Hi Erik
Thanks for your email. The sexy blurb is great. I’m going to do some stuff with it that’s about adding dates of the project etc and I’ll run it by both of you before I put it in front of the students to see who wants to get involved.
I'm really intrigued by the quote from Spook Country that Eric sent us both as well…
Here’s some ramblings, really not in any particular order. I’ve been thinking a lot about the project since Eric and I talked. I’m very excited about the collaboration as it’s taking me into a fairly new area and into a new venue that I’ve been keen to work more intimately in.
Don’t know if Eric mentioned it, but I was talking about working with radio mics from the start so that we’re not limited to performers standing/sitting/lying near a mic. I haven’t seen a huge amount of work at SARC but the work I have seen hasn’t really explored bodies moving in the space, rather sound moving and project images moving.
In terms of moving things forward in my head, I’m keen to unpick and locate things dramaturgically for myself so that I’m in the right place to start thinking about how we devise the physical and visual text for this piece.
As I mentioned to Eric, I’m not suggesting at all that there’s anything about the piece that is narratively linear – or perhaps even narrative or linear – or didactic in any way. I think it’s because I wasn’t in on the start of the conversation and am new to working with both of you that I’m feeling that I want to “understand” some of the whats and whys.
Some thoughts I’ve had:
Because of the complexity that we’re looking at creating, I’m feeling that the dreaming couple should maybe be two people rather than two halves of one person. I could be wrong of course….
Because I’m thinking we might need some constants as a dramaturgical red thread through a fairly constantly morphing piece. Whether that's the right place to locate the constants is another question.
I’m wondering if the other pair is their dream selves in some way. That’s the wrong word for it so let me explain what I’ve been thinking about today…..
I think we use our dreams to interrogate stuff in our lives but I think our dreams also torture us with that interrogation. Even whoever we are with, we are very much alone and sometimes lonely with our dreams. But then people trespass into them often without our permission. And that’s before we get into the realm where people might be doing that deliberately to attempt to achieve something. Eric’s given me some film references which I’m hoping to follow up in the next couple of weeks. While I’m typing the above I’m thinking Eternal Sunshine and Memento. Structurally as well I think they’re both interesting in that they’re non-linear, multi-layered, full of opacity and obsfucation but there are some constants which take you through the journey.
On a totally different note, I can’t imagine what it is like to not have any dreams or to not remember your dreams. From an early age I’ve always remembered my dreams in very vivid detail and they often can stay with me and their emotional effect can bleed into my waking life and make me feel very dislocated.
My dreams are often very visceral and have strong physical sensations and visual images attached to them. As well as my particular interest as a theatre director who works very physically and visually (unsurprisingly), this is why I’m interested particularly in the physical and visual text of this piece as it develops.
Perhaps it was because I’d started reading the stuff on the wiki about lucid dreaming and was thinking about this whole project but last night I had very complex and clear dreams that stayed with me all morning.
I was outside a small house and my sister was there and there were animals that we were trying to keep out of the house but the door was open. There was a tiny little ram. More the size of a miniature poodle but with thick curly horns. My mouth felt odd and I realised that I was growing extra canines the same shape as those horns. I didn’t know how to get to the dentist. My mouth continued to feel stretched as I tried to hide these extra teeth and I realised I ‘d grown an entire extra row of teeth about my top row of teeth. In a way I felt relieved. Then I noticed that the toilet bowl was full of navy blue suit jackets. Sometime later, a separate episode. I was in a relationship. I couldn’t see who it was with and it wasn’t anyone I knew but I felt a warmth and a comfort that I thought I would never feel. I woke up slowly and felt the loss of it like an enormous ache that was sonorous and dark.
Hmm. Deconstruct that….???!!
One of the strongest dreams I remember having was at the very end of my marriage when I was away on a narrowboat with my husband, knowing (which he didn’t) that when we got back that I was going to have to leave.
I dreamt that I was in one of those sleeping shelves that they had in the concentration camps. I couldn’t sit up and I felt terrified and trapped.
That one’s very obvious to read, but why I tell it is that I woke up in the process of sitting bolt upright and screaming outloud. Putting that image onstage of course would be a terrible cliché but I think the physical and visual text can at times be sudden and striking in this way. And at other times, incredibly subtle.
So, to ramble on……
The whats and the whys I’m asking at the moment are:
What’re your thoughts about the journey and shape of the piece…..?
If you had to say what was “actually” happening in the course of the piece, what would you say?
What things are we trying to say, however obliquely…..?
The bumblebee – where’s the dramaturgical seed for this….?
Is the piece about dreaming or is it about torture predominantly?
Is it about the power of the unconscious mind and therefore the power of harnessing it?
I’m aware that these feel very simplistic questions and please forgive me if they feel a little stupid, but I want to make sure that I’m really clear on the dramaturgical roots underpinning the thought processes developing the work so far so that I can contribute properly.
The stuff in your last email started to do that for me a bit but I need a layer underneath that for myself as a foundation for the exploration. I think you and Eric probably have a short-hand as I do with long-term collaborators that I need to catch up on! I feel tantalisingly close to it but not quite there……..which is probably my newness to this sort of material and to working with you guys.
What was the very first idea? Take me back to there……
I guess that's all for now
Intrigued
Anna