Pre - R & D Day 2 and 3: One Step Forward, Fifteen Steps Back, and Three More Forwards Again

I am making a show about Motherhood and Recovery. As a start, I booked in three days with director Madeleine O'Reilly and a space at Artlink in Hull with no more expectations than to live the three days and see what happened.

Day 1, which I've written about in a previous blog, was business day. This brought some grounding to the fluffy notion of, "making a show," and helped me build an idea of practical things like timeline, budget and how much things cost. Day 2, I imagined, was where the real fun would start and I would play and be free and all would be beautiful.

In reality, something very interesting happened.

Play day felt much harder than business day.

In fact, play day resulted in a quick trip to a bar which resulted in rather too much wine being drunk very quickly, followed by the I'm-bad-at-this-I-have-no-ideas-maybe-I'll-cancel-tomorrow-and-stay-in-bed meltdown - at which point I was promptly sent to bed.

Whilst we had generated a lot of ideas and played some games which generated some great starting points for tasty material, if there were a fly on the wall at around 3pm on day 2, it would have witnessed us lying on the floor with pens on the big paper and then leaving in search of sugar. We crashed balls.

One step forward, fifteen steps back.

What did we learn? I need my clowns around me. And as "my" clowns are currently in different parts of the country, (or a different country entirely!) I really will need to do some work cultivating a clown network in Hull so that we can play and fail and push forward together. (I believe this will happen and I'm really excited about it.)

Wednesday morning, Day 3, it had been planned that Charles was to pop in to chat about music and that Jack might come and take some photos. Charles and I played together when we created The Cure, (street theatre,) in Hull and Jack is my partner and also a performer.

Fortunately Charles and Jack were more than willing to play with me for a couple of hours, and I got to show off to them what we had so far. Madeleine had encouraged me to bring anything I could lay my hands on to do with motherhood or recovery, which made for a healthy bit of creative mess, and I put music on as soon as we got into the space.

FUNK CLEARED.

If there's one thing I've learned fits into my methodology for creating, it's that I need the energy of others in the room, (my own is hard to sustain for a long time and I feel easily pressured,) music in the room, lots of stimulus from colours, objects and toys. I am essentially a big toddler-clown-woman. This all seems very obvious, but I am pleased to have learned this as a fact at this stage. I have a much clearer idea of what and who I might need when I go into the next stages of R&D.

Having said this, we had also decided I need to experiment with generating material entirely alone in the room to see what happens. After an excellent morning of playing with others, I felt I could easily get down to this, my head full of ideas and without the pressure of anybody watching me. Maddie left to go and watch a show at Hull Truck, and would return a couple of hours later to find out what I'd been up to.

To my joy, I had a great time! I looked into advice on the internet for new mothers, and experimented with lip-syncing, which I had loved when working with SpyMonkey earlier this year. Whilst the results weren't necessarily audience-worthy, I really enjoyed experimenting with working to the camera and the quick results and tweaks I could make watching myself back and trying again. This will certainly be something that I use going forwards.

It was nice then to have the energy in the room changed up again when Maddie returned - again, I had something to show off about, Maddie had fresh eyes to view my work with and brought in a new impulse for more games sparked off what I had found.

For the last creative hour we played with objects, skated around, laughed, juggled muslin cloths and my own pre-judgment of what I was creating and doing started to feel like it was loosening.

During our evaluation and planning of the next stage, Maddie commented that it was really interesting that I went through a whole mini-process in this three days. The "Third Week Slump," (which I feel happens to anyone making theatre!) came to me in the afternoon of day two and by the end everything had come back around to being positive, joyful and free again. Knowing this, we have started to draw up strategies I can use during creative periods to get through the slump and to not give up.

I feel very proud of what we achieved in three days. I have a much better idea of what my show might be and what I need to do before the next stage. Most importantly I am getting a better idea of how to avoid making the work too self-indulgent and how I might head towards it being good, truthful and beautiful.

Pre - R & D Day 1: Holy Arts-Business, Batman!

What a day.

Madeleine spent a lot of today giving me a rip-roaring tour of funding, budgeting and making a show sustainable. After all, what use is a show if it disappears as quick as we've made it?

Money talk puts me way, way, way out of my comfort zone and is something I naturally shy away from, so I end today feeling a huge sense of achievement for writing... drumroll please...
A BUDGET! It took heaps of patience and talking through from Maddie, but still, a budget exists.

I learned some mighty sexy things about Excel shortcuts along the way. Yes, sexy, you read right.

I can one-hundred per cent see why this would be a great place to start. As an artist it doesn't feel like the most natural place, (I'm usually with the fluffy thinking and the dreaming,) but it's given us some really solid foundations to start making. It's also given me chance to take stock of how fortunate I am to have the support I already do, and helped me see where I need to go next.

We also spent some of today looking at the whats, whys, wheres, whos and whens, dug a little bit deeper into what I want to achieve and fleshed out what I believe to be my artistic identity. It's all very easy showing off in someone else's show, street character or act - but this is clown. It's just me. And the things that make me vulnerable and laughable. It's terrifying in a getting-on-the-best-but-most-dangerous-rollercoaster-in-the-world kind of way.

Tomorrow is setting some framework and measurable outcomes. How do we know what is progress and how do we record it? What is my way of working? How do I get from fluffy ideas to a solid outcome? And how do we know when it is good?

Play time.

CODDIWOMPLING: R&D at Artlink, Hull

Coddiwomple: to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination. I would say that is an excellent summary of my current status as an artist and human as I head into three days of research and development this Monday to Wednesday.

I am working on generating clown material guided by the wonderful Madeleine O’Reilly in a space at Artlink which I am fortunate enough to have situated at the end of my street. Our mission: to find my framework for generating material, to work out how we measure it as good or bad, and to filter through some starting points and get to the really good stuff. Unknown, unknown, unknown but ultimately so exciting!

Why am I doing this? Well, largely because I am "stepping out of my own way." I have found myself saying this a lot by means of explanation when asked what I'm up to. I've been hugely inspired by SpyMonkey's Clown Creation School in October this year, and it has acted as the final push into the unknown, my calling, my higher-self, off a cliff... whatever you want to call it. I've taken a leap.

Along my personal journey, this comes after a great many years of self-doubt, low self-opinion and many challenges with my mental health. Which, in a bizarre twist of fate, seems to now be what feeds my funnies. What is there to fear when things have been life-threateningly bad? Take my clothes off, sing about how much I love willies and leap around making funny noises? I'll do it. I've come full circle and there is only lightness and laughter.

The ultimate goal is to create a solo piece of clown theatre, whilst doing all the clown training I can afford in 2019. And then world domination, yes? Whilst I, (approaching my thirtieth birthday,) have grown up enough to know that nothing comes quickly, (I really learned that the hard way,) I have also learned that you may as well champion yourself and tell the universe what you want.

At SpyMonkey's school in October I was chatting with some fellow participants one evening when we all entered into a discussion about where we see ourselves in five years time. I tentatively answered, "with... my own show? Maybe? I don't know." This was met with, "Ha! Five years? We bet you'll do it in one. What's stopping you?" What beautiful humans. I had no come back. They were right. I am stepping out of my own way.

I want to be an excellent clown with my own show? Yes please. Is that a bit vague? Yes it is, but I'll keep travelling towards it in as purposeful a manner as I am able.