Politics – Page 20 – Hannah Nicklin

Aa-ah. Falling behind in June content already. Just dropping by quickly to nudge you in the direction of something that Andy Field and I have been scheming (on, about? Never used the word ‘scheming’ before). A return of the Flash Conference we sprang at State of the Arts earlier on this year. Now much bigger! Much longer! And with creative as well as thinky inputs!

Basically it will be hosted by Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, on the 21st of August. We have been gathering questions, speakers, performances, and innovative-ish ideas for holding different level of dialogue, and will bring them all together in a cornucopia of discussion of the ideas of performance, what it means to be ‘fringe’, the state of the world, and how the arts thread through that. And as ever, we’ll be posting audio of all the provocations, will hopefully have livebloggers, and will definitely try our damndest to replicate the conversation online, and feed everything both ways across the virtual/real membrane. Ticket will work on a pay-what-you-can model, and we’ll even do lunch. Hold the date, eventbrite will be out soon.

Copy!

This day is not about railing against authority or the great institutions of the arts. It is a day for everybody to gather at the edges of those big institutions and organisations, on equal terms. To ask daring questions and suggest implausible answers. To share a spirit of generosity and a galvanising sense of hope; that despite or perhaps because of the political, financial and environmental circumstances in which we find ourselves, the arts can and will play a part in imagining and realising a better possible future.

We’re still looking for partners to help support the event, so if you’d like to help (in exchange for your logo on every available surface) do drop us a line. And if you can offer your time over the event to help live blog/document the conversations, or if you have a pro-camera (something along the lines of a Cannon 550D) you could lend/come up and use, please DO let me/us know.

Finally, today is the last day to get a question in for the voting next week. 2 of the 4 questions that will frame the whole event are going to be from submissions. So PLEASE do submit. Everyone has their bugbear, wondering, pet peeve, or great ambition for performance, and the questions will be anonymous, so you can be as controversial as you like. Even if you can’t quite form a question, please just send us some thoughts and we’ll shape it into something that could provoke a discussion…

Think that’s that. I’ll be back later this month posting various talks that I’m giving places. Hopefully interesting ones. The TEDxYork stuff should be at least. I actually checked out the site the other day and was bowled over by who else is speaking. Feels very odd to be on the same platform as people like Bill Thompson, Daniel Bye, and Tassos Stevens. I like the theme, too; A New STEAM age. STEM plus ‘A’ for arts. GEDDIT?! Yeah.

I really love taking non-theatre-people to theatre. Not that there’s in essence ‘non-theatre-people’. There’s just a lot of people who don’t go see/do/to theatre. But hopefully you know what I mean; nothing in the world feels like theatre does, and it’s such a thrill to bring people to that.

I took an old school friend, and non-theatre-person to see the double bill of Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before at Stoke Newington International Airport (as part of the excellent London Word Festival) this Thursday. Two intimate, and at the same time widely reaching pieces, gentle, but at times painful. They did what theatre does best; make you remember yourself, and your body, your breath, and the people you’re made up of.

Like You Were Before by Debbie Pearson is a simple piece of storytelling about her moving from Toronto to the UK several years ago. Murmured words on video are played out in front of us, as Pearson traces herself, her movements, the gaps, the places where she used to be; physically, vocally, narratively. Following on video her last days in Toronto, Like You Were Before stumbles through an awkward dance, private conversations, a swig of vodka, details that only she could know. A gentle piece that focussed on the peculiar and inimitable relationship between female friends, conveyed with a sense of being let into a box full of memories, but with the holder’s occasionally snatching certain painful ones – as she fast forwarded, paused, and skipped sections – away. Simple, and everyday; in the best kind of way.

Keep Breathing is a new piece of work from Chris Goode. This (I believe) was the first outing of this work in progress commissioned by the Drum Theatre Plymouth about breath – and the things you can do and say with it. Simply begun as the question ‘say what you would like to say to the world, anything that you can say in one breath’ sent out to 6 people. Keep Breathing traced the journey of this question, through responses, conversations, meetings, and the questioner’s own thoughts, reactions, tellings. Held in a particularly conversational style – but supportively guided by the structure of the questions and Goode’s beautiful little linguistic refrains – Keep Breathing was a passionate tale about the things people put their breath to, and Goode’s realisation that much of his own work is scored by it. This realisation is made doubly poignant by revelations about his mother’s struggles with a respiratory illness.

As we were walking to the venue before the show, my engineering-PhD friend asked about theatre: ‘does it not feel, I don’t know, I don’t mean the word pointless, but to put all that work in, and then for it to end, finish, and there not be anything afterwards?’ I muttered something about life, and existence, and beauty not always being defined by usefulness.

My friend’s question was directly and indirectly answered by both Like You Were Before, and Keep Breathing. Debbie’s murmured traces connecting her past and present selves, Chris’ piece about life, death, and moments built of shared, collective breaths. Keep Breathing finished with an audience member (Debbie, in fact) blowing bubbles as Chris presented a spoken montage of the hour passed, as each image flashed before our ears, a bubble had a brief, beautiful little existence. “Breathe in, breathe out… It’s alright, isn’t it?”

I took an old school friend, and non-theatre-person to see the double bill of Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before at Stoke Newington International Airport (as part of the excellent London Word Festival) this Thursday. And I was proud to do so. They were perfect.

This cross between a blog post and a review is re-posted on the GoodReview site that I also write for sometimes. When I have the time. Which actually isn’t very often.

Tag: Politics

Flash!

Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before