Frying Pan Post -Sarah, February 11, 2011

Space is everything
Yes. I'm homesick for our studio days. We're dealing now with this black theatre, scratchy walls, and a tangible expectation from the rows of seats facing us. We've spent the week "taming" the space, making it our own or part of us, accepting it for what it is. We've been trying to analyse what creates theatrical illusion and what doesn't, and realizing that there's nothing we want to "pretend". The heart and necessity of the work is sharing what we're experiencing from moment to moment. So we can't ignore the space, and why should we, it's juicy material to move and sound and talk from. And yes, we've stripped away everything else, it's just us and the space, and next week...THEM. How exciting and terrifying.

Frying Pan Post - Susanna, February 10, 2011

Ok. So it's been a couple of weeks. Lots been going on and now we are nearing the end of a week in residence at Tangente. Wow! So amazing and telling to be working in the theatre space. I hadn't realized how much the studio space we'd been working in had become our third partner in the work. Just dealing with the space itself and the strangeness and immediate pressures of "now we're doing the 'real' thing" have taken over our content considerably. It reinforces how this duet has become so much what is going on right in the very ever-changing moment that we're in. And so this, of course will change. We'll get used to this space and then it'll be the audience that's the new element. There is no relaxing except for the work of learning how to relax into the work of it.
And this constant stripping away process. Editing the space mostly. Editing what we bring into our world - once there was a table, a chair, a door, costumes.... one by one they have come, played their role and been nixed. It's really fascinating. What is necessary? So perhaps on some level I'm taking back my comment on choreographing and improvising being so different. I mean they are. And it's a different engagement that we ask of ourselves and the audience - but it's still about choices, what's essential and a different type of editing. We are working to create the right environment for everyone to be able to engage.
I feel very blessed!
Susanna