On Friday, to conclude our week with Shunt, Mischa Twitchin presented four films of his performances: “Is Art Lighthearted?” (a dialogue between Theodor Adorno and Joseph Beuys); “The Piano Tuners” & “Eye Lust” (texts by Samuel Beckett and Paul Virilio, with music by György Kurtág); and, “The Children’s Emperor” & “The Pianist” (texts by Janusz Korczack and Wladislaw Szpilman). The presentation aimed to address the question: “why film, rather than ‘live’?” and invited discussion.
I may be wrong, but I believe all of these works were created as live performances at the Shunt vaults. Mischa's live works that I've seen have been short intricate tightly focused works, densely layered and constructed, with an emphasis on music, and close attention to painstaking construction of image - a face pressed against a sheet of glass, or a carefully lit and arranged pair of hands. The last I saw - I Wonder Sometimes Who I Am - in Edinburgh at the Forest Fringe.
In my opinion, Mischa is one of the great unsung geniuses of our time and I have a quick drink and discussion with him after the showing - over at the Hampstead Theatre. Like Dr. Johnson - you feel someone should be writing down every word he says. I did try but the scraps of phrases and sentences I put into the back of my academic diary hardly measure up to the event. In essence, he said that he had originally set out to record the live performances he had made, but quickly realised that every decision pertaining to the live performances needed to be reconsidered in the light of this separate and different form - 'something has to move within the static frame.' He had a quick stab at conventional approaches to acting - 'they try to make me feel something, through their presentation of feeling - it's just vulgar or kitsch.' His great aim, as always, is to make something 'that has autonomy' - not dependent, or constantly referring, to something outside itself. These films are not easy to watch. They are hard. They move slowly. They grind down your daily (more flippant) sense of yourself. But they grip your attention. And offer some kind of charged energy, or release, carefully enfolded within the layers of visual and aural material - suggesting something more wholesome and worthwhile. They take the time that they need, and engage you with their attention to detail - the knowledge that every decision has been carefully considered, and considered again. They are wrought out of time (and often darkness). I suppose the work in the theatre with which Mischa's work would most obviously invite comparison would be Castellucci's.

A stirring sense of provocation in the Webber Douglas Studio as Hannah and Gemma continue to show the work made by students in response to their opening workshop. I know they've been insisting on questions - the question which each detail of each work puts in the mind of the audience. On entering the studio for one work we even find a huge question mark on the floor. Closer examination of the question mark reveals it's made up of many cards, each card bearing the name of a member of the audience. Instinctively, as members if the audience, we look for our own name, and shuffle towards it. Soon the whole audience is standing in the shape of a question mark, wondering what will happen next. For the last part of their workshop, Hannah and Gemma examine in detail a part of one of the first works to be shown on the previous day - in which the performer pulls on huge surgical gloves, and approaches a carefully selected member of the audience. During the afternoon, I am struck by how the spirit of Shunt has entered the Webber Douglas Studio - a little anarchic - with big bold brush-strokes filling the space of the Studio, challenging our notion of what a performance in such a space might be. One of the participants writes to Hannah and Gemma (hope you don't mind my quoting you - I forwarded the email ) 'Just wanted to thank you for your leading us through a wonderful workshop this past week. Everyone in the group is still buzzing about the work and the ideas.'

This afternoon, Hannah was joined by fellow Shunt founder-member Gemma Brockis, another great force for good in the world. Like Hannah, Gemma appears rooted in the Shunt collective, but is often to be found working with other companies - recently, for example, in Rotozaza's car-based work Pinnochio, and in Chris Goode's Sisters at the Gate. I just have time to introduce her to the group in glowing terms when I'm off, cursing my fate, to various necessary School committees and events - and miss all the exciting performance work of the afternoon. I need to read about this in someone else's blog. Please recommend. All I get for now is a tantalising glimpse from the newly elected student rep Julia when she arrives at the last of these events, and whispers a report. A bomb attached to a stripper? Julia looks pityingly, and says I should have been there. Scattered personal possessions? Wire cutters? Another feature of contemporary practice perhaps: that it exists as much in the telling (in the imagining) as in its original manifestation. A small disruption which can set waves in motion.

Introduce Shunt founder-member Hannah Ringham to the group, fresh from curating the last two weeks in the Shunt lounge. She talks to the group about her work with Shunt (such as Dance Bear Dance) 'we have always been interested in exploring different ways to work with an audence'; and recently with Tim Crouch (work such as England) - 'also interested in working with an audence in a very different way.' During the next few days she's going to be exploring with the group 'concept' and how this can work with 'narrative.' An example of this for her would be the connection between the concept for England, that it would take place in an art gallery, and the narrative which Tim wrote, involving an organ transplantation and a lover who is an art dealer. This has to be one of the emerging themes in considering the field of contemporary practice so far: that is, the impulse, which exists, one way or another, for the contemporary practitioner to make work which is integrated - of a piece with - elements of the moment in which it is made and the surroundings in which it is performed.

Stressed out by the first two weeks of term I'm reading Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island on the Central line - an oasis of calm and decency in the headlong rush. It's an assemblage of short essays and reflections partly authored by members of Goat Island and partly by others others responding to them. Come across this:

There is, Virilio suggests, a 'grey ecology' at work here, as opposed to a green one; grey because, when colours spin past us at speed, they all blur into that one (non-) colour. (p.93)

And further on:

How then, to retrieve and repair time from this terminal acceleration? Another impossible cause, perhaps, but one which Goat Island pursue nonetheless, by insisting on what Virilio calls 'life-size presence' (rather than the shrunken sped-up presence of the small screen), and by obstinately exposing the awkward progression of time itself (Hughes, David 1996. 'Dying Memories.' Dance Theatre Journal 13.1 (Summer), pp 32-33.

I practically jump out of my seat. Or might have done - if I'd had a seat - and hadn't been crammed into the tube with a thousand other hurrying citizens. There's a lot more here in this article which it would take too long to write down. But this is exactly how I'm thinking about live work at the moment. How to slow time down? Not that I feel such a strong objection to the sped-up presence of the small screen. It's just that it leaves a great space of slowed-down time to explore and mine in live performance.

Action-packed afternoon starting with group presentations by the participants - responding to Ross' workshop. These are clever, inventive, full of ideas - like enacted sketchbooks - showing how the participants have been taking on board ideas from the workshops and letting them pile up and feed into their work.



During the afternoon Ross is working on his own presentation - 16 Essays on Composing - which takes place at 6.0, with a larger audience from across the School. Although this DVD is mainly a documentation of a touring production of the Third Man, for which Ross wrote the music, it is also a testament to the power of live theatre, since the 16th Essay is always different, and relates to the particular circumstances in which the DVD is shown. Acknowledging the presence of the audience, and the particular circumstances in which any showing of the work is made, the 16th essay deliberately heightens these, and draws attention to this element of the performance. Entering for what we expected to be a more or less straightforward research presentation, the audience found the studio in darkness, and felt their way forward to find a place to sit down. At the back of the studio, a hooded figure (Ross), seated in a small pool of light, mumbled into a microphone, and continued to speak quietly throughout the showing of the work. Gradually becoming accustomed to the dark, a trail of dead leaves and debris from the afternoon showings could be seen leading between the seated audience, from the hooded figure to the projector, positioned closer to the screen. Ross offered a further insight into his work at the end of the session when he explained how his approach to the work had been influenced by his father's medical condition, and diminishing memory, at the time - how the themes which he had pursued in his composition correlated with the limited number of topics he was able to discuss with his father at the time. The cascading individual words which had been a feature of the DVD artefact suddenly acquired a new meaning. It feels to me absolutely right for a practitioner to be so clearly influenced in his decision-making process by such strong emotional and familial events.

First visit of Andy Field to discuss Forest Fringe evenings at Central later in the term. With me and Andy were Jessica Bowles (Director of Centre of Excellence in Theatre Training), Laura Douglas (Jessica's assistant) and two students on the MA Advanced Theatre Practice course - Prae Sirichana Homsilpakul and Julia Burke. Discuss very exciting plans for Andy and Debbie - Directors of the Forest Fringe at Edinburgh Festival - to curate three evenings of performances at Central on November 13, November 27, December 4. This innovative project - building a bridge between Central and a large group of young practitioners - will be supported by CETT. I'll be writing more about this project I'm sure. So what stands out most from this meeting with Andy at Central? First off, I'd say it's Andy himself. A dynamo. Full of life. Full of plans. In Edinburgh Phelim McDermott was concerned he would burn himself out - in the cause of Forest Fringe - and urged him to gather more support systems about him. Now he seems rested and restored. Practitioners need these sympathetic activators - enthusiasts, capable of drawing a community of practitioners together - and helping them to show and develop their work.

A couple of visits to the studio yesterday. At the first, Ross is discussing the difference between sounds we perceive as separate objects and sounds we perceive as part of the environment. Percussive sounds, for example, like the striking of a drum, he places in the first category; while the resonant sounds of a drum, after it has been struck, 'spread out,' and become part of the environment. Later, when I visit, he's discussing the Greek theatre, where it's been suggested that certain masks may have been tuned to certain tones, corresponding with receptor jars tuned to particular frequencies, suggesting a heightened aural experience separate from the straightforward communication of language - an ongoing theme of this workshop, from what I've seen. Not a 'masterclass,' by the way ... clearly wrong about that! More of a collective experience. I'd be interested in hearing from workshop participants on any point of learning or insight which are occurring for them. What's being discovered? What's becoming clearer as the workshop moves along?
I also managed to talk with Hannah Ringham about her Shunt workshop with us next week. Pleased to hear Gemma Brockis will work with her for two days as well. Hannah is currently curating the Shunt Lounge, so sounded hard-pressed. Also planning their departure from London Bridge. Difficult time. We all feel for them after their tremendous contribution to the London cultural scene in recent years. Hopefully the Webber Douglas Studio at Central will be a bit of a relief.

Email from Ross. Will get this up as fast as I can so it's visible over lunchtime:

How do I post a reply -- doesn't seem to allow me to.
I wanted to say, by way of reply to your blog today:
...actually a rather atypical point in the afternoon which had otherwise been far from tidily thought through! My methodology in this workshop (for such it is, rather than a masterclass) is a bit like one of Ronnie Corbett's monologues (there's one for the international students!)
I'm using a prolonged and practical dramaturgical interrogation of the sound-text of L'Intruse by Maeterlinck as Ronnie might have used one of his shaggy-dog stories: as the spine, for a series of digressions into some of the philosophical conundrums and perceptual paradoxes of aurality. As a practitioner currently in a phase of reflecting on and thinking about his former practice this is actually rather a 'selfish' exercise, you'll be pleased to hear. I'm enjoying the opportunity of sounding out and discussing some things I have spent a couple of years writing and thinking about in preparing my forthcoming book on the subject.

Photo by Alex Eisenberg


Call in to the Studio about 4.0. A large circle of students engaged. Ross is leading a discussion about how each element of a performance interplays with each other element. In composing an underscore for a piece of theatre he discusses the importance of leaving a space for the tonality of the voice - what sounded good in the studio may not work in the rehearsal room in combination with voices and other sounds. Even the presence of a figure on stage can make a piece of work seem cluttered.
Before finishing for the day, Ross asks the group for feedback on his approach to the workshops. A few report that they found breaking into smaller task-driven groups on the first day useful. Ross agrees to do more of this in the next couple of days.
From what I can see, Ross is leading a seminar on the subject of sound in the theatre - spread over five afternoons - a great opportunity for the students to learn from his experience and research, and become immersed in his subject. If I'm right, this a reasonably well tried and tested learning and teaching technique, in which the responses of the participants can influence the thinking of the seminar leader, but are unlikely to change it fundamentally. Nothing wrong with this excellent 'masterclass' approach, and I'm grateful to Ross for giving so much of himself and his time to it, but I would also be interested in inviting the practitioners to take a more radical and possibly more 'selfish' approach - if they wished - that is, to lead a more open-minded enquiry alongside the students, in which the outcome of the research would be less clearly known or determined in advance. Could this have the potential to be an equally exciting and stimulating way of engaging with the students - though at the same time arguably a riskier one? One of the few lectures I remember from my own university days occurred when the (well-known) philosopher lecturer became lost and confused in the logical argument he was proposing on a blackboard. Suddenly the students became genuinely engaged in the drama and interest of the situation, and began to appreciate more clearly how original thinking sometimes takes place - untidily.

The Practitioner Study started today at 2.0 - Ross Brown with thirty-six MA Advanced Theatre Practice course and a small group of BA Theatre Practice students - with the subject for their enquiry 'How do Audiences hear in the Theatre?' Signs for a successful workshop not too good this morning, with very loud drilling from builders all about the studio. But call in to the Webber Douglas Studio at 4.0 and it's quiet, if rather cold (the builders have possibly drilled through a cable somewhere, putting the thermostat out of action). The students are in small groups - looking cold but reasonably happy - Ross having given them the task of discussing and arriving at a sound that suggests silence. Take a photo in the studio on my phone which I'll try to put on this blog. I think one thing they'll be learning about is the intensely difficult task of doing anything in the theatre - how events always conspire against the best-laid plans.

Have a brief chat with Ross about his performance on Friday - which will be about documentation. We decide to ask all MA students at Central. Readers of this blog are welcome as well!