Litfest

Day two of our playtime with Cath Nichols was spent mucking about with objects and seeing how animation might fit with the text.

It’s a canny balance. On day one we’d experimented with live and recorded voices and how Cath might interact with the two different delivery styles. This created an interesting textural layer, and reinforced the notion (already in the text) or story and teller. But how could we use this idea and props without overlarding it?

As you can see we had a fine collection of toys to play with – stuff we’d deemed relevant to the story (what isn’t so visible here is the meaty collection of saws I’d brought with me). Cath selected things to explore through improv.

cath nichols and the making of blue

I was really impressed with how easily she entered into the spirit of this – especially with us as audience. She created stories from scissors, sequins and a coat hanger. It was the sequins (seen here) that proved to be the most engaging – for both her and for Andy and myself.

It was when her action and words chimed the most dramatic moments appeared. So we moved from improv to the actual text and played with resonance between words and movement. The objective was not to figuratively illustrate the text but to bounce off into a different direction, to offer what would become the word of the day a different ‘resonance’ to the text.

Cath had brought a manequin and was obviously keen to play with that – a huge prop that I would hacve steered well clear of, but she had the confidence to manipulate it, creating an odd dance that she managed to pull off. We were getting somewhere. If not quite animation, there was a definate choreography to the proceedings.

andy trying to get into the dress

cath and the figurehead mermaid

We were also aware of trying to find physical refrains. Just as we had dipped into musical and wordy refrains, I was interested in the power of reinforcement through action repeated or perhaps expanded upon.

Change seemed crucial to the animation of the space. How could the objects map, remap and unmap the space? What was the point of them? How were they going to earn their keep?

mapping the territory with scarves and sequins

Engrossing was Cath focused in her conviction as to where the objects needed to be and what function they were serving to the space and story. But it was a forever a task to keep our toes out of the realm of theatre. How much could she pull the watchers in? How much could others buy into her imagined landscape?

But perhaps most importantly, when could Sarah get to be the Prince?

Prince Charming the Sarah

No, but seriously – work is play and play is work in this kind of thing. And the more we mucked about the more ideas came out. Some of which we followed and some of which we jettisoned as just being too silly. For me, this is most exciting and rewarding element of collaboration – the stockpiling of silliness and ireverance that suddenly opens doors to unexpected places that have surprising emotional power or illuminating imagery.

mermaid or siren?

In a remarkable piece of organic organisation, next week we’re working with dancer cum movement practitioner, Penny Collinson, so it’ll be fascinating to see what she does with where we’ve got to.