conflict and tea

"-What's wrong with it?

-I don't know. It's just not right.

-That's not helpful.

-You're not helpful."

i think it's fair to say that working creatively, with a short time-frame in mind and 'strong-minded-people' (for the kids, you know) makes for a stressful and conflict rich environment. i don't know whether it's fair to say that such environments allow for more interesting work but in the case of our show it was certainly a factor.

i remember disagreements, raised voices, fights, screaming, tears, Ian going to get a sandwich and a tea with a little milk, returning with a bar of chocolate, 3 teas and a pleased-with-himself-smile (usually because he managed to carry the tea without spilling any) to a simmered-down conflict zone and a little bit of progress made on, what would often become, an irrelevant point of argument.

to say myself and nessa disagreed frequently would be an understatement the size of my ego at the time of an argument (i can hear nessa saying 'all the time, you mean'). it would often leave ian exhausted, pissed off, wondering what the hell he'd started, if he had enough money to get another tea and, probably, trying to figure out what the hell the argument was about because he'd heard one very similar the day before.

but it wasn't our disagreements that were shocking. the scary moments were when we all agreed, when we saw one of the others do something or develop a scene in a few seconds and then for a split second seem to make it to the moon and everything in that what-could-be-three-seconds made sense to all of us.

it didn't happen often (well i guess it happened often enough for us to make a show) but it was enough to keep us going. below are a few videos that inspired us, provoked us, made us argue, laugh, and wonder what the hell we were doing. hope you enjoy them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dJQ35rDs
http://www.youtube.com/user/dancingbrick#p/a/u/0/FlQHwn3bxG8

from scratch

i remember when we were writing up the application, or the proposal, or whatever it's called, for the show myself and nessa were trying to figure out how we could explain what we were thinking of doing. i mean how do you convince a panel of people to give you the theatre for a week when you have nothing to show them --especially when they are used to getting a script with all the directors ideas(or at least most of them) written out. it was a 'well-we-want-to-make-a-show-about-imagination-and-at-the-moment-you-just-have-to-use-your-imagination' situation.

i feared they would think we were going to take the piss and put up a show with an empty stage, no actors, no props, nothing and then have the audience make it up in their heads. it was a running joke for a while that the audience would come out and say it was shit and we would just say 'and who's fault is it that you didn't enjoy it?'. we knew that we had lots of good ideas (or so we thought at the time and in some cases still think) but we didn't know how to communicate them to the panel. we figured we would work that out when we started to develop the show; the 'figured-out-bit' was going to be the play.

i remember that this video was a big help. we wanted to play with cardboard boxes that came to life, fly to the moon and chase shadows. in a way we could have just said that. but we didn't. we did however tell them to look at the video and then trust us... to our shock, amazement and horror they did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUCrM5i_W3c

LATM in the Edinburgh Fringe

11 o'clock in the morning starting time...oh, the horror.

That means we're going to need lots of tired and hungover people to help us do some early morning advertising. Hurrah!

We begin I suppose... a message from Big Brother

It is 4:53 in the morning, Thursday 20th of May. I've been back in Barcelona for a little over 24 hours. Having been in Dublin for a few days --one of which was to sort out some of the logistics for bringing a show to the Edinburgh Fringe (oh god!) and a second was an exhausted attempt at a rehearsal --I can honestly say this is going to be hilarious, stressful, exhausting, all of the above, below and etcetera etcetera etcetera...