Exposure

I had been planning to write a post on the blog about the difficulties of the facilitator/director's role in a piece like this. During rehearsals I have always feel a complex mixture of emotions - an envy where I wish that I could be doing the tasks too, a (some would say machiavellian) desire to set the performers even more difficult, arduous and mean tasks, and a guilt at setting these tasks and then just sitting back and watching, unable to fully take part. These last two emotions have been the most difficult to negotiate - how can I balance them both? How can I push my performers but do so in a healthy, happy, accepting atmosphere? I feel like I had already been making progress (our blindfolding exercises, for example, get better, more engaging and adventurous every time we do it) but realistically we just don't have the time to develop each task in the same way.

I had conveyed these emotions to a colleague, Jessica Hartley, who is at the moment writing a PHD thesis on risk, fear, exposure and failure in performance and pedagogy. She agreed to come to a rehearsal and, in her words, 'poke' us, with games and exercises based on physical and emotional exposure.

It was a fascinating experience.

As a group we were hesitant, we held back, and were overly polite and nice to each other - we obviously still have some way to go in terms of truly exposing ourselves as performers and people. However, what pleased me the most - apart from what I learnt about my performers, how they work, what they are like, and how they interact with each other through watching them during these games, was their positivity and commitment to the project in future rehearsals, to pushing themselves, and allowing themselves to be pushed.

I came to the rehearsal looking for validation, for the green light to be the facilitator/director that I want to be, and happily, I found it. Future rehearsals may have a completely different feel to them now...