Welcome to provocation number 5.
I am loving this paperboat journey. The notion of "reflecting deeply” in the process of “doing" is throwing up lots of interesting things for me.
My challenge is to find a way to share it so that it is interesting for you to read!
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So here goes. Hop in the boat and let’s see if I’m up to the challenge!
Firstly, a reminder. The PaperBoats is an international platform for performance-makers interested in pioneering new ways of connecting and creating. If you're new to it, you may want to catch up on the journey so far.
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Choreographer Twyla Tharp, in her fabulous book about living the creative life writes:
"I start every project with a box. I write the project name on the box and as the piece progresses, I fill it up with every item that goes into the making of the dance.
This means notebooks, news clippings, CD, videotapes of me working alone in the studio, videos of dancers rehearsing, books, photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.”
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To devise a performance collaboratively using a retrospective performance-making process means that you only find what it is in the act of making it.
This does not mean that there is no preparation.
On the contrary, a devising director can spend years preparing a simple framework for artists to work within. Crazy ain't it?
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When I begin a project, my radar is "on alert” to anything that resonates with “a little germinal something” that sparks my interest.
It’s the dance I do to summon the muse.
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I read, I listen to music, I watch films, I hunt online, I watch people, I draw, I play, I make up songs, I write essays and conjure up little thought experiments, I scavenge, I tinker, I conjure, I dream, I collect.
It's all a bit compulsive, obsessive.
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Recently, I’ve become a huge fan of the Evernote app. as a collecting place. It’s my Twyla Tharp project box!
I have Evernote notebooks for 3 types of notes: References, Ideas and Content.
Wherever I am - on my bike, in a bus or at my desk - I can jot down an idea, record audio-snippets, take a photo, make a video, do a drawing or grab a web clipping and immediately it's on all of my 4 devices - my computer, laptop, iPad and iPhone.
AND I can share my notebooks with collaborators and offer them editing rights!
It’s fabulous!!!
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Being "on alert” and "collecting stuff” gives me the sense of feeding the muse.
The human mind can involuntarily take in 11 million pieces of information at any given moment. The most generous estimate is that people are aware of 40 of these!
This inner unconscious realm is a busy, nebulous, playful, associative space where the imagination and feelings reside.
The outer world is the place of executive function, action and response.
My main way of bringing thoughts to the surface is to write and play.
I write and write and write!
And then I play and draw and tinker and talk and make videos and take photos...
And then I write some more.
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This inner-outer dance is an ongoing process, which I define in the following way:
- my original spark of inspiration, I call THE SEED
- the things I gather and absorb, I call THE SPROUTING MIX
- the things that push up out of the mix, I call the GERMINATING IDEAS
These inner and outer worlds keep rubbing up against each other in an ongoing, ever-evolving feedback loop.
At some point, I settle on an ACTIVATING STATEMENT, which is a simple “sound byte” that prompts action.
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The Sprouting Mix for the Tutu Shows PROJECT has become a ridiculously large collection of all sorts of things initially prompted by my interest in “lines”. (The Seed)
From the mix, some key germinating ideas have been "lines that connect and lines that divide”, “kind and kindness” and “transcending differences” - all expressing an interest in what it takes for us to “connect” as humans.
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The Activating Statement is simply - exploring two-ness in every which way - which becomes the catch-phrase for the project.
The Germinating Ideas lead to PROVOCATIONS which are Tasks, Games, Improvisations and Offers that act as invitations to the creative team to generate performance content.
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A devising director cannot afford to be precious.
The thousands of hours of preparation simply underpins the project and informs decision making; it doesn’t define or dictate any outcomes.
The performance-makers involved are largely unaware of the preparation that goes on behind the scenes. They don't need to know.
They'll often take a provocation and discover something totally different to what the director is expecting. An openness to the happy accident is what the process is all about. It’s the gold we’re sifting for!
Over time, retrospectively, something new is born, the result of a slow-brewing mix of open-ended play and rigorous dramaturgy.
It's a joyful, exasperating, enervating and trepidacious labour of love.
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As an insight into the Germinating Ideas that spring from the Sprouting Mix, I’d like to share with you a "little essay" from my "collection."
Five Lines, Three Circles AND Two-ness
I’m attracted to simplicity. Elegant simplicity. The type of simplicity that Da Vinci referred to when he said, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.
It’s the simplicity that comes from compulsive investigation, fearless scrutiny and time-honoured refinement.
I recently came across such a thing. A new book simply entitled STIK.
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For the last 14 years, graffiti artist STIK has been making “radically pared-down stick figures” comprising 5 lines and 3 circles.
It’s a remarkably powerful and consistent body of work the reveals the power of simple lines and circles in an evocative expression of "two-ness".
two-ness - the line and circle
Straight lines and perfect circles are human representations.
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We often don’t see such “perfection” in nature.
Nature is rougher, nobblier and more organic in its shaping of things.
Our alternative reality "digital world" uses a line – the number 1 – and a circle – the number 0 – as the building blocks for everything.
The 1 is yes the 0 is no for every digital decision in digital programming. Lines and circles are the substances of the digital world.
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In fact, nothing is more basic to the process of human thinking than how we divide everything into oppositions between one thing and another.
We orient ourselves to the world by speaking of up or down, left or right, hot or cold, future or past, good or bad, light or dark, alive or dead.
We use such dualities in establishing our own identities – in sensing our own difference from others.
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We are male or female, tall or shot, this religion or that, this political belief or that. It gives us not only a sense of where we fit in but also a sense of our own uniqueness.
However, this kind of reductive or logical thinking, if it is not matched with intuitive, imaginative, open-ended, whimsical thinking is incredibly limiting.
Logic wants to reduce the world to something we can process. So our enemies tend to be “evil” whilst we are “good” - which is rarely the case.
The combination of thinking styles helps us struggle with ambivalence and complexity – the true order of nature and reality.
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I love it when simple elemental representation provides profound glimpses into the essence of our existence as humans. STIK does that for me.
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“By adding a simple human presence to the streets, I found I could humanize the structures of the city and bring attention to the social issues surrounding them.” STIK.
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I've been playing with STIK-style figures ever since.
I started doing them for my 2-year old grandson, who delights in identifying himself and others in the pictures. He likes to tell me how they're feeling.
Since then, these figures have started to become part of graphic world of The PaperBoats and The Tutu Shows. Where to next - who knows?
It's part of this ever-evolving, inner-outer, feedback loop which underpins the retrospective performance-making process.
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There is no doubt that I am drawn to lines and circles as an elemental palette for the Tutu Shows PROJECT and rejoice in the discovery that these STIK figures, constituted as they are from 5 lines and 3 circles, might find new expression as part of the journey.
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This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory group.
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