Class: Week Three

Today's class was mainly taken up with talking, which is fine and I suspect rather reflects Suspect Culture's process at times. There was some lovely material that emerged from these discussions.

I started by raising the question Alice raises on the blog; who has been on holiday in a caravan or boat - a travelling home. There were some fascinating revelations, intriguing details:

• a parent regularly tripping up over a boy sleeping in the gangway
• the distinctions between RVs, mobile homes, and trailers
• a five-week holiday driving across the country and back again
• the RV taking up two spaces in the Wal-Mart car park
• that there are Expos for mobile homes where you can see all the models and choose from a range of tacky furnishing
• the Appalachian trailer parks where all the residents look like they're having yard sales
• the miniature TV run off the battery so was only turned on for Eastenders
• that some US National Parks have places where you can plug in your RV
• so many of you celebrating the end of GCSEs by visiting Newquay caravan park
• taking the oven out of a caravan because the car isn't powerful enough to take the wait
• the origins of the word 'boom'
• the difference between types of boat
• the difference between driving and driving somewhere

We then moved on to planes, trains and automobiles. There were some very evocative exchanges about waking in the darkness and watching the plane fly into the daylight; waking in the night to see a man sitting on your bunk staring at you; huddling under an anarchist's coat on a Polish train; the sound of the wheels.

We then recapped on the movement sequences we've been developing. First you refreshed your memories about the 'day at home' sequence. I added the following variations:

• you had to choose a number of times to repeat the sequence between 2 and 5
• you had to choose a number of seconds between 3 and 15 that you would hold the 'homesick look' between (and after) each repetition of the sequence.

This worked very well: it put some space around the sequences and allowed more focus on the movement by placing stillness there too; some of you went in and out of phase with each other, which gave a sense of connection and disconnection simultaneously; there was the nice melancholy emotional tone of watching you all, one by one, come to a halt (like, I said helpfully, the Duracell bunny). This is a very interesting, emotionally charged effect and we can certainly use it in various ways in the show.

We then repeated the 'migration dance', with the following refinements:

• I counted you in quietly but you continued the count in your heads
• You timed your movements so that they could be deliberate and purposeful but not hurried or rushed
• You faced front where possible
• On '20' you looked back to your 'birthplace'

This is beginning to look very shapely and interesting. I think we can use the whole sequences a couple of times in the show, perhaps overlaid with music, text, projections and lights, depending on resources. We can also repeat small bits of it - I mentioned that I think it's lovely to see Sam taking one step to the left and realising that means moving house perhaps from one village to the next. Quite soon I'd like to try some variations and refinements on this pattern; it might be interesting to see the baths you take have a more lingering presence. We could do this by using threads to show your journey, or perhaps you leave a trail in salt...

Bilingualism
Various intriguing motifs emerged from this discussion. I'm expecting this material to be more thoroughly documented from within the group but a few things that struck me were:

• the distinction between foreigner, adopted, hidden immigrant, and mirror
• the idea that bilingual people are 'neither here nor there'
• self help websites for parents of bilingual children
• do we dream in a specific language?

I then asked you to get in pairs and either (a) interview each other, or (b) perform the first scene of Airport. Your instruction was for one - or both of you - to speak a different language or make one up. There were some nice things that emerged:

• moments where recognisable words emerged from the confusion
• moments where the languages and vocabularies intersected (this was particularly clear in Julia and Kim's Italian/Spanish Airport)
• the textures of different languages and the interesting experience of not understanding everything that's going on but getting the drift...

Migration
Again, I'm expecting fuller documentation of the material to appear on this blog, but let's just mark some points; the distinction between

• migration (resettlement from one country to another, usually to find work)
• emigration (migration out of a country)
• immigration (migration into a country)

There was an interesting economic argument proposed. Different countries place a different economic value on their citizens, which is often connected with population size (typically, the larger the population, the less economic value of each citizen to the nation). When someone migrates from country x to country y they will do so if country y places a higher economic value on its individual workers than country x. Meanwhile, because the population of country x has diminished, it now rates each individual worker slightly more highly; and in country y they now have people to do the 3D jobs (Dirty, Difficult and Dangerous). So there are very strong arguments for allowing free migration.

I asked you to get into new pairs and to imagine you were the daughter of one of the following:

• secret agent
• ambassador/diplomat
• astronaut
• someone in the army
• conservationist/Aid worker
• international footballer
• illegal immigrant

You had to 'hot seat' (i.e. answer questions, staying in character, using your imagination to fill gaps in your knowledge). You did this in pairs for ten minutes; I then asked you to return to the circle, still in character and asked you some more questions collectively.

This was stunning. I was extremely impressed by the seriousness of your work, your sensitive and emotionally sophisticated comments were very powerful and thoughtful. There's much material here. I liked the clashes between you; some of you found it hard to make friends; some found you didn't want to make friends because you knew you'd lose them; some of you found it all too easy to make friends because of your celebrity parent. I liked the discussion of your sense of rootlessness and homelessness. There was some lovely, very poignant material about your fears for parents doing dangerous jobs. You charted the change in your feelings as you grew up. I am still haunted by a daughter's recognition that if her astronaut father dies doing his job the family will not be able to bury a body.

• We didn't get round to discussing Airport but we will do so next week.
• Next week's presentations should be on: Homesickness, Nomadic Peoples, Tourism. (In Week Five I'll want the presentations on Tourism and Interior Design.)

Dan Rebellato