Chalkboard Wall

16 June 2009

The floor area for IWGO is 10 x 8 metres. I meet set builder David Shakiran to discuss a freestanding chalkboard wall, as mocked up from old sets in Sheffield Independent Film for Aurora's rehearsals. We decide to design it so it can stand 4 metres high x 9 metres wide in middle scale venues, and shrink to 3 metres high x 8 metres wide in smaller venues. Good to be versatile on tour. I anticipate no entrances and exits form the wings - only from behind this wall. In smaller venues there will only be around 1 metre behind the chalkboard wall to the back wall of the theatre space. I hope everyone gets on - its going to be a bit of a squash back there.

15 June 2009

We are hiring Bare Bones Dance Company's truss to create a semi-soundproofed, softened studio space within a larger concrete studio space in Sheffield for the majority of the IWGO rehearsals. Persistence Works is a fine art and crafts studio complex just up the road from VDT's office at the Workstation in Sheffield's Cultural Quarter. We are currently planning for a get in there on 5th May, after one more brief week of devising with Scott Smith at Sheffield Independent Film studio. Chris Umney and Eike Schraeder are our Production Managers, Sound and Lighting Technicians for the tour. Chris was Production Manager for Double Vision, a duet with Liz Aggiss I made earlier this year - he is hugely experienced and is fantastic, calming presence on tour. Eike has been involved in Production Management at the Staatheater Wiesbaden in Germany for many years and has recently moved to Kent to set up Shraeder Umney Production and Design Company with Chris: www.schraeder-umney.com. Oh, and they are getting married in July.

11 June 2009

Today I met Jane Faram, VDT's new part-time Administrator, who will be involved in much of the scheduling and transport/ accommodation needs for the cast and crew involved with the IWGO tour. She also works part time at Site Gallery, Sheffield, who have commissioned VDT in the past, so thats a good link.

Aurora Working

Week 3 - Consolidation

18 - 22 May 2009

A series of microdances

Stolen material

Lost and Found

A nervous number

A sighing dance

Re- enactment

Footsteps and traces

Subtraction

Rant

Enigma Text

Lights on and off

When you're ready

Contortion

Being Marlena - I need a light

Being Pina - I need a dress

Being Yoko Ono - Hide until everyone leaves you.

No more dancing

No to putting my word's into other people's mouths

Manifestos and Protocols for middle age

Trying things on for size

Friday sharing with Ruth as Dramaturg - a reassuring presence

A flight home to Poland

A sigh of relief

A get out

If we go on and on and on and on and on.....

Week 2 - Aurora and Alex

14 May 2009
Alex was formally offered the work of Composer/ Cellist for IWGO.

Whilst he was over from Costa Rica, he and Aurora played with recreating George Kuchar's I, AN ACTRESS (1977) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOXpDCkOiCo

A terrible idea, really, but well worth a go just for comic value. A relief to have another person in the studio. Making solo work is a very intense process for performer and director. We also developed a manifesto for IWGO - the things we are no longer prepared to tolerate in performance.

Much discussion around invisible scores, how to reveal the mechanics of what we are doing on stage as we are doing it, how to structure 8 distinct journeys through the piece in to a coherent whole so it doesn't just become a variety show, direct address as a form, how to piece together the collective urge to continue. Central question: what is it that I am trying to say in this work?

Week 2 - Cellist Workshop

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Cellist Workshop 13th May 2009

Design Mock Up / Aurora Chair Solo

If We Go On, Devising Week 1

4th May 2009
Aurora Lubos arrives from Poland to start work on If We Go On, 7 and a half months pregnant and ready to get stuck in.
We are working in Sheffield Independent Film. It rains a lot. I cycle to work. We talk a lot. We play with Wendy Houstoun's text. It's a new way of working but as Aurora cant move a whole lot, its useful to have a different stimulus. I get very heady, intellectual and structural. My partner builds and together we rig 9 bare light bulbs hanging over the space in a 3x3 grid. I think this, a few chairs, some technical kit and a chalkboard back wall might be the 'design' of the piece. NO TO SEDUCTION. NO TO FICTION. NO TO DRESSING THINGS UP. I arrange things so that all the sound and lighting is all operated from the stage. We play with drawing scoring and writing on the chalk wall at the back of the space - its too familiar an aesthetic, but the wall looks beautifully textural when the drawing has been rubbed out. Aurora needs to lie down at lunch times and rest her growing belly.