lodged in a different story? Or is it the same story?) Permutations: the fabric on the floor as they lean in to embrace; the material on her head removed as she turns away from the embrace; the fabric on her head removed as she reaches away from the embrace… It’s a triptych. But in the world of Postscript, nothing is viewed as a ‘unit’. It needs interrupting. We consider spoken text. We consider story-tapes (‘ping’ to indicate when to turn the page). We consider choose-your-own-adventure books (Turn to page 24 if you want to see Bill meet the monster, or page 50 if you want to see him turn back to the forest). But ultimately, we agree that what should interrupt this triptych may be decided or discovered later. For now what interrupts it is one of those helpful conceptual question marks…(?We like those?)
Hello Afternoon.
An afternoon of Important Discussions.
Bloggable? Blog-worthy? I’m not sure. Let me summarise.
We needed to sit down and brain-storm/mind-map/’bleurgh’ about some of the Big Postscript Questions. Not in order to answer them (yet) but just to ‘have them out’.
What does Postscript look like? Set. Props. Costume. Lighting. We each have a turn (‘In MY head, it looks like this…’ etc). Some different ideas, but essentially we seem to have the same general idea of what the ‘final product’ might ‘be’… Watch this space…
And also – The Audience? The question we knew was implicit in tackling this project. The work-in-progress of Postscript was performed in a small bar, at the audience’s table. The ArtsDepot performance will be in an auditorium, on a stage. We’re adapting/distilling the show in its essence but the audience experience will be entirely different, as dictated by the environment. Is it possible to give them a taste of the intimacy that was created in the work-in-progress in a totally different venue? The material is beginning to stand up alone, so what purpose does ‘implicating’ the audience(through proximity, intimacy and direct involvement and interaction), as we did before, actually serve (if it is even possible?…
Today we achieved something small – a fascinating fragment of the show was formed. And we also faced up to something big – the questions that demand to be addressed through this process, in order to make this project everything we want it to be.
However, I haven’t gone away from today phased, or even scared. I’m really, really excited.
Hello a day of two halves:
To begin, we revisit a new piece of material from yesterday. Lines have been learnt. Rhythms are more familiar. The focus is palpable. Not yet there, but on its way…
Hello lamps, old friends. Extension cables plugged in. Bulbs spring to life – a field of lights in the dark. Workers out. Black out. A table, two chairs, a lamp. Rick and myself. Laura and Pablo place objects on the table in front of us. A miniature playground - touch, feel, play. A music box, a bottle, a piece of red fabric, a stethoscope (also the binoculars and knife; which are played with but later rejected).
Lights up. We play. That doesn’t work, that could work, there’s something there, try that again, and again in like this…
A story begins to form from the moment we both reach for the bottle at the same time… Try another permutation – we both reach for the bottle and I get there first. And again, we both reach, but he gets it and removes it. What is the story of each version? Which do we want to tell?
Lift the lid. The music box plays. I want to dance like the music box dancer (who incidentally isn’t actually there, just the stump where she once was…). Red fabric over my face. I stand on the chair and spin like a music box doll. I think of the part in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where Truly Scrumptious pretends to be a wind up doll…
We then revisit a piece of material from the work-in-progress of Postscript, also using Rick and myself (archetype - ‘the Lovers’). Are there correlations between this and the new music box fragment? We impose the red material on it. (A connection, an echo, a particle spilt out and lodged in a different story? Or is it the same story?) Permutations: the fabric on the floor as they lean in to embrace; the material on her head removed as she turns away from the embrace; the fabric on her head removed as she reaches away from the embrace… It’s a triptych. But in the world of Postscript, nothing is viewed as a ‘unit’. It needs interrupting. We consider spoken text. We consider story-tapes (‘ping’ to indicate when to turn the page). We consider choose-your-own-adventure books (Turn to page 24 if you want to see Bill meet the monster, or page 50 if you want to see him turn back to the forest). But ultimately, we agree that what should interrupt this triptych may be decided or discovered later. For now what interrupts it is one of those helpful conceptual question marks…(?We like those?)
Hello Afternoon.
An afternoon of Important Discussions.
Bloggable? Blog-worthy? I’m not sure. Let me summarise.
We needed to sit down and brain-storm/mind-map/’bleurgh’ about some of the Big Postscript Questions. Not in order to answer them (yet) but just to ‘have them out’.
What does Postscript look like? Set. Props. Costume. Lighting. We each have a turn (‘In MY head, it looks like this…’ etc). Some different ideas, but essentially we seem to have the same general idea of what the ‘final product’ might ‘be’… Watch this space…
And also – The Audience? The question we knew was implicit in tackling this project. The work-in-progress of Postscript was performed in a small bar, at the audience’s table. The ArtsDepot performance will be in an auditorium, on a stage. We’re adapting/distilling the show in its essence but the audience experience will be entirely different, as dictated by the environment. Is it possible to give them a taste of the intimacy that was created in the work-in-progress in a totally different venue? The material is beginning to stand up alone, so what purpose does ‘implicating’ the audience(through proximity, intimacy and direct involvement and interaction), as we did before, actually serve (if it is even possible?…
Today we achieved something small – a fascinating fragment of the show was formed. And we also faced up to something big – the questions that demand to be addressed through this process, in order to make this project everything we want it to be.
However, I haven’t gone away from today phased, or even scared. I’m really, really excited.
Daisy x
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