Weds 12 July

I have wanted to make work with song in it for quite some time. As this seems to be the piece where I am throwing caution to the wind, today we start to sing. I ask Alex to compose a simple melody that we can harmonise to and we steal some words from Wendy’s NERVOUS NUMBER text:

LOOK OUT AND ASK FOR HELP

I CAN SEE FROM THE WAY YOU WATCH

THIS IS GOING TO BE – SPECIAL

I TREMBLE AND I HESITATE

The result is so on the edge of being completely appalling, that I imagine there must be something in it worth pursuing. PK and Alex like it so that’s good enough for me. Henry’s not so sure!

I give everyone a list of what they need to ‘get through’ in the next hour or so, on top of which

Using what sketches of materials we have generated we perform a structured improvisation

I ask Henry to take people hostage within the impro

I ask Alex to score his way through it

I ask PK to concentrate on getting through a long list of texts in different forms, including a panic attack

I ask Janusz and Carly to busk their way through what little material they have and make up the rest.

They get through it and some interesting scenes emerge. Feeling a need to start working in more detail, I decide to use what happened in this improv as the basis for emerging ‘episodes’, dissecting what happened, mapping the actions and recreating it in detail over the next 2 days so repeatable ‘scenes’ can start to emerge.