Exploring Live Literature

In August and September this year Litfest's Artistic Director Andy Darby and Flax editor Sarah Hymas worked with poet and performer, Cath Nichols over five days to develop a piece of live literature. Working title: The Price of Legs. It was a piece based on Hans Anderson's Little Mermaid.

With access to the auditorium space and a materials/expenses budget of up £500, we explored frameworks for the piece, how we might realise ideas within the piece, create a context for the piece and a dialogue with any potential audiences.

This was a first for Litfest: a chance to unpack what live literature is, with no expectation for an end product. This project was research and development for us and Cath.

What Happened

We 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) of story and narrator. But how could we use this idea with props without overlarding it?

Minimise the props, perhaps? We'd collected a fine collection of toys to play with, chiming action and words into small dramatic moments. From improvisation, we turned 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. A large piece of plastic found its way into the space. Great for light, sound and movement.

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

Change seemed crucial to the animation of the space. How could the plastic and other objects map, remap and unmap the space? What was the point of them? How were they going to earn their keep? How much could Cath pull the watchers in? How much could others buy into her imagined landscape?

One day was led by dancer/movement artist, Penny Collinson. Her interest lies in how our bodies respond to space, emotions and narrative.

The relationship between stillness, space and silence within movement was pulled out more. It seems essential to me that, as Penny said, the clarity of movement supports the clarity of the text.

So by the end of the last day we had a bunch of ingredients that we all liked: recorded voice, recited text, an improvised introduction, props of plastic sheeting and sequins, movement in and out of the space. Then the blender of tension: how much was this theatre and how much was this live literature?

I like the idea that live literature is enlivening literature that wasn't necessarily originally conceived as an oral piece. Although that's not particualrly catchy. It's more than a monologue. It isn't a script. It isn't a recital, or reading. And this piece at this project's end point had elements of all these.