enhancing the narrative and drawing attention to the central question

After two weeks break from practice, focusing only in research, I look back upon the scratch with the advantage of time, the illuminating distance from the event.

The immediate days that preceded the scratch were a time of fear. A time of insecurity. The edge of time for exposing ideas, which before inhabited the space of words and existed only in the mind. At this time the work was mine, only mine and Lizzy's. But concepts had to become physical, they had to be seen and to be public, this was the hardest step. At this time there was a fear of not being understood, of speaking and not being heard, of discovering that all the work when put together did not make sense.

But it did. I was pleased with the result. All the parts were put together and the event happened. The actors were present, I felt present and the audience were too. There was a moment of exchange and the presence of all things together justified us being there. I believe we worked with the right amount of elements, many elements to create the dynamic of the piece. It seemed to me visually strong, eventhough, there are many things to be ellaborated and transformed. It was good to see through the scratch those things the worked and those that didn't.

However,there are, in my view, two main important things to be explored further, visually and through spoken text; ideas that inhabited our minds but hardly showed. First thing is the narrative, exposing the stories of the house and developing characters; creating tension. We are working site specific in an ambience rich with ghosts and stories that need to be ressucitated. Second is our central question. We need to find means of questioning the audience's notions of space and time transforming it. We need to hint these questions which are so present in Calvino.

In order to enhance the narrative we have been thinking of using the peripheral actions, the characters that are spread around the garden to make reference to our main character and her story. As if they were pages of a book that one by one give away, but visually, parts of her life and hints of her relationships. The connection between the traveller and the garden character should be implicit in the travellers stories and in the clashing of time.

The concerns with the concepts of outside, inside and transforming experiences should be present through new visual elements and in this cyclic text that fills the garden.

Finally, if this is to be a durational performance we have to think of ways of making it dynamic, repetitive but dynamic. This will also have to be developed for the actions and for the rest. We are thinking of it.....

more to come later!!!