LISTS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
13:45 (14:45)
2-27 August
(Not 9 not 14 not 21)
Answers
from Rachel Briscoe
creative
director, fanSHEN and director, Lists for the end of the world
What
was the inspiration for this performance?
Honestly?
I make a lot of lists. Mostly ‘to do’ lists but other lists too.
There was a day I was really pissed off about something and I needed
to stop being in a bad mood so I wrote at the top of a page in my
notebook ‘Things I’m sick of’ and made a list. It got me out of
the bad mood – but then a couple of days later I came across what I
had written and found it really funny – there were really political
big world event type things next to things like ‘my haircut’ and
‘winter vegetables’.
I started wondering if it would be possible
to make a whole show of lists. I was quite skeptical at first –
working with the rest of the company, we did little try-outs with
lists we’d sourced from friends. We quickly realised how engaging
the lists were, how they gave a sense of the person who’d written
them, how they showed up common humanity and how ridiculous we all
are.
And also that the show had the potential to be both very funny
and really poignant.
Is
performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
Sure,
so long as it is a discussion and not a one-sided lecture. I’m
really sick of theatre that beats you around the head with one idea.
What I really like about Lists
is there are so many voices in there; it isn’t a traditional play
so we haven’t had to resolve everything into one narrative drive/
thesis and anti-thesis. It’s a genuinely polyphonic piece – with
really contrasting outlooks in there, because we sourced the lists
from all over.
So for example, the list ‘Times I felt free’ has
quite a lot of answers that a typical liberal theatre audience might
give – things about traveling, swimming, having just passed an
important exam. But it’s also got different voices – like a young
man from Stockton: ‘when I passed my army selection’.
For a lot
of people that’s the antithesis of free but for him, it was
opportunity, a ticket out of a place that held little hope for him.
In a weird way, the list titles are a playful and elegant way of
discussing the hows and whys of human existence – without being
anywhere near as heavy as I’ve made that sound!
How
did you become interested in making performance?
I
don’t know really. I guess I love images and words, and performance
brings them together. The stuff about ‘liveness’ gets talked
about waaaaay too much. I disagree that a bunch of strangers sitting
silently next to each other in a darkened room is a shared experience
by default, but I think some performance can have the effect of
bringing people together – which I’ve not really ever experienced
in a cinema. So I guess performance gives a combination of tools that
I find very exciting.
Is
there any particular approach to the making of the show?
So
every word in the show is sourced from a list that someone has given
us. While we were making it, every day we had a daily list title that
we’d put out there on social media, and people would send us their
responses (they’d also read and comment on each others’).
When we
were in residency at a theatre, we had a postbox in the café with
hard copies of the daily title, so people could fill them in while
they were waiting for their coffee. We’ve also done workshops of
various kinds and made an installation at a festival where we
collected lists.
Then we took all these bits of paper into the
rehearsal room and played with ways to animate the content – for
example with music, so some of the lists are sung. It’s been a lot
of fun – and we feel really privileged to have been able to play
with contributions from over 300 people.
Does
the show fit with your usual productions?
Most
fanSHEN work is co-created with the audience in some way – so the
audience playing within a structure we’ve made, or responding to
some invitation or provocation from us. We’d be unlikely to make
something in isolation, without any creative dialogue… I think that
kind of work would feel less rich for us.
There’s also usually a
mixture of big ideas and trashy, funny stuff: we’re as interested
in neuroscience as we are in bad Saturday afternoon 90s TV. We’re
pretty passionate about the idea that performance can be experimental
without needing to be elitist.
What
do you hope that the audience will experience?
Oh
god, all the emotions! It really is a show that goes from poignant to
laugh out loud funny and back again in a minute. I also think it’s
a really hopeful show – because people are wonderful and
contradictory and bizarre - and the lists show this. There’s a lot
to be worried or depressed about right now – it’s easy to lose
sight of the moments of human kindness and beauty, which many of the
lists reveal. I think a bit of joy and hope could come in handy right
now.
What
strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
You
mean, what’s the dramaturgy of piece that has neither characters
nor one narrative?! I think we worked a lot with rhythm, tempo,
visual picture and contrast within these categories. We thought about
what the audience’s relationship was to each of the three
performers – and what their evolving relationships to each other
were.
We plotted moments that might be sad or challenging to hear –
and made sure we were also putting in sections that were upbeat or
funny near to them. I guess for us, dramaturgy is putting things
together in a way that gives them more meaning than they’d have as
individual elements. So we’d try putting things together and ask
ourselves, does this have more meaning than the bits do on their own.
We made a lot of material – and then cut quite savagely. But I
think you never quite understand a show until you’ve seen a good
few audiences experience it… so ask me at the end of Edinburgh how
effective those strategies were!
No comments :
Post a Comment