R&D Insights week 2: The Incredible Presence of a Remarkable Absence
Insights from week two of research and development for The Incredible Presence of a Remarkable Absence.
Photo credit: James Rowbotham. Dancers: Aya Kobayashi, Carrie Whitaker, Kai Downham & Joe Darby
Today it seems that the ideas keep flowing and the dancers have lots to say as they get their heads around their character and their situation. Quite often I watch their eyes drift up as they search their brains for ideas/images, other times I am juggling the many opinions that are being thrown up simultaneously! They are opinionated artists (as is Dougie) and this often means many many cooks in the kitchen! I mean this as a positive thing, they want to own their role and think as their character, so this takes some negotiating.
Last week we did a lot of playing and the improvisations threw up many ideas, some which have been side-splittingly funny, others bittersweet and some terribly sad; some responses I feel unable to tame! The process so far has been physical, emotional, and extremely cognitive. We have been balancing the heavy weight of existentialist thought (google existentialism if you want to know more) and at the same time we have been working at a physical rate that has required many heavy carbohydrates. Imagine doing a press up with Socrates on your back!
Alongside the physical demands, the cast have been working on spoken text. Sarah Brigham (The point director) has delivered acting tasks that have been shaping our thoughts and have been giving the characters their voice. It has been a new direction for us but I can see already how important this advice will become as the work develops. Street dance classes have also provided some new rhythms and odd co-ordinations that have snuck into some phrases in interesting ways. This is all very exciting, and I don't think we have yet fully found the potential of these influences-this will take some time!
The cast have been incredible, and have given blood, sweat and tears to the process. They have a diverse range of skills and the responses they produce are often so far out the box, it feels rude to curb them! Dougie, has been providing the in-process sound World and has been scribbling up his ideas on the wall as he goes. At the moment we are in a creative and delicious mess, shaping it will be tricky but I have a feeling it won't be long before we all crave a little more order. Until then, we will let the ideas flood the room and try to stay afloat.
Abi
“We are starting to figure out each character further. The exercise Sarah introduced to us last week, involved collecting the verbs for each character before starting to create the dialogues was very helpful. I found it easier to develop my character. But then, who we are is not as simple as several words on a piece of paper, we started seeing the risk of making the character flatter. This work is just going along the fine line between abstract and narrative, I guess it requires a real understanding of character as well as allowing our personalities to bleed out?”
Today we revisited a duet that Aya and I created during R&D... both of us struggled to remember it as it was a rather inorganic in a way and hard to sequence together - this created an interesting dynamic but a lack of rhythm (stop - start- brain and body come together and remember!!!). Today through the clarifying process of teaching the material to Kai and Joe we uncovered the rhythmic journey of the material and it took on a new life for myself and Aya finding the intention for action. Joe and Kai's physical personalities also impacted on the vocabulary and revealed new meanings and qualities...
Overall the world seems to be emerging around these 4 characters... I feel more aware of what the ground would look like and how big and small the space feels at different points. I am also beginning to understand how significant or insignificant I can be in each scenario.... I thought about the sound in that respect yesterday, some sounds within Dougie's work feel prominent whilst others less so yet without the presence of the less prominent sounds would the other feel so very important?
Carrie
Photo credit: James Rowbotham. Dancers: Joe Darby & Aya Kobayashi
“Our day began with a workshop lead by our very own Joe Darby, joining us was a local youth company Jigsaw. Once we finished the class, we continued with our rehearsal as those from Jigsaw watched in on the process. After about an hour of rehearsing, we showed them a couple of scenes/ sections of the work to see what feelings or thoughts they had about what they saw. The feedback was positive, but I think it’s hard to be young and critical. Especially when some of them are taught by Carrie... I know I wouldn’t mess with her! :) ”
“We revisited the duet me and Kai had learnt from Aya and Carrie. Today it seemed easier not only on the body but also the brain, as the attention to detail is very high. With that recapped we began to work with the two movement duets into a more narrative based quartet. This not only meant reorganising the movement that had only just settled but questioning how we approached the movement and each other as a group. For example: why would my character do this movement at all? What is his own narrative/reason? If that didn’t make sense we would lose our characters own journey, making the movement bland and meaningless to rest of the work or scene. ”
Photo credit: Cover image and Photo 1 by James Robotham
