Giving up and giving away

                                                                               

I could see you were standing there fierce with something but I didn’t know how to ask you.


A while back, some years ago now, I wrote a long blog post about disappointment. It was around the time that I gave up being what I have come to call a ‘career artist’. And of course, in the process of giving up, of letting go, I found that all kinds of other things emerged and continue to emerge as new structures for life, and as life-giving structures. But I’ve kept thinking about it. We have such narratives of keeping going, especially in the arts, but really everywhere. We encourage each other to keep going, to find a way through, to keep afloat, to stay on board. And it’s problematic, this urge to keep going, keep succeeding, keep producing, keep showing up. Not only because it fails to acknowledge that there is value in stopping, pausing, not being productive – that there is value in creating spaces where people might do those things together, as part of a social rhythm. But also because it’s a plea to not diverge.

There are times when it’s not possible to go on; when it’s not possible to go on in the ways in which we are expected to go on. When ‘progress’, in the narrow definition with which that term is used in western models, is the very thing that is holding us within dis-abling structures. In those moments that are dark and difficult, we might be able to see something more of ourselves and our interactions, if only we were brave enough to look into them for a sustained moment together.


A few months ago now, in February 2016, some people gathered in a small room in London and celebrated endings together. We were an odd bunch, and a small bunch. It was part of a long process of ending something: ending a company, ending a possiblity, and confronting some impossibilities. It was a beautiful moment that felt solemn and light at the same time, that was filled with goodwill and also a kind of refusal to yield. For me, it marked my move away from the UK for a few years, my move away from the idea of building a career as an artist in which I needed to constantly evidence ‘success’, a move away from (professional) relationships based on sustaining a social and operational model that felt immoral and uneasy at best. It was a giving up, a letting go, a giving away. But those three things have very different connotations. To give up is still very much seen as a failure to move forward, and to move forward is too often perceived as the ultimate goal. But giving up is something I have been doing a lot of.


Recently I watched a livestream of a theatre show about a white man’s journey into the Amazon rainforest and his encounter with some of the people who lived there. It was a show about a white man’s journey and it was performed by a white man who already has a good reputation as a theatre-maker. It was performed in theatres across the country. And many people I know loved this show, they thought it was sublime, and exciting, and somehow they found it not to be racist or problematic that this white man was standing on a stage telling this story in big theatres. But I found that no matter how much the man in the show talked about a complex web of presence and authorship, he was writing the end to that story as his story, as the story of him standing on a stage and receiving critical acclaim. He was buying into the myth of authorship and authority and colonialism even as he claimed to disavow and disrupt it. He made that story end with him standing on a stage telling it. Even if I had enjoyed the show itself, I’m not sure I could ever understand why he made the choice for it to be him telling the story, at this moment in time, the choice to place his body on the stage in that way. It baffled me. It could be that this was his way to look into darkness for a sustained moment together. It could be. Maybe it was. But it was also married to his own continued visibility.

I have made a show that was seen in a similar way to this – the way I decribe seeing the show above. I made a show called Glorious where local performers were invited to stand on stage and make music and speak words, and in which I stood, for most of it, in the middle of the stage on a podium inside a sculptured costume. I stood in the costume and sang, and all the other things that happened in the show happened around me. It was, among other things, described as “a vacuous ego trip” by Libby Purves in the only mainstream press review it received.

I have made several shows where I have stood in the middle of a stage, as the ‘centre’ of a piece of theatre. In making those shows, I was always making a choice, and that choice was about having a short-ish brown-skinned shaven-headed body in the middle of the stage, holding the centre whilst embodying western clichés of ‘beauty’ and ‘power’. It was a choice I was making even when I knew it could be read as egotistical. Whether rightly or wrongly, it seemed important to me to make that choice. Even as it engaged with a certain relationship to power, it felt like a place of resistance.

At the end of Glorious, after everyone else had left the stage, I stepped out of the costume and left the stage, and the audience were invited to populate the stage as they exited the theatre. The idea for that show, in a way, is that it could be anybody who stepped into that costume and then out of it again, holding that central place of power for a night so that people could gather around and perform as audience members, speakers, technicians, or musicians. The idea was that all of us were standing in those positions temporarily, each of them as important as the other. But of course it also wasn’t just anyone. On those evenings, it was my body standing in for power. Libby Purves clearly felt that I made the story of Glorious end with me, with my ego, with my body, in a way that negated the other stories for her.


I’m interested in how all of these things sit together, in what it means to give up, what it means to give away, and how power operates in the tiniest details of a seemingly simple structure like the theatre. Quite apart from ‘the work’ itself, I am thinking about the acts of watching and seeing, listening and hearing, and interpreting. I’m thinking about what is held open during a performance, and whether that confronts or conforms to the power dynamics that we may have brought in with us. I’m thinking about what people are ready to notice, what people are ready to say, and what people are prepared to ignore. I’m interested in whether it is possible to give away power and remain visible, or whether it is possible to retain a kind of power while being invisible. The relationship between noticing something, acknowledging something, and understanding something. What it means if giving up and giving away are a kind of giving over of attention. What it means to hold quite still and listen intently and not turn away. What it means to give ground, to enact giving ground, or to not give ground. And how different these are, and how different these all seem, depending on the body that you happen to inhabit that night.


It’s just words, asking.
It’s just words.
It’s words.

It’s words, and you.

Filling in the gaps

For example:

Some of you will know that I recently started a PhD, and that prior to that I was directing a large project called Glorious. On a CV, it looks seamless. But the reality is very different. There was (and still is in many ways) a long process of acknowledging an ending and inviting an unknown future, plenty of doubt and frustration and sadness, uncertainty and certainty vying with each other, a long process of letting go and listening carefully, of getting off the train but trying to stay on the horse, if you know what I mean. And there's something about the place where I've arrived that means I want to preserve the gaps in activity - I want to tell the actual story of how that looks and not gloss over it. Maybe because I've spent most of my life so far telling the story of what I've done - in funding applications, on CVs, through my website - in response to the heavy demand on artists (and everyone?) to document even better than we've lived. In many ways it's easy to make it all look smooth, filled-in, glossed-over, and sometimes that's a very fun exercise. And it's not that I've not enjoyed those things, I love telling the story of it all, it's a form of fiction. But something has shifted for me.

I've always valued transition moments. Moments of breakdown and questioning, even if they're hard, are the most significant and exciting moments in life. But I think what I'm trying to say is that now I want to be more public about those parts. That's some of what this blog is for me, recognising the value in being open about the transition moments. That's where change lies, in the potential to share those moments.


For example:

I've been leading a workshop in Brussels for the past week, six full days and evenings of intensely being with people, discovering, nurturing, listening, asking, being open open open to what might happen next, making a plan and letting it go. And now, in a short day, I turn around and go on holiday. And I can't think of anything more luxurious. I'm very lucky to be in this position. But this moment, this exit from the workshop, entry into the holiday, is so much more complex than it should be! I'm exhausted and emotional, and I don't know what to do with those things. The concept of holiday is actually quite complex - how do you let go of everything, just for a short amount of time, temporarily transition your whole life into something that doesn't resemble it at all, and then just at the moment you're getting used to that other thing, transition it back? It's a weird idea. I like it too - and I think it's very healthy to stop working for a while. But let's not pretend this thing is easy, just because it's nice.


For example:

I'm writing a PhD. It's part practice-based, which means that in theory I get to use my artistic practice as part of my thinking during this PhD. And I love doing it. I love the study, I love the learning, and the discussion, and the writing, and the reading. But the idea of validation is so closely related to an idea of knowing. And my expertise lies in not-knowing. So I walk around these days feeling inspired and excited and at the same time angry. Not angry specifically, like something made me angry, but carrying a kind of passionate rage under the surface. I think it's a good thing. I think it's an anger that's related to the gaps, an anger towards dominant structures, towards a general inability to recognise a different kind of literacy. It's existing in a space that's filled with the possibility of change, even if I've no idea yet exactly how or what that change might be.


For example:

During the workshop, we spent one full day in silence. We went to a museum in silence, walked back to La Bellone in silence, ate lunch in silence, and then entered our workshop space in silence and were in the space together in silence. The lunch especially was awkward, difficult for some, strange. But in that strangeness we found so much communication. Emotions were expressed that could never have been expressed in a normal speaking day, they arrived and they passed without being held up by the worry of words. A great frustration was encountered by everyone, but instead of getting stuck inside it, we had to find ways to be with it, and eventually, recognise it, let it move on, or let it be. A shift happened within the group that would otherwise not have been possible. At the end of the afternoon, on a piece of paper, one of the workshop participants wrote, "La parole est peut-être ce qui nous sépare des autres." Maybe words are what keep us apart.

A short extract from a long conversation

I just wanted to start by saying that I had a really lovely weekend, actually. And as I was going up on the train I spent a bit of time trying to throw some words down on a computer trying to remember what had happened the time before ... And I was looking through the old book that has got all the in-the-moment notes, and they get very aggro - which happens quite often. But this bit:

'This is no doubt a good thing, no doubt its intentions are also good. And it looks and it sounds elegant, pure, pristine. And I hate it. I'm begrudging its inanities, I'm offended by its worthiness. That's not to say it's smug, but I just feel so irked and selfish in comparison.'

Matt Trueman (extract from conversation, continued below)

In April 2011, when Rajni Shah Projects premiered Glorious at the SPILL Festival, theatre critic Matt Trueman saw the show and had what he called an “allergic reaction” to it. He felt deeply conflicted about whether to write about the show or not, and finally decided that he couldn’t.

This was intriguing to me, and since he wasn’t the only one who felt negatively about the work, I decided to get in touch with him to see if he might be interested in a dialogue. This initial contact led to an extended period of intermittent emails and meetings, and finally I invited Matt to come and see Glorious again in Lancaster, on its final outing at the Nuffield Theatre (Live at LICA), December 1^st 2012.

We were both very clear that this invitation to see the show again was made with no strings attached. We were both curious to see where it might lead – and it felt, to me at least, like an exciting opportunity for real dialogue between someone who makes work professionally and someone who watches work professionally.

What follows is a very edited version of a long conversation we had a few weeks after he had watched the show for the second time. What I particularly like about this conversation is that it sits awkwardly within discussions of the role of the critic and ideas about the ‘embedded critic’. Matt attended the work the second time neither as a critic (he was not coming to review the work) nor as a friend of the project, but as someone who had a relationship to it as an audience member, and who was open to seeing whether that relationship might change over time.

I’m guessing that the content of the conversation will be of interest mostly to people who have seen Glorious. It is quite wandering. But my desire to post it here, even after so much time has passed, comes from the fact that I’m glad it exists. I like that it happened. I think it’s wonderful. And the way that this has played out taught me a lot. About what dialogue might really mean, about stepping out of comfort zones, about listening to discomfort instead of fleeing, and about changing old structures (like the ones surrounding makers/critics) by simply acting differently.

Here it is:

[…]

RS: After we'd done London - and we had quite a break before we did [the next version of Glorious in] Newcastle - we all felt like we actually knew the show and we could really throw it open in a way that we'd always wanted to. Whereas with [the preview in] Nottingham and even with London - because we hadn't done it yet ourselves, we didn't know the material - so even though we were working with people and they were very much a part of it, I think after London we were much more able to say, okay, we could do anything with this.

MT: That's really interesting because so much of its coding - for want of a better word -

RS: I love the word coding!

MT: - has got reinvention built into it, and so until you've got something to reinvent from, it's somehow incomplete I guess. And the play of differences - in a way, seeing it twice in two different settings – is a very important way to experience it from the outside, because it is so fleet of foot and so malleable. But also, it seems to me that it is based on a core framework that can be kind of like a Christmas tree that can be decorated and the end result is radically different whichever way you do it, but at some level the tree needs to be secure to hold everything that's around it and to have bits taken and changed and turned inside out. And without that being secure - with that being as up for grabs as anything around it - it kind of becomes a tricky thing to pin down maybe. You kind of need to see what's come from and what's within.

RS: The other thing that I'm very aware of is that until we'd done those two first shows my main focus and my main concern was getting it right for the participants. Even though I wanted to make a show that had completely integrity artistically for us, but that also could be completely open to those people and that they could own. And that was kind of an impossible challenge - how do you do both of those things, and not just go ' well it's about being a community show and that's really all it's about.' Or, 'it's our show and we're asking people to do something very particular that isn't about them.' But how do you allow, or try and allow, those two things to meet onstage?

But I did realise after the London show that I had - it wasn't of course that I'd never considered the audience (laughs) - but I just wasn't worried about the audience in the same way. But then I realised that that was a massive thing because their time with the show is really short and everybody else gets at least a week to be within it and have that experience. And actually we needed to find a way - wherever the audience was coming from - to at least allow the possibility that they could find a way into it if they wanted to.

MT: It's funny that you mention the shortness of it actually. Because that took me by surprise second time around. And thinking about it now, I can only imagine that it comes from the repetition, and having been so fed up the first time round that I genuinely found it quite excruciating (RS laughs). So then to come and be like 'oh, first act’s over! Is that all the cycle is? In my mind it's much longer.' And I might be wrong but I think it was probably - I half remember this sense of the realisation that it was then going to repeat -

RS: Specially if you hated it! (laughter)

MT: - well probably wrapped up in that reaction was the sense of - okay, and then a second time - so each time I kind of - and maybe it works both for and against it depending on which side of the fork the ball happens to go down. And either way you're either digging deeper or going higher with it. And if you're having a good trip, you go okay brilliant let's listen to this again, another chance to pick up on different bits. And I was surprised by how different bits vibrated in different ways, different lines in things that people wrote, particularly with the music changing behind it. But yeah, if you're on a good trip, going again and again is a great thing. But if you're on a bad trip, it just gets more and more – and you get het up with the fact that… I felt very trapped by it the first time around.

RS: Yes. It's interesting because I had a long talk with Gerry Harris who's an academic in Lancaster, who I just met for the first time this trip, and I met with her early on in the visit. And she'd read the mix of reviews and was really fascinated and said that she was really interested to see how Glorious would work because it's clearly a project that's about being very open and generous to people, but that my work is really stark and asks a lot of audiences - she'd only seen previous work - and she was interested to see how those two things would meet.

And I think Glorious is no different because almost more than anything else it does say 'you can choose to dive into this, and if you don't...’. I think if you're not in it … there is no other way in. You can't just watch it and think, it's just a piece of theatre, it's not great, I'll just look at the lights because -

MT: It's so bare…. I found myself using the word 'austere', firstly about the Barbican as a building, and the way that that felt like it carried on into the show somehow. Which is probably where this [incorrect] memory of Guildhall musicians dressed in black comes from. This very serious 'show with a message'. And although that message was heart, it felt like 'heart' typed out on a white sheet of paper. Whereas this time around it really felt like heart.

[…]

MT: I wanted to also find out a bit more about the process of working with the six people who deliver writing - what the timescale was with them, what they were like, what their reactions to doing it were.

RS: I'll talk specifically about Lancaster because it is different every time, but there's basically this really set thing that happens at the beginning of the process and this really set thing that happens at the end which is the show, and in between is this grey area where we just find our way through whatever happens and [with] whoever we've met.

So we begin by doing this kind of stall, and this time we had it in Morecambe and Lancaster libraries and then in a shopping centre in Lancaster over a week, where we invite people to write a letter to a stranger. And that happens in public space, but we have flowers - the same type of flowers we'll use in the show - that we give out to passers-by to tell them that we're there. And then anybody can stop, write a letter or a postcard, put it in an envelope, leave it, and take one that someone else has written. So it's an exchange between strangers. And we meet several hundred people that way. And we have tea and it's all very 'us', it gives people a really good sense of who we are. And we invite anybody to leave their contact details and we also say that we'll be doing workshops if anybody is interested. And usually you can tell - because if people are interested they linger and you chat with them and tell them a bit about what you're doing and then for some of them that really sparks something.

It's interesting because I think when we started this project I had a sense that we were going to work with people who've never done anything like this before - but of course there's no way of actually doing that without having a weird segregation process where you meet people and talk to them and then decide which ones are suitable!

MT: Or you force your way into something that already exists.

RS: Yes. And the whole concept of the piece is so much that whoever it’s right for will find it. So anybody who's interested can come. And then we hold our first workshop and we follow up - and with this group, in the very first workshop, Bella and Brian were there. And then Amy and Stephen […]

MT: How many hours would you say you spent with them in workshops?

RS: Maybe ten. Most of them came to a few workshops and rehearsals. Yeah. It probably varied a bit.

MT: Because in a funny sort of way I think the first time around I was looking to them for the content of the show - perhaps because the lyrics are so - concept-heavy is the wrong word - but they contain really meaty phrases that are very delicately put. And the music doesn't swallow them but they ride it. They spin away from you quite quickly before you can start unpicking what it means.

So you turn to these not simple but straightforward in their delivery [monologues], asking what's in these? And because of the way that language exists on stage I tended to look to what they were saying rather than that they were saying the first time around. And it was very interesting to see it again after seeing Nine [by Chris Goode] actually and the way that over however long Chris and Kirsty and Jamie had had with those people they'd managed to facilitate that into a mode of self-expression that used its tools to the max.

RS: They put out a call, didn't they?

MT: Yes. And it was interesting to think of Glorious as a springboard for Nine and Nine as a going further than, somehow quite consciously, knowing that Chris had responded to Glorious and I suppose that then became a bit of a question mark to me. In that [Glorious] gives people a chance to say something but what they say is still quite naked and exposing … [it] hasn't been made to be contoured in the way that you can imagine every piece in Nine being delivered in that form but then having been stretched and tweaked. So the thought process I went on afterwards with that was this slightly strange balance of how they are fitting in with you, where the musicians are doing the opposite and making the core - that Christmas tree thing we talked about - they're somehow interrupting and twisting and shaping the central thing whereas the six bits of [monologue] material are kind of like baubles, they sit on the edges of it. They don't interrupt the actual state of that coding I guess - the initial terms.

So somewhere in the structure I wonder whether they are doing you a favour by filling in a space that is left blank for something. And maybe that's where the process and the effects of those ten hours comes into play - but sitting and watching it as an outsider to that, there's something slightly funny about that relationship there. You know it's not in any way exploitative because you can tell that's not the spirit of the entire project. But it doesn't necessarily express the openness of the rest of it somehow.

RS: I think there is something about value there though, in terms of what people are speaking about […]. There’s something very conscious about the types of things people are talking about in the monologues. And I'm really aware that [audiences] come sometimes with this expectation of what 'glorious' might be, and what we might value under that term. But I think the content of those monologues feels really important - and for me they do provide a kind of narrative actually, in that it's very much about re-listening and how we listen to each other, but also how we might listen to people who we don't know, whose lives we don't know anything about, and which we might [otherwise] never find out anything about.

MT: And you get a tiny fragment, a shard.

RS: And you kind of get to know someone, actually, through that. Whereas, I think, if they were going through a different process - which, I think, in Chris' show firstly because people are responding to a call-out and going through an audition process of some kind, and secondly because his work is very different from mine - they are crafting something in a very different way. And I would say that the ask of the participants in Glorious is very different […] but it's designed so that anybody can take part, so that if someone really wanted to do it and they could only come to one rehearsal we could find a way to make that work. And although the musicians go through a whole process with us, we're meeting them in a different way. They've already identified as musicians. Whereas the people reading monologues have only ever identified as passers-by at the moment we meet them.

MT: That's interesting.

RS: And then there's something there. For some reason they're willing to take a risk - but it's a very different ask and it does sit very differently within the piece.

MT: Maybe this is a hangover from Nine, me assuming something that isn't there, but part of me sees the gesture that you make to them kind of as the gift of us. And maybe this is the wrong way round, in terms of projector-receiver but -

RS: The gift of us as in the audience?

MT: Yes. So by saying kind of the gesture of Glorious in those bits is saying, 'you can say something and it will be heard.'

RS: But also, ‘you can hear something that is being said’. And I think it's really important that it's both of those things.

MT: To the participants?

RS: To the audience.

[…]

RS: I remember somebody saying to me: 'I don't remember that much about the content of what people were saying [in the monologues] and therefore it wasn't the right thing' or 'it wasn't enough that it stuck with me'. And I kind of think it's okay that the words fall away because the words are a vehicle for people to be present with an audience and then to say goodbye to an audience. And that's not to say that they're not important, because I think they give you a way into somebody's voice and body and language and way of being. But they're not operating in the way that words normally operate in, say, a play or a more normal theatrical setting. And that's an odd thing to read.

MT: That's very interesting. I certainly got a sense of the different rhythms and different treads and things like that, but I found myself watching the musicians for that more - almost getting more of a sense of character, and being more intrigued by these people that were around the back of the stage […].

RS: I think that's alright though.

MT: Oh yeah yeah yeah. I'm with you. I'm trying to figure out-

RS: The things at the edges are often, I find, more interesting. When I'm watching a piece of theatre, if a technician's doing something over here then that's always more fascinating than somebody centre-stage. Which is also what I think is interesting about this question of me being on stage. It's been such a 'thing' of, like, ‘Is she really egotistical?’ Or, how could I choose to put myself on a podium in the centre of the stage in a piece that has this whole thing about generosity? It's really interesting, and it's something I've come back to so many times. And we talked about it from the beginning - is this the right decision? Because in a way it's such an odd thing to do. But I also think you need that in order for the edges to appear.

MT: Mmmmm. Yeah, that's interesting.

RS: And the edges are there, I completely acknowledge, in every show I've made, the edges are the things that are interesting. But you need something in the centre in order to make that possible.

[…]

RS: And so what I kind of wanted to ask you was whether you think you have changed in the time between seeing the two shows […].

MT: Yeah. I have changed. But I couldn’t tell you how in 18 months. I could tell you some things about it. The mode of watching being very different from coming to SPILL and this wrapped into the situation of it and my approach physically and psychologically. Turning up to SPILL, as a festival which means you know you're going to be working hard, you're going to be baffled, you're going to turn up and in the show you're going to be clutching at those threads to try and make sense. Which is kind of perverse for Live Art as well because so much of it is just about sitting alongside. Whereas, say, new writing or a play is very much about it sitting up here (points to head) and processing it in your head.

RS: But SPILL also does a very particular thing with its marketing as well, I think, which is all about taking risks and going to this extreme place, which is quite interesting as well in terms of a show like Glorious, which sort of is doing those things but in a very different way.

MT: You're right. So yeah, you go and you're like, ‘Right, come on then, somehow I'm going to meet you head on as a piece of work’. Whether that's because I know the ideas are going to be pretty challenging and slippery or I know you're going to throw something at me that I might not be able to handle so I'm braced against you. And then compare that to this thing of having been a guest, and having had a nice train journey up [to Lancaster], a bracing walk, and a last little dash, and then getting into the warm and sitting down, and your chat beforehand*. And feeling like there was a very familiar pre-show mode of mingling, that took me back to shows in Summer theatre camp or something like that. Not school where it was all about achievement or the CV but something more relaxed, and sharing actually - that's a key word.

[…]

Also, not trying so hard as an audience member. Not trying to get the better of shows. Actually I've never said that before! Two years ago – [as a critic] you're trying to make your name, you're trying to find the thing that undercuts the whole, that no-one else has spotted, that gets the whole to fit into place. You're always on the lookout for the answer that no-one else is going to get. And that's too exhausting to do all the time, so now I’ve just become content, kind of, to be more on the actual truth of a show, rather than spinning it...

RS: And how much do you feel like you, when you're watching something with a view to writing about it, I guess, how much do you feel that you can just watch it, as you? And have a response to it that's very much your response, that maybe you then frame in a wider context? And how much do you feel a responsibility to do something other?

MT: There's two sides to that, I guess. One is that - it should be the second one because it's almost the 'but' - but I always worry that I haven't - I guess the same things come out of a piece of work again and again, so I always tune into the philosophy of a show, by which I mean ideas of determinism and free will, things like that […] I see the same things, also in the politics of work, […] anti-consumerist ideas at quite a simple level, or the sense of the corrupt - and I worry that because it chimes with something up here (points to head) that's quite personal for me I block off things that they're trying to say that are more nuanced, or slightly different - so I'm not doing someone's work justice because it falls into one of the buckets in my head of set ideas!

RS: What was the other thing?

MT: It's very hard to just watch. At some level you know whether you've enjoyed it or not, because you feel enjoyment. People always moan about star ratings. For me, you can feel a star rating. It's like you're a thermometer, or a test-your-strength, and it just rises to a certain point. And yes in that sense, you can't turn that off. But it's very hard to just let that be everything. You're constantly trying to read things, in the sense of join the dots and pick the threads and -

RS: It's really interesting hearing you talk about that, about trying to figure out where a thing is going. Because I think that Glorious is a very frustrating show if that's what you're trying to do. It kind of really works against that.

MT: Yeah. Yes! That’s interesting.

RS: And that would be incredibly frustrating.

MT: Yeah. That's very interesting.

RS: Did you know anything about my previous work when you came to see Glorious?

MT: I think I had seen you in the SPILL brochure the time before, for the piece about America, and I had read the blurb of that, and for some reason - probably because I was a bit younger and a bit more […].

But actually to bring it back to the question before, as it were, the other worry then is that you like things that you agree with and you get that from it, but also that the person who's writing about the show is - from a journalistic perspective - always trying to concretise and make sense of. And that is why particularly I think in the traditional new writing world everything has become quite simple and straightforward, and it says something very obviously. Because that is the work that gets four stars, because critics can codify it and work it out and go: Here is the thing in a nice new paragraph.

But actually, the work that's much more exciting is work that goes 'oh my god that's scrambled my head' - that quality of, you know, I don't know what to make of that. How exciting, how interesting, that has set me challenges that I now have to go away and think about. And when you're seeing a show every day, you just don't have time to do that.

But in answer to your question, not that much in terms of the work. I knew a tiny little shard about it, but that's it.

RS: Because that's another thing I'm very aware of, that Glorious is the third in a loose trilogy. That's not an essential part of its identity, but there is something interesting about that in terms of its shape and where it's come from, I think, because of what those pieces were doing aesthetically and in terms of cultural identity. And this piece goes into a very different space. But also, there are some elements of it that are related to those other pieces, and as we're talking it occurs to me as well that there's something-

MT: Helena [Suarez] also mentioned that you're taking a break.

RS: Yeah, I'm done!

MT: Done done? For good?

RS: Yeah. I think so. I mean, you never know what will happen but - I wrote about this recently actually. After [the Glorious performance at] the Barbican, there were some beautiful amazing pieces of writing that came out of that which I really appreciated. And what I love about a lot of those is that they really acknowledged - like Maddy[Costa]'s piece really acknowledges that she found the first act really hard, which I like, because I think that's part of it. But anyway, the negative reviews just threw me right off course. I really struggled with them.

But I think what I realised is that that's not about those reviews - because actually some of those reviews I can just throw in the bin, others raised some points that have been really interesting to grapple with and make changes in response to. But I need to stop doing this. I'm at the end of something, and if I carried on I think I'd become bitter and old, and that's not okay. […] but also, this is not a kind of climate in which I can make the kind of work that I've been making, full stop. And I think if I were to continue I'd have to make compromises in ways that I'm just not prepared to. And other people are, and that's great, and also other people make different types of work that can sit in a different kind of way, but I just feel like I can't right now.

It's really interesting, the last two shows we've done, in Mons and this one, I've loved them in many ways, but when I stood up in Mons and we were about the begin the show, I thought: yeah, I need to stop doing this. I don't love it. I don't need it, and I don't feel like it needs me.

MT: That's really interesting. Because I would have thought the continent would have been much easier to -

RS: It wasn't to do with that show though. The show was amazing, and it worked so well, the whole project worked really well in Mons. But it was about me recognising how I felt being on stage. Yeah, it's been quite hard because theatre has been what I've loved my whole life. But I also think it's okay. I think it's really good to recognise that now, rather than when it's too late.

[Someone walks into the room, our time is up, we say goodbye and thank you]

*As part of the Lancaster version of Glorious, Rajni introduced the cast to the audience and welcomed everyone in the foyer before the show began. This was not yet a part of Glorious when it was performed in London.

The big fat finger of disappointment

"Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious and direct." - Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism


Last night, I was at part of a conversational event with the director Phelim McDermott and the poet John Hall. I don't know if the whole series is like this, but this one was electric - in a humble, open, generous kind of way - it was electric and fertile and wonderful. So much so that at the end of the evening we all left feeling we still had things to say, to discuss, to place in the world, to explore together and with others. So I'm fired up and determined to post this today! And in the spirit of conversation, this blog post will just be a beginning. And I'm slowly getting used to that being okay.

This blog doesn't have to say *everything*.

Instead, here's some of everything:


Disappointment and care
As many of you will know, I've been working for what seems like forever but is actually just over three years on a large project called Glorious. Some of you may also know that whilst many good things have come of this project, there have also been a few incredibly hostile reviews and audience reactions.

I've spent a good year dealing with what these reviews and responses have provoked emotionally for me. It has felt like they have destroyed me. And not in the normal way that negative reviews might destroy a person. They've left me wanting to give up on theatre for good - to walk away and declare defeat.

But it turns out that this disappointment had little to do with those reviews. Yes of course, they were upsetting, and normally I would have felt sad - because we all want to be loved and to be successful at some level. But my response wasn't as simple as that. I used those reviews as a reason to retreat from a world I have known and owned, as a reason to say goodbye to something. And I've finally found a way to listen to that.

What I realise now is that they acted as a catalyst into a place I've needed to be emotionally. When I allowed myself to follow that instinct, to be with that disappointment, I realised that what I was experiencing was the sense of an ending and the painful process of changing values. And I really needed to experience those things in order to move into a new place in my life. Because whilst to outsiders Glorious is just the next show in my artistic career, I have experienced it as a life-changing project. It has raised the stakes considerably for me. And the act of returning to the way I used to work no longer feels like an option.

This made me think about disappointment, and about endings, and about hard places that we move through in life. Places that we're afraid of, places we distance ourselves from. And I'm wondering what happens if we can be less afraid of them. If a true friend could be someone who allows you to enter that place and find a way through it rather than around it. I wonder what decisions we might make if we were less afraid of letting go of what we knew. In this instance, what happens if I let go of the idea of being an artist in the ways it has previously manifested itself? What new spaces might arise if I can acknowledge the ending of something, and allow the next phase to emerge?

Disappointment is like a big fat finger that points unavoidably at the thing we're most trying to avoid. When it occurs in my life, I try to shield myself from it by trying to justify and understand the thing that has left me with a void. But I've learnt this year that feeling disappointed can be a rich (if difficult) place to be for a while - and that in the end, disappointment really does point quite bluntly towards the things we care about.


Problems that won't go away
The other side of this (and part of the reason it's taken so long to write this, because there are a number of tangled issues) is that I now realise that there was a value in those negative reviews. Because they highlight something important about Glorious. Namely, that it isn't an easy, feel-good, community show. It's more than that. And I don't mean better. I certainly wouldn't want to imply that there's something superior in the difficulties of this project. But I think it's important to acknowledge that Glorious is trying to do something other than that. And a part of that attempt is about making manifest 'problems' that refuse to hide.

I'm the kind of artist who is easily swayed by opinion. I value what other people think. So if an audience member has a certain reaction to the work, I do take that seriously. And I've spent so much time thinking through what the negative reactions were about. But every time I've been through this process (and believe me, I've been there a lot) I've resisted the idea of changing something in the show to make it more palatable.

And I've found myself in a place where I know there is some value to the problems, the contradictions, of a work like Glorious that doesn't fit into the classifications of 'musical' or 'live art' or 'community theatre'. Even though this means that some people will find it harder to 'like'.

I don't want to spend too much time on this right now - partly because there are many enourmous questions that get unearthed as I try to articulate what the problems are that are raised by the show, and how they fit or don't fit with current expectations around engaged or experimental practices; and partly because I'm in the process of organising a symposium around all of this for the last weekend in May 2013 and it would be far more interesting if you could come along and we could have a conversation. But maybe I'll just finish up this section by acknowledging that some of the following are present for me as I continue and move towards reflecting on what Glorious has been able to do.

The problem of authorship and the notion of author or director in community work

The problem of what we choose to make visible and what we choose to make invisible in theatre

Whether we have a responsibility to make work that looks the way it is expected to look

Whether a duty of care can or should extend to a duty of representation

What we are asking of an audience when we invite them to sit in a theatre

Whether we can make work that is both difficult and kind


The host in hostile
There was a wonderful moment last night when I felt like John Hall was pulling a gentle thread of language from inside of me. It was during this moment that he referred to the relationship between 'host' and 'guest' and 'hostile' - all sharing close etymological ground. He talked about the idea that the true definition of a guest is a stranger, and the true definition of a stranger is a person who might be your enemy.

And it made me think about:

A few weeks ago, I took part in a talk at The Baltic in Gateshead. While preparing for this talk, I had a moment of brightness when I realised that instead of talking about everything that had been brilliant and successful in the process of Glorious, I could use this as an opportunity to explore the problems of the process and the resistances we had met. I could talk about all that had seemed hard and unresolved in the project, and where this had led me in my thinking. I could take a look at why some people felt so angry, while others felt so warm. Those reactions, the angry disappointed ones, they were able to offer me so much if I could invite them into the dialogue.

And so when John pointed out that there was host in hostility, it felt like he was describing my recent epiphany. Of course! - the most interesting dialogues with the most potential for change and movement and wonder come from those moments when we embrace the thing that we feel is set against us, when we pay attention to the language of that resistance. Any response to something I've made is, after all, an offering, whether it's the kind of offering I choose to accept or not.

I often declare that I want dialogue to be wide - that I want to embrace strangers - but when it comes down to it my instincts still tell me to stick with the familiar. In beginning to embrace opposition, in embracing the failures of Glorious, I have been able to find more value in the project and more value in the dialogue. And this opens up a whole new space of possibility.


Standing on the edge
I guess that where this leaves me is in a place of great re-evaluation. I’m standing at the tip of my life, looking at all the things one might call Success, and slowly starting to see them for what they really are. And I’m asking myself what really matters in a life. Because when it comes down to it, surely life is just a series of encounters with people - it’s a series of how people treat you and how you treat them.

Glorious?

An interim evaluation of Glorious by Rajni Shah Projects
Evaluation by Elizabeth Lynch

Translation of the Glorious lyrics

Below are extracts from a very lengthy and detailed correspondence that I had recently with a wonderful man called Neil Elliott Beisson - who has translated the Glorious lyrics into French for our upcoming Belgian version of the project. I found the correspondence really interesting. It was conducted entirely via email, and without Neil having seen the show.

I love the process of translation, and often use it within a creative process in some way or another - but I've never written lyrics before, and certainly never had someone attempt to translate them into another language! The challenges are not just of sense, but of rhythm and sound and allusion. Neil is a poet, and he dug deep into the process, asking me lots of questions about intention - and I'm really grateful for that.

The dialogue (even in its edited form here) is rather long and might seem opaque to those of you who've not yet seen the show - but I like it being up here as I think it offers an unusual insight into the creative process. I've included some extracts from the Glorious lyrics in English to help make sense of it - however, not all the lyrics we discuss are included (to avoid overload!). If it's helpful, you can download copies of the full lyrics in both languages here. And if you fancy it, you can also read a bit about the Glorious project here.

Dear Lucille, here we are then
Strange how people look at you and
Strange how you can be so present
Even as you draw the line
As you step outside
As you step outside

Dear Sushila, hold them tightly
Feel the past return around as
You are holding onto hope that
even this, all this might change
As you draw the line
As you draw -

Dear murmur
Hold them gently
Hold the weight of knowing people
Hold the weight of staying true
Place your body in this landscape
Know your body in this place
you're a mine of hidden stories
on the lashes of your mind...

Neil
In "Song of Letters", in the Lucille stanza, what do you exactly mean by "draw a line" and "step outside"? Is it about a situation in particular?

In the Suchila stanza: "Hold them tightly". What is the "them" referring to?

More globally, "the act of unbecoming" is a concept that can be understood and translated in a variety of manners. What is the meaning closest to what you have in mind with that line?

Rajni
Song of Letters came from a series of letters I wrote to real people. So, no, the characters are not linked, they are like separate letters that are held next to each other. The only thing linking them is me 'writing' to them in a way.

"draw the line" is like the expression 'to draw the line' - meaning, to contain something, to put an end to something. It's about containment really - though of course in English with a nice double meaning of drawing with a pencil too.

"step outside" again, I guess this is kind of metaphorical and literal at the same time. It's ambiguous in English too. I like the literal idea that you step outside of the door of your house into the wider world - but also step outside of a situation.

"Hold them tightly" - again (sorry) this is ambiguous. In my mind though, this definitely refers to the audience (them) as well as perhaps Sushila's family.

"the act of unbecoming" for me is about letting go, letting things unravel, breaking down of the known self in order to enter the space of the unknown. Does this help? It's a phrase I've coined for this show really!

they said: when the land is shaking,
when the earth itself is breaking
there’s a void of hesitation 
and you can’t know who to trust

Neil

In the "Landbreak" song, i'd like to know what you meant by the word landbreak itself: is it just a reference to an earthquake (wether real or abstrat)? Or is there a pun intended with "daybreak" since you talk about the night falling etc? Also, is the past tense in the recurring "They said" an absolute requisite? It sounds right in English, of course, but translates weirdly into French unless i also put the other tenses in past tense too, but i'm afraid it changes everything...

Rajni
"Landbreak" - yes, related to daybreak, and the song does relate to an earthquake, though it also metaphorically relates to what is happening to our society at the moment, this breaking up of everything we thought we knew, this shaking up of societies.

It is fine to change tense if it makes sense.

Most lyrics relate to a particular situation and at the same time refer to the audience and everyone in the auditorium - this is quite important. So they can be read as relating to a narrative, but also relating to the narrative that is unfolding before us - i.e. we are all in a space together, waiting, wondering, sharing something, and preparing to say goodbye.

Neil
i have a hard time with "on the lashes of your mind". Lashes can have to very different meanings... And none of them will translate litterally, but maybe if you can explain in English i can find some analog metaphor...

Think 'eyelashes'. A part of the body, but one which falls and regrows, and is on the edge, and often associated with beauty and softness. Also, one can make a wish and blow into the world an eyelash that has fallen out.

It also sits in contrast to the idea of 'a mine of hidden stories'. The mine is deep and maybe dark and rich, and the lashes are high and light and on the surface of the body.

- "Feel the past return around": the words "return" and "around" are kind of redundant and i can't help but think there's a reason for that. Does the around mean that the past comes back to surround, to envelop the person you're writing to? Should i emphasize on the around? Like i've translated into French as "feel how the past has come back to wander about"... Is that close enough to what you had in mind?

Rajni
Glorious has a lot of circles in its structure - so the idea of something coming back around emphasises that - yes - a kind of surrounding/enveloping as well as a circular rather than linear progression of time in a way.

Neil
- By "staying true" you mean staying true to oneself? To everyone in general? This will drastically change how i'll translate, and i'm afraid that a generic word phrase like "being sincere" might be too general and far off.

Rajni
Staying true to what you believe in - to yourself, your heart, yes, I think that's the closest.

Neil
- "on the brink" means on the verge, on the limits, on the border of... But what about "brinking", a few lines down?

Rajni
"brinking" meaning existing in a state of being on the verge really - it's a word I made up! The idea of living on the edge, in a fragile way rather than a dangerous way

Neil
- "As this place returns around": is it a physical place or more like a mental space? Same as the first question with the accumulation of "return" right next to "around". Oh, and why "return" and not "come back"? Maybe that's the part that escapes my understanding!

Rajni
See the answer for the first question! And I think it's more like a mental space - but also the idea that through time places and ideas and people change but there's a circularity to that change. AND as I said before, 'this place' definitely refers to the theatre space as well as the mental space. So the way that we keep coming back to being in the theatre (we're in a fictional space but we're also right here, with each other) is important.

Neil
In Landbreak, i'm still thinking about the title, i haven't come up with a solution yet that would paralel the daybreak and an earthquake. At some point you use the word "rupture" which also exists in French. It can be used to refer to the break-up in a love relationship or merely the breaking of something. What did you have in mind writing this? i assume i have to keep it vague, but still... i guess it would help to know...

Rajni
I think that the idea of rupture could work well - I guess what I like about landbreak is the idea of a landscape changing too (actually the physical land on which we stand) but we may have to take a different route to get to the same feeling in french.

- What about the voices in the distance?

I was thinking about people who won't be there to see the show. For all of us, there are people, whether alive or dead, who are not close physically but speak very close to our hearts - and I'd like for them to be present with us in the room/theatre when we perform.

every now and then
you feel them fly past
everything you knew
all the furniture
all the books you loved
people who cared and
feelings of regret
murmurs of desire

Neil
i have one question: the language is very poetic, with a very strong imagery and is sometimes broken (voluntarily, i suppose, or maybe am i the only person to feel this) by the use of daily-life words like "food" (which sounds ugly in French) or "crockery" or "furniture". Why is that? Was it to ground into tangible reality the abstract concepts in the other lines? The three words i've quoted definitely sound weird. By "furniture", did you mean the actual cupboard, shelves etc, or do you extend the meaning of the word over to anything material that could get in the way of "travelling light" (do you know that "Bag Lady" song by Erykah Badu?)... Other than those abstract questions, i'm pretty happy with how it came out in French...

Rajni
Yes, I love the fact that these very mundane words appear in an otherwise very poetic text. For me, it's actually poetic to have them there. And yes, in my head, it's actual plates and chairs and tables that fly through the air in this song. There is something gently comical about it - but it's important to me that it is grounded in this way, not just ethereal but also about imagining all those actual objects in our lives, and what it would mean to throw them into the air.

to break wide open
to shy away
to blinker and canter
to squander the day
 

to wander and wonder
to place and displace
to keep it within you
and not leave a trace

- i have a hard time with "To blinker and canter". In French, they can be translated by horse-related words, but not as verbs, is that ok? Are they indeed related to horses or am i missing something? Maybe it's an idiomatic expression i don't know?

Yes, they are horse- related. In English, though, we can relate them to a person (though we wouldn't normally, it works in the poetic context of the song) - does that feel weird in french? too weird? If so, I'm happy to explore taking another route.

- "To whittle away" is the work of a craftsman, right? Cutting and polishing something... Is it a problem if i use two verbs in infinitive form in French? To emphasize the meticulousness of it?

I think it is fine. It's the idea of slowly cutting away at something in small bits. The main thing with this song is the rhythm/rhyme. It should feel really like a list - very same-y - and that builds and builds in a very simple way.

- Also, by "Unravel" means to unveil who you are to the world, right?

Mmm, not necessarily. I would think of it as letting go - sometimes that might mean going crazy, losing a grip on the world, letting go of one's image. So in a sense yes, and of course it's not clearly stated, but the idea of stopping holding it all together is important.

As we draw this act to night
as the hills are folded in
As the coloured lights are fading
and our thoughts are packed away
It is glorious

- What is the "it" in "It is glorious"? That's the main thing because it'll enable me to understand the whole song... Is it the fact that the show meets an audience that is glorious?

Ha ha, this is a tricky question. I think it's the whole situation that is glorious - yes, in a way, it's the fact that the show meets an audience, and here we all are, for a moment in time, sharing this space and these stories with each other.

Hey, just a quick question before i get into more detail and send you the lyrics back: what do you mean with "Now that the hills are folded in"? i understood it as "now that the performance is over and we've packed all the stage-decorations and all"... Is that correct? The same goes with "thoughts packed away". i think i get it, but i'd want to make sure!

I guess I should have said: there are no hills in the show! It's just a phrase I liked, that doesn't particularly makes sense, but yes is generally referring to the idea of things going to sleep / packing away.

"i had doubts about "earthbound" as in being just a being that cannot fly, or bound as in clearly rooted in the soils?"

rooted in the soils - either really, but also 'heading towards earth'.

"It is glorious": i've kept the word itself, for i believe both the English and French languages give it some sort of grandiose, almost religious, importance. But instead of an "it", i've gone for a "everything"... i hope you don't mind!

I'm not totally sure yet - but I'm going to try it as you have written it! I think my worry is that I would like it to convey that this, right here, is glorious - and in a way this implies that this glorious exists in spite of everything that is not glorious in the world. Does that make sense??

How about "Nous sommes gloooorieuuuuux"

It would really refer to "all of us, sharing this moment in this space"... Yes?

One last question: about "the hills that have folded in", how about i use the image of flowers that close at nighttime? So far it's the best idea i've had...

On the value of doubt, reflection, uncertainty and not knowing (quiet people especially welcome)

These are notes from a session I called at Improbable's 2012 Devoted and Disgruntled event...

I place a lot of value on spaces for reflection and doubt - and listening. And by Sunday morning, I hadn't really found a way for those spaces to be present at D&D, so I called this session.

What I didn't do was think much about how I might actually create the kind of space I was craving within a very loud room where lots of other conversations were happening simultaneously. I'm really grateful that so many people showed up and stayed present with the discussion - and can only apologise that the idea didn't occur to me earlier, when I might have come up with some brilliant way to create a more conducive space where we didn't have to shout. Nevertheless, we talked of...

Not knowing as a process in life

"There is so much we're supposed to know"

Engage with 'not knowing' as a process of moving forward - our constant movement between spaces of knowing and not knowing and how we might allow the value of each affect the other - the value in consciously putting oneself in a space of not knowing - but also needing a clear sense of self when valuing the space of not knowing. Which can feel tricky!

Relationship to Failure

Someone pointed out that uncertainty and doubt are always present in a rehearsal or making process - so what's the big deal?

Perhaps those spaces are always present, but at some level we are hardwired to think of spaces of uncertainty as spaces of failure. What transformations occur when we continue to inhabit these spaces instead of moving through them as quickly as possible towards a resolution?

What is the relationship between placing oneself in the unknown, and listening or empathy? What if leaving my own certainties allows me to be more in the world?

Thinking about timescales (and referring back to Simon Bowes' session on "It's going to take years") - what if something that appears to fail in the short-term eventually represents a really important shift in thinking?

Long timeframes towards change.

Again, how do we allow this kind of thinking to be something a wider audience can relish?

Audiences

There's no lack of makers interested in addressing these questions - but how do we respond to these spaces as audience members?

What does it mean to create a piece of work where the audience is free to be reflective and journey into a space of not knowing? How can we avoid slow, reflective spaces being antagonising or boring to audiences? Especially within a theatre context (as opposed to live art, for example, where this is more common)

Maybe we need to think more about how a piece of work is framed/introduced, how an audience is prepared for a piece of work. Thinking through audience expectations that are set up through the medium and its traditions (different in visual arts / live art / theatre), through the space (theatre, gallery, page, browser) and how the audience move through it, and therefore also the way that time operates within that space.

It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass - Anne Carson

Re-educate

Someone spoke of the importance of re-educating. My notes aren't great on this bit - but I think this relates back to the idea of frames, of thinking about the wider frame of presenting a piece of work, and acknowledging the notion of re-educating within a creative thinking process. If I want to really change the way audiences watch this work, what can I do to let them know?

Slowness as Resistance

Slowness is a resistance of narrative / expectation / speed / knowledge.

Sometimes that resistance hits the wall of a fast world. Matt spoke of not being able to engage with my show, Glorious, not because of an unwillingness, but rather an inability.

Transparency and withholding

Theron noted the difference between work where artists and audiences are entering a space of not knowing, and work where the artist is in a place of knowing and the audience is entering a space of not knowing.

We talked about transparency, and the extent to which knowledge is withheld from an audience - and how this is handled.

We didn't (but I wish we had) talk about manipulation of audiences, and whether this is desirable or unattractive or inevitable.

Gentleness can be counterproductive

Simon proposed the idea that maybe we're too gentle and worried around creating these alternative spaces. Maybe as audience members we sometimes want to be faced with an obstacle we can't get around. How do we create a culture that acknowledges that audiences can feel grateful for challenge and having been pushed?

We talked again about spaces before or after a difficult performance - the space for audiences after Internal by Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Geod, for example, or the lead-in to Coney's works.

Walking

We went for a walk at dusk.

SEAM 2011

This is a talk I gave at the 2012 SEAM conference in Sydney. It was written to be spoken rather than read, but maybe something enough of it remains to jot down here. I will return to this thinking, it will grow deeper. But for now:

You have to believe in what you do. You have to believe it’s worth it. And then you just have to do it.

the edges of home

In early 2005 I started to make a show about cultural identity and the stereotyping that we find ourselves swept into on an everyday basis. It was about the many safety nets that we create for ourselves, our homes and our habits, clothes and characters, our versions of history and geography, our constant attempts to contain the falling of life. It was about what it means to create a home within a theatre, and to constantly bump up against the edges of that home. It was about shifting borders, falling in and out of being, falling in and out of the performance itself.

This little one hour autobiographical piece was called Mr Quiver. Through a series of unexpected circumstances, it grew to become a four hour performance installation into which audience could wander at any pace and stay for any duration, some remaining, some even waking and sleeping with us over the four hours. We didn’t think about documentation much, but later managed to scrape together enough material for a very basic DVD (see here for an example of what this looks like!).

but we've not finished the conversation

By 2008, when we finished touring Mr Quiver, our lives had moved on three years and the piece itself had continually evolved, and everything and nothing in the world had changed. It felt clear to me that Mr Quiver needed to be one in a series of performance installations, spaces where time could pass more carefully, where we could contemplate our small place within this racing world - spaces that could be intimate and wide at once. So Mr Quiver became the first in a trilogy.

And then came Dinner with America.

Dinner with America wasn’t a critique of the United States, or even a rant about the Bush era - but contained the voices of US citizens from many different backgrounds, who talked about how they felt living in that country in 2008. The people I interviewed talked about politics and race, identity and validation and nationhood, but they also talked about daily routines, favourite restaurants, clothes, the police, what they liked to eat. Through the show, these voices started to mingle with the voices of the audience, who shared food and conversation with the performers in the space to mark the end of each performance.

who writes the future

In 2009, I helped to bring New Orlean’s artist Jose Torres Tama’s The Cone of Uncertainty post hurricane Katrina show reflecting on the experience of the post Katrina floods and aftermath to London. After the show, I gave a response as part of a post-performance panel, and I’d like to read a short extract from that response, as part of this line of thought about audiences today.

“It made me think about water and paradise and violence. It made me think about the idea of giving someone a voice. About being homeless and shouting. About cycles of behaviour, and the cycle of a life, and the moment when we humans return to earth and water. It made me think about the idea of history. About the blinkered confidence of those who write the future, and the dialects that have been lost, and the dialects that have been eradicated. And the people who have been lost, and the people who have been forgotten, and the people who have been eradicated. It made me think about water, about the desire to be quenched and carried. It made me think about the layers of society, and the layers of a rock, and the rings of a tree, and the ways in which today will be fossilised. It made me think about being spontaneous, and about being sectioned, ostracised, placed outside the box. It made me think about physical instincts. It made me think about physical instincts in the face of nature. It made me think about ego and placelessness, and how being small can be big. And it made me sure that the way forward is less about giving people voice than allowing people to listen.”

Over the years, ever increasingly, I’ve felt that whilst making performance was exciting and important, there was more work to be done - so much more work to be done - in making this performance accessible to a wider audience. I know that access and audience development and equal opportunities aren’t the sexiest words to use in a talk - but those words mark my territory. I care very much about making experimental work accessible - and not just because of a sense of fairness, although that’s a part of it. But also because of a deep interest in conversations that open up new spaces in society, that form bridges of experience, that allow us to listen in new ways. Because I find that newness of experience pushes the walls of a building - and the rigour and frustrations of inviting diversity whilst retaining integrity are what move us forward.

the heaviness of theatre

After our premiere of Glorious (the third in the trilogy) in April of this year, an audience member and academic came up to me to tell me how much she liked the piece, how she felt it was really important - “but, she said, I think you need to take it out of the heavy frame of the theatre.”

And I thought, yes, maybe she’s right. Surely she's right!

But then I thought: No. There’s a reason we’re in a theatre. There’s a reason this trilogy has been leading here. There’s a challenge there, certainly, in using a very conventional theatrical set up. But it’s that challenge that interests me most. And whilst Mr Quiver and Dinner with America both used an installation setting, I’d argue that each piece uses the fact of the heavy frame of a building - whether that’s a church, an opened out stage, or a gallery - to set up a challenge, to necessitate a new conversation.

Whether or not we’re succeeding, who knows - I might be able to reflect on that at the end of 2013 when we’ve put Glorious to bed. But I know now, having reflected on that comment, that being in a theatre is one of the most important aspects of Glorious. It’s an intervention in a theatre. And it asks the theatre to be heavy with history and etiquette, and it asks people to enter that space who have never been there before and to deliver very delicate narratives within that space. And it asks the audience to really be in that space and to listen and to allow themselves to be a part of that building. It asks whether we can be in conversation with the building, as it looms over us. And it asks whether, at the end of the day, we can recognise the theatre as a moment in time. A building that has arisen and will disappear again. A pulse in the cityspace. A rock that will eventually erode. Just like a story that is repeated over time, these spaces will challenge and change and expire.

Thank you.