Apocryphal Lab 8th July 2008
In attendance: Julia, Zoe, Lukas, Rachel, Bill.
At the beginning of the year we were carrying on our work with Reaction/Response and it was fascinating to see how far the work had come. Looking at ideas of reaction and response in relation to representation and presentation, the evening was spent initially asking the performers to create a presentation and a representation of either something sacred or secular, sacred/secular or secular/sacred. Once this was done, and each shown to the group, one performer then did their pieces again and the other performers, Julia and I, were to react and respond to what was happening, while the sole goal of the performer showing their work was to get to the end of their showing. This process was used with Bill’s pieces and then Rachel’s pieces.
By having to announce whether you are reacting or responding to the moment, every action and comment that you make suddenly comes into question and the presence of the room shifts in awareness level, even if you are the performer showing your piece and react to something someone else has done, you have to announce it. In this way the moment is constantly shifting and everything is being reviewed almost as it happens.
An interesting element that was brought in was repetition. You could react, respond or repeat either your actions or words spoken, and this somehow freed the performers up to take more chances. The repetition somehow deepens the gesture or word that is repeated, gives it more weight and means you pay attention to the echo, and to it. It also allows the process to flow a little more and it added a sense of play with yourself and the other performers.
As we had all been shown the pieces first before the reacting and responding occurred, we were able to play more, and the verbs such as supporting, disrupting, and witnessing were brought out, although disrupting was maybe the knee jerk reaction. In order for the work to evolve, Julia felt that we needed to get to a rhythm where responding becomes the more popular choice as this gives a more of an open channel for the work to grow. There is definitely so much more discovery to be made to the work, and it would be interesting when presenting this work in a lab showing to see if the audience would join in with announcing their reactions and responses as Julia and I do. Through doing this I felt that we are once again working with that grid level of awareness, and investigating our own responses to situations which means that the work becomes much broader as it has the possibility to investigate on the audience’s own reactions and responses to what they are shown, and for us to then filter this into the work in a very real way.
