Until Then, Then – Process Reflection #2: Questions / Practice.

I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark. – Henry Miller

I’ve been dwelling on what this next installment in the reflection might end up being. Questioning whether it’s relevant or practical to document how this work was pieced together and what we were thinking when we made it. I’m not sure it’s really useful to go into great detail, but some rough outlines might be interesting, so this is what we shall work with. The following are the core ideas, questions and meditations that sat at the heart of our work and discussions around the work.

  • The choice to live. The reasons to die.
  • The choice to die. The reasons to live.
  • The seemingly inconsequential details that either drive us towards or keep us from death.
  • The futility of memory as tangible saviour. Yearning for a lost time that slips from view each time you (I, they) turn around to grasp it.
  • The slow, inexorable death of the theatre.
  • The theatre is dead.
  • The theatre isn’t dead yet.
  • The theatre is dead to us.
  • The existential crisis is universal and inevitable.
  • It’s all in the mind.
  • The existential crisis in performance is universal and intimately familiar.
  • The theatre is one, big existential crisis.
  • It isn’t really, but sometimes it feels that way.
  • There’s an archetype – or a story arc – that illustrates this clearly. Again and again. Why?
  • Why are there performers in theatre?
  • Why characters?
  • What purpose does the character fill?
  • What of the role of the audience?
  • Why is there an audience?
  • What meaning do we place into a performance space?
  • What defines a performance? What are the necessary elements? Why?
  • Why do we crave Aristotelian structure?
  • Why do we yearn to see our selves in the elements of “performance” coalescing on stage?
  • Why do we yearn for recognition?
  • What is the opposite of that? Is it alienation?
  • Why does theatre that does not give some form of pleasure (recognition and/or idealisation of the self) make us (people, you, them, me) so angry?
  • Why is the subjective response regarded in the self so often as truth? How can we better understand that in ourselves and in our audiences?

The creation of this work and the curiosity we have with these ideas, when articulated, have caused so very many peers to ask, why we are not pursuing academia. Because surely, theoretics and academic exploration is where these questions and experiments are most at home.

The argument is not lost on me, but I have to ask – why are they not at home in practice and presentation, too? Why do we not have a deep, broad culture of dialogue and experimentation in performance practice outside of academia? In the world of the work, in the face of a public, in a wholly nourished creative sector? Why is it not just that – about the practice?

{ 0 comments }

Until Then, Then – Process Reflection #1: Beginning With Grief.

“Art is violent… To enter or ‘to choose death’ means to enter fully with this acceptance, if necessary, of death. The only way to win is to risk everything fully and be fully willing to die.” – Anne Bogart, A Director Prepares To begin writing about the work – the process of creation and the [...]

Read the full article →

Until Then, Then.

Until Then, Then plays until March 10 at La Mama, Carlton. Book here. Performed & co-created by Nicholas Coghlan; Directed & co-created by Ming-Zhu Hii; Sound by Russell Goldsmith; Lighting by Damien McLean; Design by Matthew Angel and Ming-Zhu Hii Production photography by Pier Carthew.   

Read the full article →

Dumbing down is not an audience development strategy.

I’ve been thinking about theatre’s (let’s face it, somewhat unsuccessful) attempts at audience development for a while now, trying to formulate a clear and coherent piece of writing that would articulate my misgivings, but this morning it crystallised for me when my husband drew my attention to a wall post by a friend of mutual [...]

Read the full article →

Why we’re not done talking about diversity.

I don’t want to be the annoying non-white woman who goes on about the need for more interrogation around the diversity of (and in) our arts practices and structures. I’m uncomfortable enough with culturally specific labels as it is, and worse with impatient stereotypes driven by some kind of fear-induced backlash against political correctness. Especially [...]

Read the full article →

It is not my job.

It is not my job to tell you what to think. It is not my job to tell you how to feel. It is not my job to show you how to live. I may want to. But it is not my job. * It is not my job to solve the text. The text [...]

Read the full article →

Abandoning the Literal (a meditation in six parts).

1. Brainteasing. I’ve taken shifts at my former job again (to keep the wolf from the door while I do the Work) where we sell a variety of games – old-school board games, card games, strategy games, jigsaws, Rubik’s Cubes – you name it, it’s most likely on the shelves. In the spirit of customer [...]

Read the full article →

A question of nothingness.

I’ve seen a fair bit of live performance lately. Thrown myself back into it in the hopes that the deluge will fill some of the gaps in my memory of the practice forged by my brief spell in the wilderness. In the hopes that I’ll get a grasp on the substance of the thing again. [...]

Read the full article →

My MONA Love-Rant

There’s something serious to be said for the meeting point of art and entrepreneurship. These two traditionally odd bedfellows are, I believe, becoming more and more of a necessary pairing. In the arts we curse and complain a lot about a lack of funding, the difficulty of marketing our work, and an inability to grow [...]

Read the full article →

Of multiple cultures and none. The curiosity of mixed-race identity.

One of the things that got to me about the 2008 Presidential elections was that the media kept referring to Barack Obama as “the first African-American President of the United States of America”. I referred to him that way when he won, too. Hell – he even probably refers to himself in that way when [...]

Read the full article →

A thank you letter to an incredible cast and crew.

This is a word-for-word copy of the email I sent to our magnificent cast and crew yesterday, upon the occasion of the wrap of principal photography for Hey, Wasteland. I mean every single 0 and 1 of it.   Dear Amazing Ones, I’m writing to say a huge thank you for all your hard work, [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries