This year I am going to be using my blog as a diary of my devising processes. This means that those working on the project but not in the devising room can keep up to date with the work, I can also review my working patterns, and hopefully some of what I write will be interesting for general reading.
This week I'm working on Treasured with Louise Platt, focusing on the first room in the performance which has been called at various times: the chill-out space, the relaxation room and the sanctuary, but yesterday was named the preparation room. I haven't worked on making this space since 2006 with TOWW, but both Lou and I seem to have a very strong impulse about what its about.
Lou's initial list concerned with the atmosphere and feeling of the room was this:
Simplicity, calm, intriguing, non-threatening, care, attention, weathered, depth, present.
Lou notes that it is a much harder thing to make an unthreatening place than a threatening one – but that is what we want to do.
I am very keen that the preparation room is a place of slowly unfolding action, with its own momentum, so that you don't feel like it will stop when the audience member leaves the room. The action of the space overall is choosing – this is where you choose what jewellery you will wear and therefore which story you'll be part of. Lou also identified it as the start of “a call to action” as you would see within a hero quest story.
We identified the most important aspects of the audiences time in the preparation room as:
Welcome – introduce performer and space, take their coat.
Connection – start making connections between audience member, this space, the performer using the making of tea. Also (this may be subliminal at this stage) to the other space, connecting to the jewellery, the space of the story room, the people (performers) in the story room, the story of the jewellery.
Choosing – knowing you are choosing your piece of jewellery (it is not a trick). Choosing not through seeing the jewellery directly but things connected with it, using the senses to do this.
Having chosen the ball is set in motion for the next stage of the performance (taking place in the story room).
Contribution – the audience member is given something to take with them which is used in the story, this may be something that they come up with or may just be an object.
Anticipation – a brief amount of time anticipating the experience.
Entering the next space – we think that one of the performers from the story room may come in and take you there. The two rooms should work together as a whole and the connections between them remain fluid.
We also spent some time looking at tea. I have bought some flowering tea and watching the process of that unfolding was fascinating. However Lou points out that the taste and look are very specific to China. In fact with all teas it seems they are closely related to place. Short of becoming tea experts and making our own, tomorrow we are going to try using a green tea infusion (from the flowering tea) to make the basis of a Moroccan mint tea.