A productive class, I thought, but one that will be fairly quick to summarise.
I started by outlining a suggested structure for the show, which you discussed. There was some debate about whether the middle section needs to be given a single location or not. Various locations were proposed, including a public toilet and a railway station. There was concern that the show could seem to diffuse and abstract without being grounded in place. (We might also want to give a sense of place to underscore the 'home' theme.)
I liked the discussion of rooms containing memories of all those who made their home there. I suggested that an estate agent showing someone round an empty house could be an interesting sequence, because theatrically it allows us to imagine a set into an empty space.
There was a suggestion that we should follow a single character or a series of characters through different locations and experience, possibly alternative outcomes. This would link to themes in
Mainstream, Timeless and
Airport.
I agreed that we needed a sense of character, but I think this could simply mean that each situation is firmly realized rather than forcing us to adopt 'rounded' naturalistic characters.
I then asked you to suggest how you would complete a white jigsaw, and what childhood games you remembered. There was some lovely stuff here. And then we drifted into Barbie irrelevance. (And Irrelevant Barbie
TM will be in the shops this Christmas.)
You split into two groups, one to record some more video of your home memories and ideas, the other to find more 'home' images with sheets and sticks. By the end of the class, everyone had been videoed. (Though I would also like us to 'hotseat' some fictional memories and video that too, in exactly the same way. Perhaps Nia?)
The sheet and sticks group did some good work. There were some nice images of ideal homes of the future, and some rather more effective, slightly more abstracted and minimal, images of non-homely homes: an illegal migrant's transient home in a container, a prison, a homeless person's doorway. There was also a more general and warm image of home, in a kind of slumber party.
We then looked at the beginning of
One, Two, Suspect Culture's 2003 show, which uses music (and musicians) in a much more foregrounded way than usual - though note that a key moment in
Lament is when Nick Powell appears on the stage to play keyboard live. You were very positive about this show and we noted that, even though it was very abstract and spatially not given an obvious sense of location, it worked well. We noticed that the experience of your head whirling because you can't sleep is a common one allowing immediate audience access to the experience. The experiential quality of the music - the volume, the lights, the presence of the musicians - was physically very exciting. The formality of the counting was intriguing and quasi-poetic. We also noted the visual juxtaposition of all that technology (it must be Suspect Culture's most high-tech show) and the pillow, which is something we might be able to draw on.
For next week:
- Watch Mainstream. Rachael has the video and is arranging a viewing. Otherwise, I will leave a small number of copies in the office for you to borrow and read between you.
- Write me a postcard and leave it in my pigeonhole.
Dan Rebellato
