The team had a great rehearsal last night where we implemented the latest version of the script, used the video (recently completed), and finished some new choreography. Still to go, I have to finish some costumes, we have some “where do I go when the puppet goes here?” moments to figure out, and the sound.

The process so far has seen me and my actor John Gilmour working one day a week for the last 5 weeks. It has been a joy to rehearse and to see the show change in the minutest of ways – after all it’s only a 4 minute show! However, as the weeks have passed I have brought in props that I have made either as mark-ups of what is to come or as the object which I intend to be used in the final performances. Week on week there is a new “bit” to add. What this has done, however, is seen the process move at a snail’s pace because so much has been mysterious. “This is where the AV plays…” “How long is the AV….” “I don’t know.” I answered so many questions with “I don’t know” or “Let’s just say it is true that…” And because John is great that has been fine. Real progress, however, has really been made in the last two rehearsals where more props and other technical “bits” have been in place.

Now that many of the costumes are complete, the big set pieces are viable (there was a rehearsal where Helen Cuinn, the second puppeteer, politely ignored the crap build job I did on the biggest one), and the text has been stripped back, confirmed, and memorized we are really advancing the nuances of the performances.In most devising processes I know that one must do the ‘hard yards’ or get through the slog of creating, throwing up and then throwing out images, only to reclaim them later or filch the best part of it for actual use some point down the road. That ground work makes what I have called “real” progress possible. But not this process. I think what was holding us back was that I could see the objects I had written into the images we used as starting points. I could see them because I had to make them. But communicating what I “saw,” even drawing pictures and using likenesses from other work doesn’t communicate idea exactly. So, for the most part, there has been more speculation going on than devising.

What if….we had taken a week of development? A solid 6 days, everyday, 6 hours a day with a few breaks, to warm up together, think together, devise together, and then rehearse together. Would complaints of “It’s only 4 minutes, there isn’t time for that” have increased? Would that complaint have turned into “We only have 4 days so let’s decide!” resulting in much haste and stress? Haste and stress does not a good performance make…. That said, we would have worked as a team from the start, we’d have had less chat because the objects would have been there in materiality not imagined a different way for each collaborator, we’d have been decisive, imaginative, and focused. I had my head in the design/build world way more than directing and now I’m focused on performing as well. That week would have let me put on that still-odd director/performer “hat” but not the designer hat too. That alone might have seen the process take on greater clarity.

And yet I can’t help feeling most of the design and build should have been done at the kick off. Most of my initial images are, in some variation, present in the current show. I might just have had the confidence to know they were going in and therefore made them – WELL – and the team had them from the beginning. As an individual practitioner with a one-off grant, however, making that firm, though confident decision, sets me up for an over-budget show. Because I am who I am if something wasn’t “right” or “right” for the show we ended up creating I would have bought/made the new “right” thing. Not a sustainable practice at this stage.

All good questions for next time!