Interview Three
On Fun, Flow, and Interpenetrability
When do you have the most fun during the artmaking process? And does this relate to your autism in any way?
It’s a really good question. I think ‘fun’ is a really interesting word to use, because I think fun can mean a few different things. There can be a kind of bouncing around fun, hahaha fun, you know? Which I don’t know if I ever feel during an artmaking process. Do you know what I mean? Because it’s almost not appropriate to feel like that, in a way. But then there is a different kind of fun, which is a lot to do with a sort of satisfaction about being very deeply in something. And feeling like the world of the thing is very complete and very surrounding, somehow. And by that, I don’t necessarily even mean the world of the thing as in a fictional world, or a worldbuilding sense. It can also be the world of the thing as in the focus. Like being right in there and being in the doing of it. I think that the times when it feels best is very much where there is that feeling of immersion, either in a part of the process, or the whole process, or the creation. I think that is often very autistic. I’ve heard people call it ‘flow’. Do you know what I mean? Like when people write, where you’re absorbed and your attention is fully in something. I think it’s definitely a kind of time where there is not distraction, or where the distraction doesn’t matter.
Do you feel it relates to hyperfocus?
Yeah, but I think that I only ever make anything through hyperfocus, in a way. Hyperfocus isn’t always a comfortable place to be. It can be a feeling of not being able to let go, or not being able to get enough of something. Of wanting more. Whereas I think the times when I feel the most pleasure in work is when we have done perhaps an hour or two work session and something really beautiful has come out of it. So it doesn’t have to be this kind of locked-in hyperfocus. Being locked in is quite uncomfortable, actually. In a weird way, perhaps I’m just saying, oh, I like it when it works. But then you analyse when it works and it’s a lot to do with … OK, so the image I get in my mind is stroking a cat’s fur, and it’s all smooth and running in the same direction. So there is a feeling of flow or a feeling of immersion or just pleasure. Does that answer your question?
I guess it does. Is there anything that helps you get to that place? Does it happen often in the work? Is it easy to get to that place? Is the getting to that place often blocked?
I think there are two ways to answer that question, because I think, one the one hand, you can view it as kind of like this middle path, you know? Where the engagement is enough and there isn’t distraction, so it doesn’t feel light, or slight, or fragile, or half-assed. But then, on the other side of the path is where it feels just too heavy, you know? Like, has the performance anxiety kicked in, or is there this feeling of not being able to let go. Which I don’t suffer from too much, actually. It’s about being able to understand when something is finished. When is it enough. When to let it go. Because being in this kind of dog with a bone feeling, raggedy pulling against something, that’s the opposite of pleasure. Not being able to stop. You know? The, Oh, let’s go through it one more time, energy. I see that in other people more than in myself, though. I think that is one way of answering your question and I think every artist regardless of whether they are neurodiverse or not would probably say that it’s good to be in an easy middle ground between something feeling slight and fragile and something feeling heavy and obsessive. It’s a Goldilocks thing, isn’t it.
But?
On the other hand, you can’t be in that position all the time. You have to get there. I mean, you can’t just step into flow. Sometimes it takes weeks and weeks of thinking and months and months of working things out because it’s a complicated place to be. It’s like surfing. You can’t constantly be surfing the perfect moment on the crest of the wave.
No, and I guess a lot of the work is also about creating the conditions that enable you to do that part of the work that flows. So, of course, you can have those good moments anytime, but you also have to research funding opportunities and write grants in order to get into the rehearsal room in the first place.
Exactly, and you can get a satisfaction out of that work, but it’s not quite the same thing as flow. I would also say it’s important to say we’ve done entire projects where that flow moment hasn’t come. I don’t know if a flow moment ever came with Homecoming. That project is very fragmented and it was all push, it was all make. There was nothing at all wrong with that project, though. I enjoyed it very much. I loved it deeply. So, I want to be careful when I talk about being in the flow moment. I don’t want to make it such a big thing.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Because some of it was just really hard work, like laying out the book. But actually, when it started to have its own rules and shape, there were some real moments of pleasure.
There were! But I don’t think I would call that flow. It’s really important to note that the pleasure doesn’t have to be flow. Flow and pleasure are not the same. Flow and satisfaction are not the same. There’s a huge amount of pleasure and satisfaction in flow, but outside of flow, there are also huge amounts of pleasure and satisfaction. I feel like I’ve seen other artists who kind of devalue everything other than flow, who get very very frustrated when they’re not in flow. They hanker after it and I just don’t feel that way. I don’t think making art is easy. It’s like building a house. Yes, there might be a moment when you slot the final roof tile in place and sit there and watch the sunset with a cold ginger ale, but of course it’s not all like that. Maybe none of it is like that. But that doesn’t mean there’s no pleasure or satisfaction. Maybe being autistic means I can stay focussed and interested for longer when there isn’t flow. Maybe my stubbornness is an autistic thing, finding pleasure just in the doing and the no-flow?
So from your conversations that you've had during this research project, so far, do you now have any new imaginations of what an ideal performance space or performance environment or performance context looks like for you specifically?
Yes, I do. And I think it's potentially a coming into focus or cleaning of the lens on what we've been doing anyway. And I think one of the ways relates in some way to acceptance of disability, and I feel it relates to it like this: so imagine there is an ordinary working space, you know, like an ordinary rehearsal room or a performance making space. And then, on top of that, we overlay accommodations. See what I mean? So, usually we go into the rehearsal room for four hours, have a lunch break, then go in for another four hours, have a break, and then do an hour or two to finish up. And that’s the normal. Then ten or eleven hour day. But when we do it, we overlay an accommodation and say let’s do two hours and two hours. And that is fine, but it only goes so far. And perhaps it doesn’t directly answer your question, but I think what I need to do more is delete the assumption of what the normal is. Stop working from the normal and accommodating. Just be in the space we need, from the beginning. Now we might end up doing the same things, but I feel like this letting go would still be beneficial because the existence of the norm, or the existence of an expectation and then deviating from it by overlaying it with an accommodation creates anxiety for me. Maybe it shouldn’t but it just does. It’s like, okay we did four hours today (but we should have done eight). Or, OK, we achieved this today (but we should have achieved that). And then it’s, but it’s OK we didn’t achieve that because I’m disabled. And that last bit is what I gained from diagnosis and community, which is very very good, but it would be good to work to be beyond even needing that to a place where I don’t have the anxiety at all. One of the things that’s coming up from the conversations I’m having is how accessibility and designing the workspace is also designing the working method. So it’s not only the physical space that needs to be designed, it’s also the conceptual space and the temporal space and the procedural space. And they all have to be conceived of and built anew each time. And you have to get rid of these feelings that it’s an accommodation from a norm. It’s like, remember the time when we were filming with Kysy and I had to go home?
Yeah.
That should have been fine. It should have just been a simple acknowledgement that, oh, sadly, this environment isn’t working today and I can’t continue because I’m unable to. I don’t feel safe and I have to leave. Instead, there was this whole drama because I knew I needed to leave, but I felt I couldn’t and had to push through. And then that meant that in order to be able to leave, I had to push things, or let things be pushed, up to a pitch where I felt I needed to walk out. Do you see what I mean? Whereas, if I’d been much more gentle with myself and I could have just said, you know what, I’m sorry but this isn’t going to work for me today and I feel like I’m doing harm to myself and I need to call it a day, then we could have closed the space in a good way. Not pushed so hard into the drama and the wrong. I probably stayed in the space for three or four hours longer than I should have, so by the time I left I was in meltdown territory and ended up cycling off on my own feeling all fucked up when that isn’t safe or sensible.
Yes, I see.
And sometimes, I think when we’re in the mode of overlaying accommodations, when we achieve anything, it is such a weird relief. Like, oh, we actually got something done! And by doing that, it shows I’m using energy that should be used for creation worrying that we are not working to the norm.
So how would you change things to come closer to letting go of that norm?
I think on a very practical level, it’s just kindness. You know? It’s like, oh, how can this space feel warm and kind? How can we be kinder to each other within the space? How can we be as extremely radically kind as possible? And to everyone that comes into the space. How can we insist that that kindness extends to everyone? And ensure that everyone is kind to us? Very often, what happens is when we encounter an ‘outside person’, like the person working in the cafe, or the person at reception, or, I don’t know, one of the tech team from a theatre, it can be that that person isn’t kind at all. We don’t often have that experience but, you know, it can also be the unkindness of the space not being good enough — too hot or cold, too noisy or dirty, too small or with the wrong kind of floor. Or too far away. That can all be geographical unkindness, or sonic unkindness. But, to get back to the point, it’s about working in the kindest, sweetest way we can, and really really thinking about all aspects of that. And, it’s about getting rid of the feeling that making the accommodations is moving us away from achievement. I still have remnants of this core belief that you achieve by sticking to the norms, and the accommodations are unfortunate, but you work through them and if there aren’t too many you still might achieve something. Like on the other side of them. I’m realising that that is such a stupid logic trick. Because of course the accommodations make achievement easier, or possible. So it’s about trusting that the more I accommodate, and the sweeter and kinder we are, the more we’ll create, and the more value there will be to what we create. It’s hard to put into words, which is why I’m waffling so much, but it’s a feeling I definitely get from talking to this … you know … of creating ease. And ease isn’t laziness. It isn’t a lack of rigour. It’s the ease and ability to work.
Yes, that makes sense.
I suppose it’s like, imagine a heating system. If there is a leak, how can it work? You don’t think with a heating system that repairing the leak is taking away its ability to work.
No.
And it’s a good analogy because it’s also about energy dissipation. Or feeling that the energy taken to repair and change is somehow a waste or an extravagance. You know? Like, oh, all that time we took to make the space sweet and kind was time when we should have been working! But then, on a practical level, we’ve known for a very long time that having eight bad hours of ‘work’ is worse than pointless. It’s not only that no good work happens, but it can be that the good work from other days is undone, and then you can’t work at all for a week after. All you get is the feeling you did what was expected. But then perhaps some days you can do 30 minutes of great inspired work and that might be more than you achieve in three days of grinding pushing. And it gets really interesting when you think about what happens even when you don’t do the inspired 30 minutes. It means you manage to keep the boat from going in the wrong direction. We can have this anxious notion that, oh, the boat has to go somewhere so it might as well go backwards, or sideways, but that makes no sense! Because then in the following days, you just spend time getting back to the right place to be able to start again.
Is there anything more specific about the performance space as opposed to the making space?
OK, so during the course of this research, I really started from thinking about access for the audience, because I think that’s how it’s usually formulated. But I think I’ve found more juice and fruitfulness when I’ve moved to thinking about it from the side of the performance maker. But, and let’s try to explain, I get this feeling that if there is the sweetness and kindness of accessibility backstage, you want it to kind of ripple and emanate out towards the audience. I think that is often very difficult to achieve because very often, the jurisdiction of the performers ends where the stage ends. It’s usually the house that takes care of the audience. Early boarding, and all that kind of thing, crosses that fourth wall. The word that comes to mind is permeability. So permeability means the ability to leave. So in a bad stage space, for me, it feels like I’m locked in. I can’t go forward because the audience is there, and I can’t go backwards because I’m not allowed to walk off stage. Do you see what I mean? It becomes a kind of aquarium. So there are two kinds of permeability. The first is I’m allowed to leave, or even that the backstage area kind of leaks into the stage area. Or a temporal permeability where there’s no sharp cut off between the prep time and the performance time. It helps me to feel at home in the space, including the stage. Rather than it being this special rarified space under lights I only perform on. Taking possession of it somehow really really helps. Even walking around all the audience areas, up to the back seats and where the fire escape is. Kind of like a dog marking its territory ..? Scent marking. And then belonging, like this is my space and I can go anywhere within it. It’s part of the permeability. I can not only leave by going backstage, but I also don’t feel oppressed by the audience when they arrive. You know? Because the audience can form this giant, aggressive, judgmental, monolithic block in front of you. I can feel quite afraid of the audience. So there has to be gentleness coming from the other side too. There have been certain moments when I was performing that have been very very important to me. Like, I remember one moment when we were doing Karelia and I stepped onto the stage, my monologue part where I’m talking about going into the house, and I saw Dominique was there and she smiled at me, and I smiled back. And it was just like, OK, I can just talk to her. It’s just Dominique and I’m just standing there telling a story. It was a really important moment. There was another moment in Karelia at the end when some people went onto the stage because they wanted to look at the weaving. They stepped into our space, and I loved that. And then I think about the extremely magical moment in Anatomy in Four Quarters, by Clod Ensemble, when we walked across the stage at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff. You know, so these permeabilities are super super important.
How would you define the different spaces?
I think I would say there are four main domains when it comes to a traditional playing space like a theatre. There’s front of house, there’s the audience seating space, there’s the stage space, and then there’s backstage. I think less traditional venues will still have those domains even if they are just waiting on the pavement to be let in, for example, or an actor having to get changed in the toilet. And the more that those four realms can interpenetrate one another, then the more I can feel at home in all of them. And that would actually work for the audience too.
Okay, last question. Do you think the making process and then the actual performing can be reconciled into the same place? Do you think these parts of the process feel like they need different environments? Do you want to change that at all? And how?
I think that's a very perceptive question. I basically think when there's as little difference as possible between the making me and the performing me, that's when it's best. Yeah. So it's kind of like, I think when it's worse, is when I am kind of like having to transform myself into a performer at the end of the making process. So there's this kind of like, oh, you know, shake myself down and breathe in and walk onto the stage and be a stage pig kind of thing and be someone else and be something else and be inpermeable. Hard. Like made of steel somehow? Permeability is interesting. Isn't it interesting that it's coming up here too? So I think that the soft me, the one who makes is the one who is shyly proud of the things I make or insistent on the things that I'm finding interesting even when they’re quite geeky or nerdy. Or the one who is discovering or getting things wrong, you know, just just being interested. And getting into it. And being myself actually, I think the more that person gets to be on stage, the better. Hard stainless steel performers could actually be abolished. You know, and I think that's an interesting reflection on the question we just asked, again, because you're talking about two different domains: there's the domain of performance, and then there's the domain of preparation or making. And if those two domains can interpenetrate one another more, it’s better. There's a slight difference here, though, because it's very much about the making domain penetrating into the performing domain and not vice versa, not mutual penetration. Yeah.
I think it’s interesting, because we talked before about this performance of Peter [Pleyer] made that we went to see on my birthday. And I mean, I think there was a slight artificiality, you know, it was still a performance space. But I think for me, it felt a little bit like we were stepping into Peter’s studio more than how it usually feels at a performance. And I wonder if the reason we love that performance is maybe something to do with that. The gap between the making environment and the performance environment was quite blurry.
And I think there's something really, really nice about that. Yeah. And I also think that there's this softness, you know, and there's a humanness. And there's an equality between audience and performer. And I think there's this thing of just being like, I'm just a person, I'm just doing this thing on stage. It's like, I'm not trying to be virtuoso, I'm not trying to impress you, I'm not trying to take on a persona. I'm not trying to be a superstar. It's not about my ego, it's not any of these things, you know, it's just like, I've made this thing, and I want to show you, or I want us to look together, even. You know? It's like, how can we look together? How can we be together? And I think it’s also Make Better Please, which has been one of those very, very key performances that we come back to again and again. It really blurs those domains. I think it blurred them quite cynically, in some ways … cynically is the wrong word … knowingly, you know? I think it blurred those domains, quite knowingly because I think the audience was, in the best sense of immersive theatre, manipulated, and carried and brought along. Which isn't the way we work. You know, it's not the way we work. We don't take someone into a position and then say, you thought it was this, but actually, it's something else. But I think geographically, there’s a similarity. You know, if you've mapped that performance you have to ask, was it all stage space or was none of it stage space? Was it all performance? Was none of it performance? You know? Was it all participative? Was none of it participative? We could say it was all participative because at no point did we just sit and play an audience. You know, assuming that's the definition of non participative, that your only role is to play an audience. But then, at the same time, was none of it participative because actually, all we did do was play an audience? We didn't have that much agency within the structure we were carried along within. But even so, I think that permeation was there.
There's this one mini note, I would just say that I notice about that performance as you're talking, which is that that performance was in Cooper’sLloft, which we predominantly knew as a rehearsal room. And isn't really a stage. It's a room backstage, which as performances goes is about as interpenetrated as it can be? And it makes me also think about liking that piece Scavi as well, which was not in a theater, it was in rooms, but it was still very performed, and we were just being an audience. Maybe it’s just a hack or a trick that may be useful to hold onto. Maybe spaces that aren't formally like stages where you still do a show could sometimes feel like you get that into penetration quicker because you break the contracts more quickly because there's no contract visible.
Yes! You know, I think we’ve touched on something very interesting here. Is non-participative performance simply where the audience has no role other than being an audience? Then is non-participative theatre where the performer never has the role of being an audience? You know, because the interpenetration goes two ways. You see what I mean? When you have the audience performing, then you have to have the performer witnessing that as an audience. I think the worst kind of performances are where the performers ask the audience to do something and then they’re clearly not really listening while they’re doing it. Like, they just go off and sort of stretch and have a cuppa, or think about what they have to do next, or whatever. They kind of see it as a break and you realise they’ve left an audience member performing to the rest of the audience, but they’re clearly not interested.
It’s a really good question. I think ‘fun’ is a really interesting word to use, because I think fun can mean a few different things. There can be a kind of bouncing around fun, hahaha fun, you know? Which I don’t know if I ever feel during an artmaking process. Do you know what I mean? Because it’s almost not appropriate to feel like that, in a way. But then there is a different kind of fun, which is a lot to do with a sort of satisfaction about being very deeply in something. And feeling like the world of the thing is very complete and very surrounding, somehow. And by that, I don’t necessarily even mean the world of the thing as in a fictional world, or a worldbuilding sense. It can also be the world of the thing as in the focus. Like being right in there and being in the doing of it. I think that the times when it feels best is very much where there is that feeling of immersion, either in a part of the process, or the whole process, or the creation. I think that is often very autistic. I’ve heard people call it ‘flow’. Do you know what I mean? Like when people write, where you’re absorbed and your attention is fully in something. I think it’s definitely a kind of time where there is not distraction, or where the distraction doesn’t matter.
Do you feel it relates to hyperfocus?
Yeah, but I think that I only ever make anything through hyperfocus, in a way. Hyperfocus isn’t always a comfortable place to be. It can be a feeling of not being able to let go, or not being able to get enough of something. Of wanting more. Whereas I think the times when I feel the most pleasure in work is when we have done perhaps an hour or two work session and something really beautiful has come out of it. So it doesn’t have to be this kind of locked-in hyperfocus. Being locked in is quite uncomfortable, actually. In a weird way, perhaps I’m just saying, oh, I like it when it works. But then you analyse when it works and it’s a lot to do with … OK, so the image I get in my mind is stroking a cat’s fur, and it’s all smooth and running in the same direction. So there is a feeling of flow or a feeling of immersion or just pleasure. Does that answer your question?
I guess it does. Is there anything that helps you get to that place? Does it happen often in the work? Is it easy to get to that place? Is the getting to that place often blocked?
I think there are two ways to answer that question, because I think, one the one hand, you can view it as kind of like this middle path, you know? Where the engagement is enough and there isn’t distraction, so it doesn’t feel light, or slight, or fragile, or half-assed. But then, on the other side of the path is where it feels just too heavy, you know? Like, has the performance anxiety kicked in, or is there this feeling of not being able to let go. Which I don’t suffer from too much, actually. It’s about being able to understand when something is finished. When is it enough. When to let it go. Because being in this kind of dog with a bone feeling, raggedy pulling against something, that’s the opposite of pleasure. Not being able to stop. You know? The, Oh, let’s go through it one more time, energy. I see that in other people more than in myself, though. I think that is one way of answering your question and I think every artist regardless of whether they are neurodiverse or not would probably say that it’s good to be in an easy middle ground between something feeling slight and fragile and something feeling heavy and obsessive. It’s a Goldilocks thing, isn’t it.
But?
On the other hand, you can’t be in that position all the time. You have to get there. I mean, you can’t just step into flow. Sometimes it takes weeks and weeks of thinking and months and months of working things out because it’s a complicated place to be. It’s like surfing. You can’t constantly be surfing the perfect moment on the crest of the wave.
No, and I guess a lot of the work is also about creating the conditions that enable you to do that part of the work that flows. So, of course, you can have those good moments anytime, but you also have to research funding opportunities and write grants in order to get into the rehearsal room in the first place.
Exactly, and you can get a satisfaction out of that work, but it’s not quite the same thing as flow. I would also say it’s important to say we’ve done entire projects where that flow moment hasn’t come. I don’t know if a flow moment ever came with Homecoming. That project is very fragmented and it was all push, it was all make. There was nothing at all wrong with that project, though. I enjoyed it very much. I loved it deeply. So, I want to be careful when I talk about being in the flow moment. I don’t want to make it such a big thing.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Because some of it was just really hard work, like laying out the book. But actually, when it started to have its own rules and shape, there were some real moments of pleasure.
There were! But I don’t think I would call that flow. It’s really important to note that the pleasure doesn’t have to be flow. Flow and pleasure are not the same. Flow and satisfaction are not the same. There’s a huge amount of pleasure and satisfaction in flow, but outside of flow, there are also huge amounts of pleasure and satisfaction. I feel like I’ve seen other artists who kind of devalue everything other than flow, who get very very frustrated when they’re not in flow. They hanker after it and I just don’t feel that way. I don’t think making art is easy. It’s like building a house. Yes, there might be a moment when you slot the final roof tile in place and sit there and watch the sunset with a cold ginger ale, but of course it’s not all like that. Maybe none of it is like that. But that doesn’t mean there’s no pleasure or satisfaction. Maybe being autistic means I can stay focussed and interested for longer when there isn’t flow. Maybe my stubbornness is an autistic thing, finding pleasure just in the doing and the no-flow?
So from your conversations that you've had during this research project, so far, do you now have any new imaginations of what an ideal performance space or performance environment or performance context looks like for you specifically?
Yes, I do. And I think it's potentially a coming into focus or cleaning of the lens on what we've been doing anyway. And I think one of the ways relates in some way to acceptance of disability, and I feel it relates to it like this: so imagine there is an ordinary working space, you know, like an ordinary rehearsal room or a performance making space. And then, on top of that, we overlay accommodations. See what I mean? So, usually we go into the rehearsal room for four hours, have a lunch break, then go in for another four hours, have a break, and then do an hour or two to finish up. And that’s the normal. Then ten or eleven hour day. But when we do it, we overlay an accommodation and say let’s do two hours and two hours. And that is fine, but it only goes so far. And perhaps it doesn’t directly answer your question, but I think what I need to do more is delete the assumption of what the normal is. Stop working from the normal and accommodating. Just be in the space we need, from the beginning. Now we might end up doing the same things, but I feel like this letting go would still be beneficial because the existence of the norm, or the existence of an expectation and then deviating from it by overlaying it with an accommodation creates anxiety for me. Maybe it shouldn’t but it just does. It’s like, okay we did four hours today (but we should have done eight). Or, OK, we achieved this today (but we should have achieved that). And then it’s, but it’s OK we didn’t achieve that because I’m disabled. And that last bit is what I gained from diagnosis and community, which is very very good, but it would be good to work to be beyond even needing that to a place where I don’t have the anxiety at all. One of the things that’s coming up from the conversations I’m having is how accessibility and designing the workspace is also designing the working method. So it’s not only the physical space that needs to be designed, it’s also the conceptual space and the temporal space and the procedural space. And they all have to be conceived of and built anew each time. And you have to get rid of these feelings that it’s an accommodation from a norm. It’s like, remember the time when we were filming with Kysy and I had to go home?
Yeah.
That should have been fine. It should have just been a simple acknowledgement that, oh, sadly, this environment isn’t working today and I can’t continue because I’m unable to. I don’t feel safe and I have to leave. Instead, there was this whole drama because I knew I needed to leave, but I felt I couldn’t and had to push through. And then that meant that in order to be able to leave, I had to push things, or let things be pushed, up to a pitch where I felt I needed to walk out. Do you see what I mean? Whereas, if I’d been much more gentle with myself and I could have just said, you know what, I’m sorry but this isn’t going to work for me today and I feel like I’m doing harm to myself and I need to call it a day, then we could have closed the space in a good way. Not pushed so hard into the drama and the wrong. I probably stayed in the space for three or four hours longer than I should have, so by the time I left I was in meltdown territory and ended up cycling off on my own feeling all fucked up when that isn’t safe or sensible.
Yes, I see.
And sometimes, I think when we’re in the mode of overlaying accommodations, when we achieve anything, it is such a weird relief. Like, oh, we actually got something done! And by doing that, it shows I’m using energy that should be used for creation worrying that we are not working to the norm.
So how would you change things to come closer to letting go of that norm?
I think on a very practical level, it’s just kindness. You know? It’s like, oh, how can this space feel warm and kind? How can we be kinder to each other within the space? How can we be as extremely radically kind as possible? And to everyone that comes into the space. How can we insist that that kindness extends to everyone? And ensure that everyone is kind to us? Very often, what happens is when we encounter an ‘outside person’, like the person working in the cafe, or the person at reception, or, I don’t know, one of the tech team from a theatre, it can be that that person isn’t kind at all. We don’t often have that experience but, you know, it can also be the unkindness of the space not being good enough — too hot or cold, too noisy or dirty, too small or with the wrong kind of floor. Or too far away. That can all be geographical unkindness, or sonic unkindness. But, to get back to the point, it’s about working in the kindest, sweetest way we can, and really really thinking about all aspects of that. And, it’s about getting rid of the feeling that making the accommodations is moving us away from achievement. I still have remnants of this core belief that you achieve by sticking to the norms, and the accommodations are unfortunate, but you work through them and if there aren’t too many you still might achieve something. Like on the other side of them. I’m realising that that is such a stupid logic trick. Because of course the accommodations make achievement easier, or possible. So it’s about trusting that the more I accommodate, and the sweeter and kinder we are, the more we’ll create, and the more value there will be to what we create. It’s hard to put into words, which is why I’m waffling so much, but it’s a feeling I definitely get from talking to this … you know … of creating ease. And ease isn’t laziness. It isn’t a lack of rigour. It’s the ease and ability to work.
Yes, that makes sense.
I suppose it’s like, imagine a heating system. If there is a leak, how can it work? You don’t think with a heating system that repairing the leak is taking away its ability to work.
No.
And it’s a good analogy because it’s also about energy dissipation. Or feeling that the energy taken to repair and change is somehow a waste or an extravagance. You know? Like, oh, all that time we took to make the space sweet and kind was time when we should have been working! But then, on a practical level, we’ve known for a very long time that having eight bad hours of ‘work’ is worse than pointless. It’s not only that no good work happens, but it can be that the good work from other days is undone, and then you can’t work at all for a week after. All you get is the feeling you did what was expected. But then perhaps some days you can do 30 minutes of great inspired work and that might be more than you achieve in three days of grinding pushing. And it gets really interesting when you think about what happens even when you don’t do the inspired 30 minutes. It means you manage to keep the boat from going in the wrong direction. We can have this anxious notion that, oh, the boat has to go somewhere so it might as well go backwards, or sideways, but that makes no sense! Because then in the following days, you just spend time getting back to the right place to be able to start again.
Is there anything more specific about the performance space as opposed to the making space?
OK, so during the course of this research, I really started from thinking about access for the audience, because I think that’s how it’s usually formulated. But I think I’ve found more juice and fruitfulness when I’ve moved to thinking about it from the side of the performance maker. But, and let’s try to explain, I get this feeling that if there is the sweetness and kindness of accessibility backstage, you want it to kind of ripple and emanate out towards the audience. I think that is often very difficult to achieve because very often, the jurisdiction of the performers ends where the stage ends. It’s usually the house that takes care of the audience. Early boarding, and all that kind of thing, crosses that fourth wall. The word that comes to mind is permeability. So permeability means the ability to leave. So in a bad stage space, for me, it feels like I’m locked in. I can’t go forward because the audience is there, and I can’t go backwards because I’m not allowed to walk off stage. Do you see what I mean? It becomes a kind of aquarium. So there are two kinds of permeability. The first is I’m allowed to leave, or even that the backstage area kind of leaks into the stage area. Or a temporal permeability where there’s no sharp cut off between the prep time and the performance time. It helps me to feel at home in the space, including the stage. Rather than it being this special rarified space under lights I only perform on. Taking possession of it somehow really really helps. Even walking around all the audience areas, up to the back seats and where the fire escape is. Kind of like a dog marking its territory ..? Scent marking. And then belonging, like this is my space and I can go anywhere within it. It’s part of the permeability. I can not only leave by going backstage, but I also don’t feel oppressed by the audience when they arrive. You know? Because the audience can form this giant, aggressive, judgmental, monolithic block in front of you. I can feel quite afraid of the audience. So there has to be gentleness coming from the other side too. There have been certain moments when I was performing that have been very very important to me. Like, I remember one moment when we were doing Karelia and I stepped onto the stage, my monologue part where I’m talking about going into the house, and I saw Dominique was there and she smiled at me, and I smiled back. And it was just like, OK, I can just talk to her. It’s just Dominique and I’m just standing there telling a story. It was a really important moment. There was another moment in Karelia at the end when some people went onto the stage because they wanted to look at the weaving. They stepped into our space, and I loved that. And then I think about the extremely magical moment in Anatomy in Four Quarters, by Clod Ensemble, when we walked across the stage at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff. You know, so these permeabilities are super super important.
How would you define the different spaces?
I think I would say there are four main domains when it comes to a traditional playing space like a theatre. There’s front of house, there’s the audience seating space, there’s the stage space, and then there’s backstage. I think less traditional venues will still have those domains even if they are just waiting on the pavement to be let in, for example, or an actor having to get changed in the toilet. And the more that those four realms can interpenetrate one another, then the more I can feel at home in all of them. And that would actually work for the audience too.
Okay, last question. Do you think the making process and then the actual performing can be reconciled into the same place? Do you think these parts of the process feel like they need different environments? Do you want to change that at all? And how?
I think that's a very perceptive question. I basically think when there's as little difference as possible between the making me and the performing me, that's when it's best. Yeah. So it's kind of like, I think when it's worse, is when I am kind of like having to transform myself into a performer at the end of the making process. So there's this kind of like, oh, you know, shake myself down and breathe in and walk onto the stage and be a stage pig kind of thing and be someone else and be something else and be inpermeable. Hard. Like made of steel somehow? Permeability is interesting. Isn't it interesting that it's coming up here too? So I think that the soft me, the one who makes is the one who is shyly proud of the things I make or insistent on the things that I'm finding interesting even when they’re quite geeky or nerdy. Or the one who is discovering or getting things wrong, you know, just just being interested. And getting into it. And being myself actually, I think the more that person gets to be on stage, the better. Hard stainless steel performers could actually be abolished. You know, and I think that's an interesting reflection on the question we just asked, again, because you're talking about two different domains: there's the domain of performance, and then there's the domain of preparation or making. And if those two domains can interpenetrate one another more, it’s better. There's a slight difference here, though, because it's very much about the making domain penetrating into the performing domain and not vice versa, not mutual penetration. Yeah.
I think it’s interesting, because we talked before about this performance of Peter [Pleyer] made that we went to see on my birthday. And I mean, I think there was a slight artificiality, you know, it was still a performance space. But I think for me, it felt a little bit like we were stepping into Peter’s studio more than how it usually feels at a performance. And I wonder if the reason we love that performance is maybe something to do with that. The gap between the making environment and the performance environment was quite blurry.
And I think there's something really, really nice about that. Yeah. And I also think that there's this softness, you know, and there's a humanness. And there's an equality between audience and performer. And I think there's this thing of just being like, I'm just a person, I'm just doing this thing on stage. It's like, I'm not trying to be virtuoso, I'm not trying to impress you, I'm not trying to take on a persona. I'm not trying to be a superstar. It's not about my ego, it's not any of these things, you know, it's just like, I've made this thing, and I want to show you, or I want us to look together, even. You know? It's like, how can we look together? How can we be together? And I think it’s also Make Better Please, which has been one of those very, very key performances that we come back to again and again. It really blurs those domains. I think it blurred them quite cynically, in some ways … cynically is the wrong word … knowingly, you know? I think it blurred those domains, quite knowingly because I think the audience was, in the best sense of immersive theatre, manipulated, and carried and brought along. Which isn't the way we work. You know, it's not the way we work. We don't take someone into a position and then say, you thought it was this, but actually, it's something else. But I think geographically, there’s a similarity. You know, if you've mapped that performance you have to ask, was it all stage space or was none of it stage space? Was it all performance? Was none of it performance? You know? Was it all participative? Was none of it participative? We could say it was all participative because at no point did we just sit and play an audience. You know, assuming that's the definition of non participative, that your only role is to play an audience. But then, at the same time, was none of it participative because actually, all we did do was play an audience? We didn't have that much agency within the structure we were carried along within. But even so, I think that permeation was there.
There's this one mini note, I would just say that I notice about that performance as you're talking, which is that that performance was in Cooper’sLloft, which we predominantly knew as a rehearsal room. And isn't really a stage. It's a room backstage, which as performances goes is about as interpenetrated as it can be? And it makes me also think about liking that piece Scavi as well, which was not in a theater, it was in rooms, but it was still very performed, and we were just being an audience. Maybe it’s just a hack or a trick that may be useful to hold onto. Maybe spaces that aren't formally like stages where you still do a show could sometimes feel like you get that into penetration quicker because you break the contracts more quickly because there's no contract visible.
Yes! You know, I think we’ve touched on something very interesting here. Is non-participative performance simply where the audience has no role other than being an audience? Then is non-participative theatre where the performer never has the role of being an audience? You know, because the interpenetration goes two ways. You see what I mean? When you have the audience performing, then you have to have the performer witnessing that as an audience. I think the worst kind of performances are where the performers ask the audience to do something and then they’re clearly not really listening while they’re doing it. Like, they just go off and sort of stretch and have a cuppa, or think about what they have to do next, or whatever. They kind of see it as a break and you realise they’ve left an audience member performing to the rest of the audience, but they’re clearly not interested.