The Structure of a Story

We've been touring two slightly different versions of What I Heard About the World in Portugal and the UK over the last two years. In Portugal Jorge performs in Portuguese and English, whilst Chris and I perform in English, and the English text is surtitled. In the UK version we all perform in English. In both versions, a small section in French is surtitled in the home language of wherever we are.

In the UK version, Jorge tells a story in Portuguese which isn't surtitled. He checks if anyone in the audience speaks Portuguese, and if anyone does, he includes them in the story-telling. It is important to us that Jorge gets to speak in his native language in the UK version of the show, as it means he is able to be more "himself". And I guess on a really simple level it's a reminder that we can't understand everything that happens in other countries, other languages.

This week we've been in Helsinki with the show, at the STAGE festival at Korjaamo, and it's the first time (bar early work-in-progress showings in Germany) that the show has been performed in a country where neither English or Portuguese is the first language. We performed the English version of the show, with the majority of the English language (plus the French) surtitled in Finnish. Of course the Finns' grasp of English is, on the whole, embarrassingly good.

There were two sections that we didn't surtitle, because they are the loosest performance-wise,  the most conversational, and so quite easy to follow for an audience who have a bit of English. We also think (though with only anecdotal evidence) that it is more distracting for the surtitles to seem to be inaccurate as we go "off script" live.  Even though the audience are listening to a whole show not in their first language, we decided to keep the section where Jorge tells a story in Portuguese - without surtitles - for the reasons mentioned above.

After the second performance we had a post-show discussion, and we were talking about this with a couple of audience members. They said that they really liked "not understanding" the Portuguese-language story, because it changed their relationship with Jorge and made the show "more human". One of them then observed that although he couldn't understand what Jorge was saying, he could follow, from Jorge's delivery, "the structure of a story" as he was telling it. 

I really like this idea, and I realised that this observation articulates something I already think about that section of the show, where we are playing with how briefly we can tell certain stories, and still make the point with them that we're trying to make. This is the section of What I Heard About the World that is most like the story-telling in Story Map - five stories told directly to the audience, a couple of different ones (from me) each night. For me it feels like the stories in this section have been told several different ways, with different structures, until we have found the structure that suits them - suits what we want to do with them - best. The content of the story is the same, but we try several structures for it before settling on the right one.

Psalter Lane, four years on

So, this is the fifth in an ongoing series. Four years ago I was asked to write a piece for the Sheffield Telegraph about the closure of "Psalter Lane" - which many people in Sheffield understand to mean Sheffield Hallam University's Psalter Lane Campus - an art school. Sheffield Hallam were moving their art teaching to be part of their city centre campus.

I was sad to see it close. I had attended Psalter Lane as an MA film student, and then did a few visiting lectures there once Third Angel was set up. But I knew it mainly from going to degree shows there - an annual cultural highlight in Sheffield. I was brought up around Walsall College of Art as both my parents taught there, and so I have an ingrained affection for self contained art colleges/campuses. And I live in this area of Sheffield. I felt I was qualified to write something. So I did. I said I was sad to see it close.

And every summer since I've done this. You can see previous entries, including the Sheffield Telegraph article, by clicking here.

This year I chose the one overcast morning of an otherwise sunny week to take my camera with me on my walk to work. As you'll see, there's a planning application in. Perhaps next year, it will look different. But whatever they build, I'll miss the art school that was here, now that it's gone.

Emergency Drinking Water

This month I've been making a show with MA students at Leeds Met University. I have a (very) part time salaried post at Leeds Met, but this project was very much like the "visiting artist" models we deliver in Universities across the country. We make shows with groups of up to 30 students - treating them as much as possible, within the educational framework, as we would treat fellow devisors in our other projects. The difference, of course, being that rarely do we get to work with a cast of that size.

Emergency Drinking Water, which we presented last week, was closest to a normal Third Angel devising process - if there is such a thing - partly because it was a team of just eight devisor-performers.

We re-mount the show in Leeds in September - here's what Version 1 looked like.

EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER

Devised & Performed by

Jane Bellamy

Hannah Butterfield

Louise Hill

Kimberly Maud

Rochnee Mehta

Debbie Newton

Lisa-Jane Pennington

Tina Torrington

Devised & Directed by

Alexander Kelly

Lighting Design &

Technical Management

Matt Sykes-Hooban

Rehearsal photographs by 

Kiran Mehta / Leeds Metropolitan University

The Distance Between Us

I've just received my physical copy of Performance Research: On Foot. It's lovely to get partly because we've got a set of Artists' Pages in it, and although I'd been sent a link to the online version of it, the pdf doesn't quite do it justice, as it is designed to be held as two 2-page spreads.

I saw the call for the On Foot edition quite late, but knew it was something we'd like to contribute to. This is what I pitched to them:

In Third Angel's performance piece 9 Billion Miles from Home, artists Gillian Lees and Alexander Kelly were attached to each other via a pulley system that meant that for one of them to move forward, the other had to move back. 

Barefoot and supporting one another they created a perfect circle of talcum powder, so positioned that although they could both reach the centre spot of the circle, they could not do so at the same time. Once each in the performance they stepped into the circle, leaving (in Alex's case) four perfect foot prints or (in Gillian's case) evidence of ten minutes of barefoot running on the spot. This was a shamanic performance obsessed with travel, return, cycles and distance – distance measured in miles, metres, footsteps, days, years. 

Ten years earlier, in Third Angel's Saved, Rachael Walton stepped backwards through a floor covering of epsom salts in a performance in which the audience were required to remove their shoes in order to feel the salt shift under their feet. Rachael left perfect footprints in the salt, before stepping back and erasing them. 

For The Distance Between Us, Alex and Gillian revisit 9 Billion Miles from Home to discuss the task of performing it, and the physical and emotional memory it has left them with, and Rachael revisits the solo task of walking backwards for anything up to 5 hours at a time, erasing traces of her passing. The paper takes the form of an illustrated conversation, discussing how, in performance, Alex and Gillian would watch, not each other's faces as they travelled about the stage, but each other's feet. How they learned the measure of each other's steps. They compare footstep awareness with Rachael: when to place a heel or toe first; how to measure the transfer of weight. The blisters, scars left by, and the cold of, the different floors they trod on as the work toured. The footprints left in the talcum powder and the salts.

The On Foot edition of Performance Research is edited by Nicolas Whybrow and Carl Lavery. Nicolas asked me what "an illustrated conversation" might entail. I said I wasn't actually sure, but that I liked the sound of it.

Through talking to Gillian and Rachael, the illustrated conversation idea evolved into a kind of performance map, the conversation layout reflecting the performer-journeys taken in the shows.

The Distance Between Us : 9 Billion Miles from Home (detail)

The Distance Between Us : Saved (detail)

It was a really helpful process creating the pages in collaboration with Nicolas and Carl, and I'm pleased with how they've turned out. I am also interested in the process with  both Rachael and Gillian that created them. I wonder if there are more of them to be made.

Performance Research: On Foot (with lovely contributions, too, from Gregg Whelan, Dee Heddon and Stephen Hodge, amongst others) is in shops (and libraries) now. You can subscribe and download individual articles on the Taylor & Francis website, here.

The Story of the Day

Here's the text / notes of what I said as the final summing up / 'story of the day' presentation at the end of the Inspiration Exchange at PSi#18 in Leeds last Saturday. The exchange was open from 9.30am - 6pm, with this happening in the last 20 minutes.

I started off writing 36 cards, thinking that six rows of six cards would work aesthetically. But when I got the table, I realised that five rows of seven worked better. 35 cards. So I had to choose one card not to include.

I chose not to include one that I thought the most general piece of inspiration: SOCIETY DREAMING. This is something that Douglas Rushkoff said on a panel I heard at the Edinburgh TV Festival many years ago. He explained the idea that culture and art are society's way of dreaming, its way of working things out. He talked about the experiments that have been done in which human beings are stopped from dreaming, being drugged or simply woken up whenever they enter REM / dreamsleep. After a couple of weeks of not being allowed to dream, human beings start to go mad. And you can see a parallel, he explained, when societies aren't allowed to dream; regimes that censor and restrict art eventually start to go mad.

This idea has stayed with me since I heard it. But it seemed, in this context, these easiest card to extract.

And then the Exchange opened and no-one came in. The calm before the storm? I hoped so. I wrote some notes.

For the first hour it's only members of the production team who cross the threshhold - people with furniture and lamps.

Other peope look in, most bearing takeaway cups of coffee. They promise to be back later, or just wish me luck for the day. I enjoy the quiet. I use the time to get a double espresso, eat a banana. Rearrange my furniture. Put the foldaway chairs away into the corner, to make it look like I'm expecting less people. I figure out how to use the remote controls for the air conditioning unit and the dimmable lighting.

I start to write the words that I am reading to you now, 7 hours later.

I think about the way my grandma would just slightly adjust the objects on a worksurface in the kitchen. A small notepad, some keys, a pack of pills. Moving them mere millimetres. As a teenager I found it irritating. (Or did I, really? Did I actually find it strange, and did I find things that I didn't understand, irritating? Or did the door it opened onto the loneliness of old age frighten me? Was my irritation just a defence mechanism?) But now I understand, I think. Just to make sure everything is just so.

I watch people walk past the doorway to my self-contained and well signposted room, without looking in. I wonder if I should have asked to be out in the main hall... Occassionally people slow slightly, look in and smile at me. But they don't stop.

I realise that I am expecting someone to interupt me writing these notes, so I can break off and tell a story. To them. To you.

I think about my children.

And then someone comes in and

I swap A PERFECT CIRCLE

for THE PERFORMANCE THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

a story of sticking at it.

I swap "WHEN WILL THE WEDDING TAKE PLACE?"

for LOCKSMITH: "I WANNA SEE YOUR WORK."

I swap PEOPLE WITH CLIPBOARDS

for ANCESTRAL FRUSTRATION

Then I swap THE PERFORMANCE THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

for HOW-TO DEMONSTRATIONS

I swap NOT KNOWING WHAT TO THINK ABOUT POLE DANCING

for DO I DRAW THE ACTORS OR DO I DRAW WHAT I SAW?

I swap THE HOUSING BENEFIT CLAIM SYSTEM

for THE HUMAN INSTINCT TO CREATE IMAGINARY MINDS

I swap THE IDEA OF A RETRONYM

for THE ICONS OF FORGOTTEN TECHNOLOGY

I swap 23 POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA, FROM MY DAD

for HIRE AN APOLOGY

I swap AN ESCAPED LUNATIC ON CANNOCK CHASE

for this:

I swap EMPTY BENCHES

for THE FLOOR CARRYING YOU

I swap THE PATENT NUMBER OF A UFO

for ARE CONKERS BABY WOOD?

At some point I say to someone, "Pick one that sounds good." And then I think what a stupid thing to say that is. I think about the disappointment - for them and for me - when someone picks the "wrong" card, and gets a story that they're not that interested in. Particularly if this is a story I've told to someone before and they've really found a personal connection to it, and then this time it doesn't mean much.

I swap HURRY SICKNESS

for SQUIRRELS

in general, and then I immediately swap SQUIRRELS

for A SQUIRREL

in particular.

I swap THE INSIDE OF A SAXOPHONE

for LETTING GIRLS BE

I swap THE EMPTY SOAP PACKET

for QUICK SHAVE

I swap A SWIMMING POOL AT NIGHT

for PROFESSOR MOAN ALOT

I swap "IF IN DOUBT, TAKE IT OUT, IF YOU CAN'T WIN, LEAVE IT IN."

for A MAN WALKS INTO A BAR

I swap AN UNBOOKABLE PIECE OF KIT

for MR. BEEFHEART

I swap AN 84 YEAR OLD AUNT WHO SMOKES 20 A DAY

for RIGOROUS HERBERT

I swap DESIRE PATHS

for I CAN DO THAT

I swap A SQUIRREL

for FU CHU CHOO-CHOO

I swap THE FLOOR CARRYING YOU

for FLAMENCO INCOGNITO
and then swap FLAMENCO INCOGNITO
for 1 - 2 - 3 PALOMA BLANCA

I swap PROFESSOR MOAN ALOT

for MEETING MY FIRST HUSBAND 25 YEARS LATER

We refine the rules and figure out what happens if I'm offered a story first,
and so I am swapped 1967

for A BOTTLE OF MARBLES

I swap RIGOROUS HERBERT

for LIFE BEGINS AT 40...

I swap SOMETHING MY MOM SAID TO ME WHEN I WAS 19

for CUT A STORY SHORT

I swap FU CHU CHOO-CHOO

for A TREE IN SIBERIA

I swap THE ROADS THE BUS DOESN'T TURN DOWN

for TRAVELLING PADLOCKS & A JAR OF KEYS

And then we were out of time.

Inspiration Exchange at PSi#18 Leeds

Each time we run an Inspiration Exchange it is a slightly different shape and mode. This Saturday we're running one at the Performance Studies International conference at the University of Leeds - though it is still a public presentation, too. Here are the details:

Third Angel presents an

INSPIRATION EXCHANGE

10am - 6pm, Saturday 30 June, FREE!
Room 18, Parkinson Building
(just inside the main entrance)
University of Leeds

Woodhouse Lane, Leeds

Just drop in any time, and swap a story of something that has inspired you for something that has inspired someone else.

At 5.30pm I'll be presenting a reflection on the day's exchanges.

After presenting an Inspiration Exchange as part of Compass in Leeds last year, I agreed to answer some questions about it for Gwen Pew and her website The City I See. I finally got around to answering them this month. They were good questions, too, including this:

How would you defend conversation as an art?
This is a great question. My flippant-sounding answer is that art is conversation. The more portentous-sounding explanation of that is that surely art is part of the conversation between human beings about what it means to be human. There’s not very much I’m certain about when it comes to art and performance, but that’s one of the things that I am certain of.

But more specifically, conversation as art. I think that, often, when we’re making work we’re looking for the right frame, or form, to best explore the ideas we’re interested in. The form that adds something, that articulates something that another form wouldn’t. I’m most interested, I think, in work that can only exist in the form it is presented in. (I’m not particularly interested in theatre you could easily make a film of, for example). And with this idea, the idea of things that have inspired us, a structured conversation felt like the right form. And it is structured, but hopefully that structure is quite light-touch – the conversation can wander off in different directions, and meander quite far, depending on how many people are waiting; but the card-swap structure is there to reset the piece when necessary.

You can check out Gwen's site, and read the whole interview here.

Promising Performance

As part of the International Student Drama Festival this week, I was invited to be part of a panel called Promising Performance. Frances Babbage hosted a really interesting discussion between the audience and Terry O'Connor (Forced Entertainment), Ben Eaton (Invisible Flock), Annie Lloyd (Compass Live Art) and myself.

We were given a particular brief:

Four panellists discuss where they see promise in performance-making today. What gives them hope? What conditions make it likely art will turn out well? And since to promise is also to declare commitment, the panellists will be challenged to consider what promises they themselves might make in terms of arts practice.

Terry, Ben and Annie all had some great thoughts, that I hope will be gathered together elsewhere - I'll update if so. And afterwards the audience engaged in a lovely, questioning discussion, which sadly had to be halted as we over-ran (but that's also a good sign, I guess).

Anyway, here's what I said (more or less):

I was of course tempted to write a list of the many places I have seen promise in performance recently. Moments, whole shows, images, ideas... But then I asked myself what it was in these moments, these shows, that was so promising? Not so much what do I look for, but what did I find, or what have I found recently?

Commitment.

Attempt.

Charisma.

Honesty.

Skill.

Audacity.

Care.

Doubt.

I thought I'd talk a little about these last two, doubt and care.

I am wary of certainty. Certainty is over-rated in my book. In a discussion between someone who is certain and wrong, and someone who is uncertain and right, who is going to get their way?

This is something I've been thinking about quite a lot recently, and the more I think about it, the more I think that it is the people who recognise that almost nothing is certain, who are more likely to be right. I am aware that the contradiction here is that I am suggesting that I am more likely to be right about most things because I am personally certain of very little. But we'll leave that for now.

So the work that I am drawn to – that unsettles, disturbs, delights me, work that stays with me – is work that doesn't tell me what it thinks, or what I should think about what it is showing me. Rather, the work that I am drawn to is the work that lets me see its thinking – either happening live in the moment, or having happened in its process; work that reveals its doubt and uncertainty, that offers tentative answers, sure, but that invites me to wonder what my answers might be, that leaves me space to bring my own experiences into my reading of the work. I'm not necessarily talking about performance that invites me to interact with it physically or conversationally (although I often like that), I'm talking about mental and emotional space.

And uncertainty and doubt do not preclude confidence or skill – I still want my attention held.

Yes, yes, this is all very well, but what does it actually mean? 

Can you give us an example?

Fair question. Let's come back to it.

I had a conversation on Twitter recently with writer and blogger Honour Bayes. She was wondering out loud about why she finds it harder in theatre than in any other art form, to like a piece of work if she knows she doesn't like the people who have made it. I recognised this feeling, and so we wondered about it together; we didn't really come to any conclusion, and I've carried on thinking about it since.

Recently, I've been thinking that it is to do with care. In other art-forms (and I am making a big generalisation here, I know), my relationship with the art work is with an object, or artefact. It's unchangeable. It is much less influenced by my knowledge of the people who created it. Frank Miller might have revealed himself to be an objectionable idiot on his blog, recently, but I still remember Ronin as one of the greatest graphic novels ever created. (I am aware of course that this is an incredibly niche example).

But when I enter a live performance space, then I am putting myself into the care of the artists – the performers, devisors, writers, directors, musicians – anyone involved in the making of it. So my feelings about the work and the people are that much more intertwined.

And all to often I don't feel cared for, or even acknowledged. And worst of all, I sometimes feel acknowledged and uncared for, through clumsiness or arrogance. Ignoring or intimidating an audience is pretty easy, isn't it?

But I see promise when a performer talks to me, to us, not The Audience with a capital A, but those of us in the room right now. I see promise in eye contact. I see promise when artists and performers are interested in challenging me, and making me feel uncomfortable – not in my seat or with being in the room with them, but unsettled in my world view or in my assumptions and preconceptions.

Yes, yes, this is all very well, but what does it actually mean? 

Can you give us an example.

Fair question. Let's deal with it now.

There's a kind-of-monthly performance night at the Crumblin' Cookie in Leicester called Performance in the Pub. It was set up by theatre maker Hannah Nicklin, who programmes two pieces of contemporary performance each event – usually solo, story telling performance, because the stage is quite small.

The event is marketed as “theatre for people who don't do theatre”. On the website for the event, Hannah explains to the potential audience a little about the sort of work she's programming: “think of how bands put music together compared to how composers do – that's the difference between performance and theatre.” Tickets are donation based – artists are paid expenses, and the audience are told how much the event costs, and therefore how much a break-even donation is.

Last month I was lucky enough to perform our show The Lad Lit Project at Performance in the Pub. Some people in the audience were friends, some knew our work, and some hadn't been to see theatre since they were in Year 6.

On before me was Jodean Sumner of Trace Theatre, with her piece It Starts Like This. A 25 minute solo performance on its way to becoming a full length show. It feels to me like genuinely experimental, process led work - a process that has produced a piece probably (I'm guessing) quite different to Jodean's original intention. She asked people – friends, colleagues, the internet - to send her words that were significant to them, in the expectation, perhaps, of getting some really interesting found text to construct a show out of. But what the show actually deals with is Jodean's difficulty in connecting with these significant words - maybe because she doesn't share the the life experience of the people to whom the words are significant.

And from there the show explores the difficulty of communication within a shared language. Do you know what I mean? she asks. You know what I mean.

It is brave work; it challenges the audience, demands attention, and it rewards that attention. I enjoy the promise of the way the piece asks questions of us, and the way we communicate with each other, whilst also asking questions of itself and the process that created it. And it is beautifully performed.

In both the piece and the event that hosted it, and the venue that hosted the whole event, I could see both uncertainty and care, contributing to one of my favourite-ever nights of showing and seeing performance.

***

And what promises can I make about the performances I will be part of making in the future? Not many.

I can't promise what they'll be about, or that you'll find them interesting.

But I can promise that any work of mine you come to see, I will find interesting, and I will at least be asking if it's about something that you find interesting. I promise that I will have made it because it's about something that intrigues, or bothers, or worries me. I promise that I will have made it because I had to.