Week 2 woohoo

WEEK 2

 

2 days at Laughton Lodge, Lewes

Me/Antonia Grove (performer)

Ben Duke (performer)
Jo McInnes (director)
Brad Birch (writer)

 

We asked the question again this week, to imagine we had seen this piece (Running on empty) finished and performed already. These are some random, imaginary things we envisaged having seen:

 

A conversation that shifts your perception of events, two people with a heavy weight above their heads, a black and white film of the two performers in another time and place, the thrill of an unknown outcome, a singer on a microphone, two people in severe isolation and examination, a million miles between them, things breaking, relentless repetition of a word or phrase, a kiss, a pulsating blurring light, a sickening silence, a beautiful song and a guitar.

It's interesting the amount of similar images there were between us all, irrespective of who was new to the process this week. 

 

What we did:

 

We drew and wrote, we told stories, we danced and we played games, but we spent most of the time in the pursuit of combining dance and dialogue.

We worked with one of Brad’s existing scripts (Even stillness breathes softly against a brick wall ) on day 1, and then he wrote us a perfect little play a few pages long to use on day 2.

 

Me and Ben improvised together (under Jo's direction) to identify the movement quality of different states; intimacy, jealousy, dominance, competition, passive and direct aggression, resignation.

We then layered dialogue on top of these states.

 

What we think we discovered:

The movement holds an indefinable and unpredictable energy, life and a breathing space. As the movement and relationship between us heats up, it boils to such an extent that something has to be said. The words explain the context like an anchor. The dialogue creates a narrative, a strand, something for the audience to cling onto.

The dialogue tells us how the characters exist in their world, the movement tells us how they feel about that world.

 

The movement shows us the battle, the war, and the voice explains the stakes. Voice can be used as another weapon. The different layers of communication create a greater depth of understanding.

It was surprising how natural it felt to move whilst in dialogue, but it depended on the nature, form and language of the dialogue.




What next:

3 days this week @ Laughton and The Nightingale, with Ben Duke, Ben Webb (writer) back in the studio, and the lovely Charlie Morrisey will join us in the capacity of movement director mostly (although I will make sure we get to dance with him too!).
Jo will pop by to see where we've taken the process this week and I'm looking forward to Lee Ross coming in to see what we've been doing and hopefully inspire him to write a song or two.

I think some running along the seafront or up the downs is in order again since we are working in Brighton. I might need to borrow Frankie the dog again though.