Reflective Practitioner- the performing body

In light of today’s disappointment I had a think and read so here are some thoughts about the performing body-

Devising, well my manifestation of devising needs more than acting, it needs performers. I will not be asking my performers to embody or represent a character, instead I need them to serve more like ciphers, and they will be vessels for the texts that we use. I also need them to negotiate their own ‘self’ in performance, to find a performative presence for this work in relation to the discourses that we will be exploring. They will need to be brave and be willing to give of them selves, surrendering to the tasks and games that we will be negotiating during the process and in the resulting live performances. I am going to need them to identify and develop their own localised and specific performance persona/s. This I hope will not be a fixed persona but one in flux that is shifting and dynamic, responding in the moment to the audience.

This is a big ask, I know that but without it, this project will fail. It requires certain bravery and a willingness to risk and invest everything, only everything will do. I am hoping that the performers who come forward will bring skills with them and have a good background in performance rather than just acting, in fact I am not sure how useful a background in acting and drama will be to this project. Performers with a history of dance and physical theatre would be ideal; performers with experience or knowledge of contemporary devising practices. Maybe even non actors and non performers would be more suited to this project, as then they will come with few expectations and fixed baggage.

I just hope that they will be brave, generous, ferocious and tenacious, willing to take risks and really push themselves. I need people who are body aware, have few inhibitions or at least be aware of them and willing to challenge themselves. If I want the audience to invest and to risk, then we will all have to do so without exception.

Tim Etchells from Forced entertainment, really clearly expresses the situation when he wrote: ‘Investment is what happens when the performers before us seem bound up with what they are doing-it seems to matter to them, it appears to hurt them or threatens to pleasure them, it seems to touch them, in some quiet and terrible way. Investment is the bottom line-without it nothing matters, and we don’t see half enough of it’.

The question that I must ask myself is, how do I facilitate this? How do I make it matter to them, how do I let them get bound up, how do I allow them the space to feel touched, to feel invested, to feel at risk? I am still so worried that time is not on my side, Forced Ents have been together 20 years, lived together, really come through it together and it shows, you can tell. How do I build a group dynamic, find the space and time to play that develops connections and links between performers? It truly is my biggest concern at the moment. Etchells talks about how important investment is and how it affects their performance presence: ‘Investment is the line of connection between performer and their text or task. When it works it is private, and often on the edge of words’. For me this seems fragile, a delicate and almost sacred process. I am going to need performers with imagination, commitment and the willingness to give themselves in and over, the ability to play. This is also what I hope for from the audience, this is the opportunity that I want to give to them. The performers need to achieve it if there is any hope of the audience coming onboard too. I am responsible for setting up the opportunity for my performers to achieve this place. I need to think carefully about devices and strategies that I can use to make this happen.