Scratches

So, last week were the scratches at college! We did the first one on Tuesday and then had to reperform something for Thursday, which were held as open performances. 

As I had been really struggling turning my tea conversations into a more traditional style of performance I decided to do one on one performances for Tuesday. I finally managed to do the performance embodying other people's stories. Something that I have been trying to do for weeks.

I enjoyed the performance and some interesting aspects came from doing it. I realised that if I want the conversations to be a performance in their own right I still have a lot of work to do in the framing of the activity. I probably got a lot more out of the experience than the tea takers did! I knew that I was passing on other people's information and stories but this was lost on a lot of the participants due to the fact that I hadn't framed the activity throughly enough.

I really liked that there was a natural progression to the conversations and the stories that were told. I started off my first story by saying that I was an 86 year old woman, then telling an anecdote. This then inspired the tea taker with me at the time to embody the story of their own Grandma and say to me in return "I'm a 96 year old woman". I then retold this story to the next tea taker - who in return became their two and a half year old nephew, and told an anecdote from his perspective. I loved that other people also took this concept on board (and would really like to know from the participants how this felt to them by the way :o) )

The conversations took a turn when one tea taker told a story that was actually about themselves, from then on the theme of memories and people's grandmas emerged but all about themselves, which was great. 

Actually witnessing this progression finally allowed me to see a way to write the show!! The empathy inherent in the telling of stories swung between being someone else and being yourself. The conversations naturally drifted back to being about them rather than embodying another character or person. This really showed me that this is what I have been working towards. Also being able to see how it felt to embody someone else's story finally gave me a hook into the script writing.

I still want to work on this section being a performance on its own, as it is a great way of getting material and has a great deal of performative quality and value for the participant that is yet to be excavated. So any further feed back from people that saw this section would be great as I don't feel as though I have fully explored this option yet.

Anyway, on to Thursday. So, I wrote the show on Wednesday and performed it, unrehearsed, on Thursday; which was incredibly nerve racking but turned out to be the best thing for me. Being under so much pressure by having limited time to write something meant that I couldn't over analyse anything and talk myself out if it. 

There are loads of things that I need to consider now, such as the materials I am using, the delivery of the work, and expanding the script. I feel in a good place to be able to do it though and am working on finding a director to help me with some of this, as it is incredibly hard for me to be subjective about the work. I suppose that is one thing about working from process; you become so embedded in the work and the process of how you got there that it is hard to step out of it again to be subjective and a little cold about it in the editing. 

I got some really helpful feedback from everyone that saw the performance on Thursday but any further thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

P.S big thanks to Harriet for documenting it for me and getting it on the net!