Catching Up: Part 1

How many times have we been here before? The lengthy delay between posts followed by an apology and a promise never to do it again. I’m so predictable. But never mind, this time so much has happened in between posts I just haven’t had the time to write here (I always find it takes ages to update the blog. Why is that? They are only thoughts after all; I’m not writing an essay).

Where to begin…I suppose with the scratch night, which seems like an age ago but was really just over a month, and which I promised to write about. It was a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants moment – the technical set-up wasn’t perfect (in fact, they were doing the get in while we were supposed to have our technical rehearsal which wasn’t ideal). Our ‘rehearsal’, therefore, was mostly a mad dash to figure out where things should go for the performance.

The night itself was an interesting mix of pieces: each one was genuinely different from the others, which goes to show how vague and subjective the term ‘physical theatre’ actually is.

They were of varying degrees of success – some showed real signs of promise and imagination (there was an interesting one with a drummer and his a growing drum kit – I’m afraid I can’t explain it any clearer than that without using up lots of time), one was very well executed and entertaining but, to me, didn’t have much going on under the surface, one had a good idea that was let down by an A-Level-style execution and one was just baffling. I don’t have any time to go into more depth and I apologise for leaving you with these mystical statements but hey, I’ve got a bed to get to and work in the morning so let’s push on through.

Ours, in my opinions, is the one that was the most genuinely experimental – we were shoving out our very un-mainstream ideas and moments on stage to see what would happen, and was also difficult to watch (or even perhaps enjoy) due to its very rough, raw, unready state. HAVING SAID THAT…I think it went rather well for an initial testing-of-the-water. We essentially took the structure of what usually is the final scene and extended it to the 15 minute limit we had for the night. I picked our tasks carefully, as always, after much observation and thought, after lots of discussions, exercises, games and soul searching, and the tasks nicely varies in their rhythm, use of space, dimensions and types of physicality (I won’t say more, because you have to see it for yourself!) As always, the textgame was present alongside it.

It was messy, it wasn’t timed right, we were unused to doing the whole thing but the tasks were onto something and as ever I strongly believe in the ideas of the piece and it’s potential to transform into something beautiful, shocking, horrible, funny and thought-provoking. Overall we got positive feedback – people seemed intrigued with the concept. One woman said there was something beautiful in the fact that we were trying to ‘communicate something impossible to communicate’ which was an interesting thought but sadly, there was not enough time to ask her to elaborate on it. People were interested by their own reactions while watching; caught between wanting to help and wanting to leave us, finding it funny and finding it horrible – all classic Failure Project reactions.

Some doubt over the soundtrack (which was the bleep test) – some found it too obvious. I’ve cut down it’s presence since but would never want to get rid of it completely – it provokes quite strong childhood memories and emotions in people which I think opens out the piece a bit more to the audience. It does so, too, without being emotional within itself – one of my bugbears is overly dramatic or manipulative music in performance; I find it lazy and it often produces the opposite effect in me (for example in Romeo Castelluci’s Inferno – the music was so full of pathos at one point I switched off entirely). Some doubts also about the length, too – one girl said that it became more and more fascinating, peaking at the 12 minute mark, at which point it dropped off as we were too exhausted to do the tasks with any success. While I understand where she’s coming from, I disagree completely – I find the aftermath, the point after which the failure is obvious and it becomes clear they’re doomed, to be really interesting. The piece shifts at that moment, in tone and mood as well as energy, and enters a new phase – more contemplative, more sad, more stripped down - it seems more human.

Enough about this – it was only 15 minutes! To come:
1)The SPILL Festival
2)Failure Project at Scenepool
3)Thoughts on all this scratch night malarkey, and where we’re going next

Until next time!