Currently restructuring the way Left at the Theatre operate. Hoping to attain more members of the collective so we can look to make fresh new collaborative works. It is a challenge to get people in the same place at the same time, work commitments interfere, I have erratic hours, RM is studying a PGCE, AB is working in Brimingham and others are based in the north. However this struggle is somehow positive. It is giving me time to scrutinise Left at the Theatres output, from Clutching at straws which we have shown in numerous guises and various festivals and showcase nights, to Intimacy which was a long slow grind, until production day when everything seemed totally worthwhile. I am also deliberating all of the failed studio experiments that Rachel and I have played with.
Without this long stretch of studio time where we created movement pieces based on flirtation, or awkwardness, that piece where scratching was a motif, or the time we experimented with random narratives, writing sentences, rearranging, creating stories to entwine them, the improvisation, the musical stimulus, were all ghosts of performances yet to be actualised. To conceive an idea of to make a performance about, first we must start making, we make blindly, and we agree, and we disagree, and we scrap, and we edit, and we redo, until eventually something is created…or discarded.
Considering this maximal studio practice I am pleasantly surprised with Clutching at Straws aesthetic values, it is somehow poetic in its minimalism, 2 bodies, one glass, a bottle of wine. We would never have physicalised this if we hadn’t improvised a scene about relationship breakdowns.
So now I am looking at Left at the Theatre from a more business like approach, understanfing our strengths and weaknesses, aiming to discover our values, our objectives. And this is giving me great hope, I am lookign forward to collaborating with a wider range of artists, to establishing a shared vision, and to taking this project to a new level.
