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.

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

words matter. things matter people matter. is all matter. matter energy energy matters family matters practicle matter. energywooshing on out.leaveing you and charging towards that one person you want to hear most from in the world and they are holding a letter. A letter that explains everything that has gone wrong with your life. instead of handing it to you they speak.

‘ no you must walk on by’

Walk on by.

I opend the letter it said ‘live’

None of this is my own words.

love

Erica

My goodness! Dig It: Word is going live! Isn’t it crazy when you come across people who say yes as much as we do? Big big birds circling in the skies shadowing and then circling out again. So much excitement and energy going into this piece it’s hard to sit down and write the actual words words words! I’m just writing into the weight wait worlds words weight bit, and I no believe it now, all words lighttrippy SETTLE DOWN YOUS.

Love, Lucy

WORDS!!!

Here are some. Because I have faith in you. And words require so much FAITH!

And yet get so stuffed up by the accompaniment of BIG BAND BELIEFS BLASTING!

And that’s so NICE sometimes. SUCH AS: when my beliefs make me take words that are not so amazing at all and make them totally wonderful and definitely indicative of RAINBOWS! RAINBOWS! HERE AND TO COME! Because current life is being INADEQUATE and AWKWARD or FAST. Or when faith slips entirely and I hope that people’s beliefs will sing over my words and somehow make them ok and maybe even gracious, when they’re really not. And when I let my own beliefs sing LOUDLY right over words even as I say them so I can mostly ignore what I am saying while focusing on the fact that I am totally totally justified totally in saying those words and I hope anyone hearing will also hear my beliefs not my words.

But generally, got to have so much faith that peoples beliefs won’t totally sing away words.

FAITH in people, and life, seems to give me some silence around words so I can actual hear them, small and tinny as they may be. Maybe faith is just the willingness (or stubbornness) to shut up shut up for just a moment?

But it’s a problem a real problem because there’s always some aspect of belief to faith, isn’t there?

In response to the image accompanying your letter, since when is soul the mind, and spirit the heart? In terms of Michael Mead’s spirit and soul, where soul is the feminine dark spiralling to glory part of us, and spirit the masculine bright straight arrow to ultimate success part of us, that seems reversed. But then my heart makes considerably less excuses than my mind does. And my mind is seeming very curvaceous at the moment, enjoying taking the long way around, and getting me into interesting messes.

In response to your letter and our conversations lately: Mean Time. We’ve looked into many different possibilities for the word Mean in relation to my obsession about Ubu Roi in Artslab, and your idea of Meanaphorical. Many mean-ings (sorry). Mean, overtly nasty. Mean, ungenerous. Mean, ungenerous to the point of not even giving people your own meanness, and thereby a connection to what and where you are. You’re adding lately the definition of mean as in the median point. Which I guess also comes back to mean-ings, the median point of a words associations might be what it means. I don’t know how this relates to ‘in the mean time’.

Maybe Mean Time is mean because it’s right bang on and time ought to be more like a jumping castle where you lean one way and bounce back through the airy middle and onto the other side and up up. Time should wobble like a watermelon jelly I think. Why should I be alone in my wobbliness? I like time.

Yes yes you may definitely borrow my new Rumi book. In the meantime:

NO EXPECTATIONS

A spirit that lives in this world
and does not wear the shirt of love,
such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.
The two worlds play across him.
He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes
for that way of being.

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in spring dies in the fall,
but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,
expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.
You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount. Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgment of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask.
Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets
that they keep.

Rumi

 LETS DO SOME WORK SOME WORK ON TIME AND MEAN AND WORDS AND FAITH.

Love, Lucy

Dear Lucy,

How about dem developments eh? I really felt by the end of the week just true your statement of just how elastic time is when it’s spent honestly in deep obsessive states.   That is a misquote but you know what I mean? I think you wrote it on this blog somewhere. I mean we got through so much by just being insanely obsessive over things I mean we had a lighting designer for a weeks development of a new work.. how did that happen. Anyhoo elastic time is a reality which now means I have to renegotiate my previously not so good relationship with it but it is nice to know it has powers for good too.  It puts me in mind of we were walking back from Coffee at PACT last week, you said  ‘Time is the only consistent thing and you gotta make it your friend. You then said ‘you know I haven’t it’s a bitch cose it is all like hay I’m gonna change things.. .but you can always count on it to pass.’

Make that two more misquotes. But I swear the spirit of what you said is in there.

 And seriously Lucy W how much does that suck I don’t know what I dislike more beginnings or ending.

 Hey how about we make our logo a moon clock.

Oh god that works far too well.

You know when the metaphors get start growing on their own you are in trouble. You recently bought a new Rumi book can I borrow it? I think I have learnt all of the ones I have off by heart wooooo-me!

Lots of love

Erica

Billenium: Morning rays across Billenium find your troubles like marbles in the lost drawers of youth and hoards them like treasures

Billenium: We make you mistakable for a magical mystery

Billenium: Home of the malleable noon

Billenium: Does not fear mistakes, mistakes make holes in the earth of Billenium and oil spills through.

Billenium: Where nothing tells your stories but your fingertips

Billenium: Makes us believe whatever we love most

Billenium: Danger makes us richer

Billenium: Needs your help in the evening when the floor vibrates with bats in the disused train-lines under the city and cockroaches of information running across the ceilings

Billenium: Trips wires dead on the sand long dead

Billenium: Hipster cranks building medicine machines where fairytales milk riches out of the landslide for the rich hours of the night with slight light but not much under a door when a parent is dissolving into another room where nobody exists at all and monsters drag us around

Billenium: Night falls into the river