Ile and Moondirt concept Video #1.

Shot while in residence with The Space Program @ Pact Center for Emerging Artists

More info Check out our Ile and Moodirt page

All footage Pollyanna Nowick.

Climbing!

Ile and Moondirt was written in 2005 by David Finnigan in order ask a lot of questions about what was possible from a script. Seven years later myself Lucy Watson, Patrick McCoy, Nick Atkins , Rachel Roberts, Finnigan by correspondence and a fabulous  supporting production team ( The Guys at Shopfront theatre and PACT Pollyanna Nowicki Grant Moxam, Chris Dunstan David Munroe) performed  half an hour what was scarily cohesive work.  We answered a  lot of questions and made the impossible possible. I absolutely adore this script as it is written on the page. There is a rhythm to a lot of Davids work that really strikes a synchronicity my own creative process but this one in particular at least right now. It really was/is strange to be working so much from your own intuition and not from a learned process for developing work. Terrifying and just quite incredible in so far as it encourages boldness, silliness and flow. I don’t have resistance from this piece at all like I have in the past working with classical text. You pose it questions and it answers and it answers in the now because that is all it has. I am feeling lively on this cliff edge so I write to explain what is happening here.

An earlier scrawled email to David has the words  ‘this piece reaches out for conversation’ meaning it asks  people to engage with it in a very tangible way. It also reaches out for recognition between the various sections of the text that are in opposition to each other – the same scene rehashed, alternate endings, lists of instructions or histories, poetry/songs.  But it is as if each section is able to maintain its own integrity while speaking to the others.  The week at PACT has now meant Ile and Moondirt has also started speaking between various performance elements as well – design, projection, space, live bodies and  ll of these are not completely synergised neatly until, I would argue you add audience members to the mix. Then I think all the spaces are filled by their and our liveness, our presence within it.

As we move the project towards its fullest realisation the coming year is all about thinking in baby steps.  Committing to a long development life, testing out innovative and ridiculous strategies to build each section of the piece in its own way before we look to produce it in its entirety. It’s about making sure the creative beast is taken care of by attending to the practical things in life and keeping some time to regularly not be working at all. (Today I got up early and watched the sun rise because I thought it would be beautiful and for no other reason.)

Next tiny step for this piece is looking and breaking apart the three characters in the script that do not have bodies and building them through sound to make them as felt and intimately perceived on stage as they are on the page. There are three sound ideas we are interested in at the moment –  The Mountains,  The City of Billenium and The Noise army .

Our line of enquiry; What would it be treat different sound elements as individual characters. Acknowledge that individuality by giving these characters to three different sound designers (much as you would assign individual actors to individual characters) then let each designer build them as unique sounds through their own practice. Finally  facilitate an interaction where the sounds (and their designers)  can converse with each other much like actors rehearsing a scene.  The imagined outcome is instead of a single coherent score for the piece you would now have three characters that operate on their own plain and it is their interaction that give the  piece its atmosphere, its score, its song.

Baby Step? Suppriseingly.. Yes.

I am naturally inclined to sink my energies into a work and bring it density. Its time consuming but not a density that is a struggle to meet but rather a density that rich like fertile soil- a living micro world, delicate, intricate, considered,  web or net like. Ile and Moondirt is dense. It needs its density, its delicate intricacy to be broken open and viewed in its separate colours like a rainbow in a crystal, (in this metaphore the eye- the observer is also important) and  I hope to see my work mature to a point where this is possible. Where performances unfold on multiple planes simultaneously then maps a traversable path through these creating an undeniable live experience for both the creators and the audience.

I cannot look at things and see a singularity and I am fanatic about to igniting the collective imagination to allow for the fantastical. Continually drawn to examining the restraints and possibilities of performance making in an effort to really understand what it is and how to effect people in the moment of liveness, of now. And in that respect this script as its written on the page is a gift, an absolute gift for my process. Ile and Moondirt invites humour, playfulness, poetry, crudeness, embarrassment, closeness and warmth despite being set on a frozen unlovely ledge. It smashes together whimsical beauty, frightening horror, naff comedy and  heartbreaking tragedy  it’s a daunting piece to take care of but its childlike intention to live within an immersive imaginative world makes it a delight to wrestle with.  It will grow and play as we continue to grow and play. Feeling lively. Gently Lively.

Tea, Black Berry, Medicine Ball... yeah process

Photos by Pollyany Nowicki