Theorising practice and practising theory: making performance with
version 1.0
A micro-lecture by David Williams
1. Not-knowing
We (version 1.0) start a new work not knowing what it is. What is
the smallest possible amount we could know that would enable us
to start? Or to put it differently, what would be the shakiest
premise for being together in the studio, one that nonetheless
keeps us here together in the same place, engaged in the driving
of the work, albeit often in contradictory directions? What is
the shared passion that brings us here together? Might passion
be uncertain? Can I be passionate and uncertain at the same time?
I don’t know, but I’m thinking hard about it…if
I think hard enough I can make it so…
Might passion itself be knowledge? As one of the characters repeats
endlessly in Hal Hartley’s short film Theory of Achievement, “Love
is a form of knowledge. Love is a form of knowledge”. As if
repetition might lend it more weight, as if heavy thinking might
make love. As if repetition might make the aphorism true. Or more
true. As if by repetition it might change love into knowledge or
vice versa. As if repetition was change in itself. As if repetition
were alchemy.
Who was it that said: “Stupidity is doing the same thing over
and over, and expecting it to turn out differently”? Is this
why stupidity is valuable – because it refuses to know in advance
what the outcome might be?
Returning to the studio – what keeps us in a state of not-knowing,
of not-sureness? How long can we stay there and stay productive?
How long can we stay there before we go mad? We can’t know
yet, but we’ll know it when we see it. When do we need to see
it, whatever ‘it’ is? After not knowing for so long,
how could we know anything anymore, let alone ‘it’?
What must we not know? What must remain unfinished? Of Forced
Entertainment’s
devising process Tim Etchells says: “No one would bring anything
too finished”, and later, that it is:
a process which refuses to know, at the outset, what it is looking
for. Remaining rather, a journey undertaken, in which the territory
unfolds, as much of a surprise to us as it may be to anyone else.
We say without hesitation that it takes us time to find out what
a certain piece of work might mean or even be concerned with, and
that this discovery, if it comes at all, is made by doing- making,
talking, touring- a discovery based on risk and uncertainty, not
by our adherence to a plan.
(Etchells 1999:17)
We used to speak to each other of our work process on The
second Last Supper (2001) being aerated, of having breathing space built
into it. The performance was created primarily through a series of
extended improvisations of between one hour and two-and-a-half-hours
in length, and we only met a couple of times each week. We breathed
in the world through our breaks, and our breathing in the world breathed
through the work in the studio. Frames were established around each
improvisation, material was introduced and older material was re-tested
to see if it could work a second time. We began by staging one of
these each week, with alternate rehearsals being opportunities to
re-visit and shape the material these improvisations threw out. We
wrote down each of the actions we could remember and stuck them on
the wall of the rehearsal room. These scribbled notes covered half
the wall and read like the torn out pages of a thousand different
trashy plays. We rearranged these pieces of paper and wrote over
them. Some pieces of paper fell off the wall, and got left out of
the plan. We added new ones, and discovered the conditions necessary
to make each of these spontaneous actions repeatable. As if it was
happening for the first time each time. No pretending for us. We
transcribed the wall onto a list, and set up the improvisation again,
performing list-in-hand.
Maybe the food and wine made it easier. We were, after all, rehearsing
a dinner party, and having a strong aesthetic interest in the real-ness
of performed action dictated that we work constantly with the real
thing. No acting for us, thank you very much. Our division of roles
equated with arranging who brought what food each week. Yana made
a great salad with edible flowers; I brought bread fresh out of the
bread maker and a bottle of wine. Washing up became a key form of
debriefing each session, of making sense of where we had gone, what
we had done, and what we might do next.
Maybe we just got drunk at every rehearsal, and that made it work,
or at least, made it all make sense. God knows we drank enough alcohol
in the name of art through this process. By the showing we had got
up to three litres of red wine per performance between the six of
us, not counting the wine we gave to the audience. When we came back
to work on the production the next year, we had 6 cases of wine from
a sponsor. We were obliged to drink it all. We took that obligation
on ourselves as no one from the bottle shop came to see the show.
Maybe it was only through drunkenness that the complicated narrative
structures of the piece made any sense. But if that was all there
was to it, how was it that we were able to write so many pages of
elaborate structural manoeuvring to make it work while we were sober?
We enjoyed the games we played with the ever-increasing vocabulary
of rules and conditions, but it was always necessary to remember
the pleasure of the audience and the original desires we wanted the
project to express. While relaxing we managed to keep each other
on our collective toes with critical gazes and strong aesthetic obsessions.
Our powerful personalities collided and clashed, but the explosions
seemed to direct their energies into the work and its complex dramaturgy.
We attempted to convince each other again and again of the same ideas
with different justifications, throwing in new challenges through
material and provocations to the group, demanding that everyone had
to struggle to stay performatively afloat. This was uncertain work
indeed; the conceptual ships passed each other in the inky blackness,
always about to collide.
How does this uncertainty, this porosity of the work, stay pleasurable?
We found the most useful dramaturgical question to ask each other
in this work was: what are your pleasures here? Knowing of course
that these are themselves unstable constructions of desire. What
is the architecture of these desires? Is there ever a plan, or should
we follow our noses, so to speak?
What does all this uncertainty do? How is not-knowing constructive?
Why is it worth it? What does it make possible? As Brian Massumi
states:
The question is not, Is it true? But, Does it work? What new thoughts
does it make possible to think? What new emotions does it make
possible to feel? What new sensations and perceptions does it open
in the
body?
(Masumi, as cited in Minchinton 1997:60)
So, we work through our not-knowing. Now what? In order to face
this question, I want to switch modes, and use some spatial metaphors
(recognising both Yana Taylor and John Baylis’ exhortation
to resist metaphorisation. I’d like to wriggle off this hook
by pleading here for some tactical metaphors, some metaphors to be
tried on, tried out, taken for a walk). I want to talk (metaphorically)
about architecture.
2. The architecture of space and time
I want to use architecture, as both a metaphor and an organising
principle for the experience of both space and of time. Or more
precisely, an organising principle for the experience of time in
space; the particular qualities of how time is shaped by space.
What changes when we ask: What is the built environment, that is,
what is the environment we construct around ourselves, in our moving,
speaking and makings? How do we move through it, in a similar way
to Bernard Tchumi’s movement arrows on architectural diagrams,
mapping the flow of bodies through space (space making bodies and
bodies making space)? What are the ergonomics of this space (nodding
here to Mike Pearson’s notion of site specific performance)?
How is this space modified for my occupation? How is it modified
by my occupation of it? In Michel de Certeau’s terms, how
is this space practised?
I ask of a performance: What is the architecture of time in this
work? How is time structured? How do we move through time in this
work? How do we navigate and experience this time? What is the phenomenal
weight of this time? How important is it? How much does it matter?
How long will it linger? How soon will it be gone? What are the flows
and eddies? Where does it get stuck? What is the superstructure,
that is to say, how is this experience of time held together? What
are the hanging points – what are the rock solid important
places that hold everything up? What are the foundations – what
underpins this? Are they strong? Are they strongly felt? Could they
collapse at any moment? And finally, what is the interior decoration?
Is this particular feature here present for its aesthetic appeal?
Does it make you feel at home? Does it make you comfortable? Does
it scare you? How is being in this work different from being in your
own home? How is it the same?
Still with me? Are we still on speaking terms?
3. Words
I was speaking of speaking, and speaking is a world unto itself.
We speak ourselves into the world. Speaking has a weight of action,
not merely a weight of words. Speaking is an act, and should never
be considered a retreat from action. Language has more than a rhetorical
function in speech – as J. L. Austin has it, it DOES THINGS.
When I say – I AM THE KING – I am doing something.
I am making myself the king, and in doing this to myself I am doing
it to you. Depending on my mode of speech, I am bludgeoning you,
I am begging you, I am deceiving you. These are not intentions,
not motivations. These words are not subtext. They are actions.
They are words. And they have a life of their own. Once spoken,
they can’t be taken back. Words are not boomerangs. They
have power, and their powers are different to mine. Words are weapons.
Words are empty. Words are weighty. Words are cheap. Don’t
be afraid of them or they’ll eat you alive.
In the beginning of a new work, faced with a terrifying mountain
of words, I set this exercise:
Take a piece of the text. Introduce yourself. Approach words
as if they are weapons. Take the weight out of words. Make them
exceptionally heavy. Play with storytelling modes, summaries, and
explanations.
Try to make sense, make it happy, make it sexy, make it boring,
and make it up. Translate it. Riff on it. Rip it up. Render it
guttural
and into gibberish. Make it a tragedy. Make it a comedy. Make
it the hardest thing you’ve ever had to say. Experiment with
delivery. Focus on bigness, weight, investment, urgency, subterfuge,
and lying.
We were afraid of the words we were working with. It was all too
big, all too much. We felt too much responsibility to the words,
for the words. And they were eating us. We gave power to the words,
and left none for ourselves. We couldn’t speak, and we really
needed to speak. We needed to speak. Slowly. One question at a time.
Start at the beginning. Take a piece of the text. Don’t be
precious about it. Anything will do. Speak to me. Something will
happen. Keep talking, and I’ll go somewhere with you. Let the
words slip out. Let the speaking carry you away. Somewhere between
a throwaway line and a spirit possession.
Another project, several years ago:
You are Person X. But you are also not Person X. It might
be useful to think of Person X as a persona (a ‘mask’) or a ‘what-if’ self.
Person X could be you. But no one knows. Keep everyone guessing.
So, to keep looking for Person X:
1. What is person X wearing?
2. How does Person X hold themself?
3. In addition to the first action for Person X that has already
been determined, what are 3 other actions for person X?
4. How does Person X exit?
5. Person X is missing a person they have never met. Describe this
person.
6. Person X is on a mission. What is this mission?
7. Person X wants to be someone else. Who does Person X want to be?
8. Person X is homesick in their own home. Where does Person X want
to be?
9. Person X has been waiting to say something for a very long time.
The time is right. What does Person X say?
See how easy it is? Words are cheap. Spit ‘em out. Words are
quick and dirty. Be quick, and get dirty. You might find you like
it…
And while I’m speaking of speaking – every time I open
my mouth, a decision is made, and this decision is not always mine.
The act of speaking catches me by surprise, grabs me and shakes up
what I think I know. Words rolls out, and come into life in the world.
And words also bring themselves into the world, into life. Words
carry me away, as much as they are carried by me. Speaking, like
Jean-Luc Nancy’s community, happens to me. Speaking is unpredictable,
uncertain. Every utterance, not matter how unequivocal it may appear
to be, is really a stammer, every gesture a twitch. The impulse to
speak, the impulse to move, carries me away. Suddenly I am speaking,
suddenly I am moving. And I don’t know why. I can’t even
guess. But I’ve landed somewhere. And I can always find my
feet. I can always close my mouth. As Roland Barthes says: “The
pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own
ideas- for my body does not have the same ideas as I do.” (Barthes
1975:17) Sense arrives afterwards. The why? and what does it all
mean? always lags behind the doing. The what is it? is always determined
in retrospect, in relation, in the negative. As Ariane Mnouchkine
stated in an interview:
At the present moment, we’re guided more by what we don’t
want than by what we want. What we want still remains unclear. Directing
is always like that, twenty-nine times out of thirty, I don’t
tell an actor: do this, but rather: don’t do that. As a
director, I reject certain things. I think a lot of directors
write what they
want before the actual directing. In my case, I write afterwards.
(Mnouchkine in Copfermann 1999:20, emphasis in original)
The negative always seems to be more useful in shaping the work
for me – what do I not want to do? Where do my pleasures take
me today? These pleasures have desires of their own, desires always
provisional, contingent desires, desires in play, desires uncertain.
That is to say, desires needing to be worked out.
References
BARTHES, Roland (1975). The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. R. Miller.
London: Jonathan Cape
COPFERMANN, Emile (1999). ‘The Search for a Language’ in
WILLIAMS, David (Ed.) Collaborative Theatre: The Theatre du Soleil
Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge.
ETCHELLS, Tim (1999). Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance
and Forced Entertainment. London and New York: Routledge.
MINCHINTON, Mark (1997). Dancing the bridge-performance research:
a polemic. Writings on Dance, 16(Winter). 58-64.
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