Recapping, Reconnection, Reimagining
As written by Sophie Amos
Photo of the company considering the script... Sophie, Hugh, Jen, Erin and Steve
Performance should never stop developing, art is a fluid form that should never feel completed. A story that never really ends, it’s a entity that can be built upon. Even when the curtain closes the audience should feel that the story continues. Performance is a living being, the characters continue to have life even after the final curtain closes, the worlds continue in the minds of the audience and hold a place within the hearts of the performers. That’s how I see it, but I have a flair for the dramatic (darling I’m a performer!).
Without development what are we doing? It sounds like I am being really deep and philosophical…stay with me here. Without listening to feedback and growing from it, what is the point? The latest R&D session was all about this. Growth. Development. Regeneration. We all came together as a united front and all had chance to talk through the feedback and see how we can take it on board to develop the performance.
I have used the word growth because nothing has dramatically changed, we are simply growing the ideas, nurturing the feedback, so we can develop a performance that really has a voice of its own. The feedback we gathered from audience members was like finding tiny treasure pieces and puzzle parts that are missing to make the bigger picture. As a creative you live in the world and you don’t see the wood for the trees as it were. The opportunity we were given to perform a scratch was important to this process, as we have gained an understanding of the feeling of an audience member, thus enabling us to sprout new ideas to support the context.
Have you ever filled out one of those comment cards? Or a text on “we really value your feedback” and never ever see any changes from your comments? Yeah…well we actually really do value the feedback as it helped us in such an important part of a performance, the developing.
Development is one of the most amazing parts of this process. We hold such a unity as a production and performance team, that we are all giving a piece of ourselves to this show. We all give a thought, an idea and help the performance develop. We all had something to say about the feedback, and we all had solutions to offer. The feedback that was given was discussed and developed upon for us to work on in rehearsals. So thanks for those that did take the time to give us feedback…your feedback was really valuable. Your voice was heard.
With the ideas flowing and the coffee, we started to chip away at the second half. Taking what we had learnt from the scratch, what we knew about how we felt and regenerating the script to be a accurate representation of the revamped You, Me and My Voice. The performance is alive, it has a purpose and is a continually growing entity that has a life of its own. The characters do live on in the world even after the curtain closes. It is not a printed book.
I am really looking forward to hearing how it makes people question themselves and society as a whole. In these uncertain times, there’s too many people talking and not enough listening, something I think the show really highlights. The show is becoming more than an autobiographical performance about voice, to me it is becoming a reflection of what we as a society are dealing with everyday. Not being understood, not being listened to, not clear enough communications. A complete communication breakdown. To you, it might have another meaning, another life and another journey within your mind and well, isn’t that just wonderful?