[It seems I'm not able to write about
Chris Goode and Company's Open House except at several months'
distance. I've spent snow-chilled January dreaming myself back into
the heat flare of May 2012, and a room in Bristol where magic quietly
took place. This picks up a story thread from an earlier post, How
You Do This Is Up To You, which talked about
the first Open House at the West Yorkshire Playhouse's Transform
festival, 2011. As ever, all gratefulness to the participants in Open
House Mayfest for their trust and patience: Chris, Angela, Tom,
Pauline, James, Heather, and Robert, whose surname I never found out,
whose illustrations were enviably good, whose leap into the unknown
filled me with admiration.]
Let's start again with the room. A
long, thin rectangle on the second floor of Hamilton House, a
community centre in the middle of Stokes Croft, an enticingly
anarchic street in Bristol lined with derelict squats, hipster coffee
shops, anti-capitalist ventures and elaborate graffiti. Windows
stretch two-thirds of the way along one wall, making the room bright
and warm in the heavy May heatwave, noisy with traffic and indistinct
chatter from the cafe tables below. A silken red evening dress hangs
at one of the windows. Much of the opposite wall is glass, too, but
that's opaque, blacked out by curtains in the corridor outside. The
room extends in neatly demarcated zones: an admin space with
imposing, cluttered wooden desk and a tea table offering biscuits; a
carpeted section, over which creep jagged lines of masking tape; a
large square laid with black plastic dance mats; at the furthest end
a stage, not raised, defined instead by a lighting rig that looms
pointedly over motley pieces of dumped furniture.
It had taken the organisers of Mayfest
2012 a while to find a suitable room for the second incarnation of
Chris Goode and Company's participatory work
Open
House. Hamilton House was a thoughtful choice
politically (their
website
explains why), but the insinuating presence of that stage betrayed a
certain misapprehension. Open House is an experiment in foregrounding
much that is implied, assumed or ignored in theatre-making: that
theatre isn't a product but an ongoing process, a collaboration
between people in a particular space and time, a reflection of life
and the living of it. There are intermediary showings and a final
performance, but these aren't staged events so much as staging posts
in a journey: a journey without end.
The time will come when I spend the
full five days watching Open House unfold – which isn't so much
watching as participating in a quiet way – but I'm not there yet. I
joined Chris and co a little after midday on day three – Wednesday
23 May, 2012 – and instantly felt the difference between this Open
House and the first, programmed within the 2011 Transform festival at
the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. The mood of the room was
lighter, less charged, buoyant with laughter. I spent a long time
wondering what caused that change. The summery atmosphere? The
windows that encouraged voyeurism? The levity of being peripheral to
the rest of Mayfest, outsiders unbound? The giddy pleasure of work
that feels like play, in an atmosphere of mutual respect?
All of those, plus this: in the Bristol
cast, women and men were equally balanced, with Chris and two
returnees from the all-male Leeds team,
Tom
Frankland and
James
Lewis, sharing the space with
Angela
Clerkin (who works regularly with Improbable),
Heather
Uprichard (a founder member of Shunt), and
Pauline
Mayers, a dancer and choreographer who went to
the Leeds Open House as a curious outsider and has been a key
collaborator with Chris Goode and Company ever since. And this: the
Bristol cast were a more irreverent lot than the Leeds team, not more
playful necessarily, just less inclined to meticulous theoretical
debate. In Leeds, there was a lot of electric talk about the
performance being alive to the moment, in a “constant state of
jam”. In Bristol, in a prominent position on the desk, was a jar of
strawberry jam. That's how different the two rooms were.
The other key difference was the
relative absence of other people. There were visitors, one of whom, a
grey-haired, smiling man called Robert, became a key contributor, but
nothing like the flow of festival volunteers, theatre members and
not-involved-but-intrigued figures that filled the space in Leeds.
Without this traffic, the pressure towards activity, into which
visitors could be drawn, was removed.
This concentration of numbers, plus the
fact that the three actor-maker-performers (Tom, Angela and Heather)
are all people who feel comfortable creating and playing characters,
plus the nudge to voyeurism (the windows) and narrative storytelling
(the stage) suggested by the room, combined to shape the work I saw
made on my first day.
Their first day, Monday 21st, started
with a show and tell: Chris had asked everyone to bring in an item
that was important to them, which might hold the beginnings of ideas.
Beside the red silk dress on the window ledge was a wooden circle
with geometric lines carved into it, an elegant example of a
tree
of life; there was also a library book, Last
Night on Earth by choreographer and director
Bill
T Jones, a small crimson cushion embroidered
with the words Kneel to Pray, and a painted wooden spoon who goes by
the name of
Mr
Curry. There was also something I couldn't see:
a susurration. Shhh: listen. A whisper, a breath. “Is that the
sound of extinction?” someone had written on the opposite wall.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, these items
– with the possible exception of Mr Curry – had inspired
something approaching a story. It had characters: a man, possibly
dead now, whose life's work had been the cataloguing of extinct
species; a woman who worked in the building across the street from
Hamilton House, an artist probably, who spends her days cataloguing
the life she sees from her window; another woman, glimpsed in the
street wearing a red silk dress, a mystery with whom both the other
characters are obsessed. It had questions: what is the relationship
between the man and the artist? What does the woman in the red dress
represent for them both? And within these tentative foundations of a
narrative structure it had a multitude of set-pieces: a communal
dance and a choral dream shanty; a comical index of fictional
creatures; some absorbing texts on lies and dreams; a desire to hear
an inventory spoken; and a non-religious response to the invitation
Kneel to Pray.
There was something rather lovely about
the impulse towards catalogues, indexes and inventories in this,
because while the performers worked together to develop the materials
for the showing that evening, I was busy cataloguing their working
space. This is an abbreviation:
*a masking tape path, mimicking the
sharp geometry of the tree of life, messages scribbled along each
line:
(a change of heart) (a mending of
ways) a chance for redemption
will I ever stop being afraid?
if I keep waiting, maybe it will get
better?
a new journey?
an old dream?
a chance to change?
*details of extinct animals linked with
string to a 1931 map of Land's End
*a chart recording the height of
everyone who enters the room
*ink drawings by Robert, dream visions
of woodland, the Open House room, a mysterious figure in a red dress
*two posters inviting contributions:
tell a lie about yourself/tell us something true about yourself.
While I'm making my notes a woman comes in, browses for a few
minutes, writes on the lies poster, “I truly know love”, then
walks straight out.
*Robert's truth: My life has in part
been a project of reinvention and of constructing a world
uncontaminated by my father's approval.
*Angela's truth: I let the flow of life
happen. I have met amazing and unusual people when I have swum
against the tide.
*a text inspired by the tree of life –
“Follow the line. The line forks... The line flows and races. The
points it passes through are each a present and each present has
length for one end is joined to the past and the other to the future
or possible futures... What happens at the end of the line?” –
paired with Robert Frost's poem
The
Road Not Taken.
*hula hoops in red, blue, yellow and
green
*a table spread with photographs of
each performer wearing the red dress. James looks like a brothel
Jesus.
*behind the desk, written on an A3
sheet: I'd like to see the shadow of a bird in the road but not the
bird that's casting it.
*a yellow Post-It note stuck to the
window with a single word scribbled upon it in pencil: JUMP?
In another unintended mirror of the
burgeoning narrative – the man is so engrossed in cataloguing the
world around him, he neglects his own family – I'm so absorbed by
the task of noting every detail in the room that I almost miss it
being transformed. Tom, feeling his way towards playing the man,
takes charge in creating an environment for him in the stage area. He
clears away the superfluous furniture, arranges a desk, a sofa, a
cabinet and a coffee table, and upon these places the paraphernalia
of the man's existence: his index cards, a plant, a trumpet, a
wireless. This is one story space; outside the window is another; in
between, a clear zone for dance, improvisation, collaboration with
the audience.
As in Leeds last year, the seven
company members – Robert had been fully adopted to the team by now
– gathered in the late afternoon to create a set list, putting in
order the disparate elements for their showing. Unlike in Leeds,
almost no one came to see it: just four of us, and two of those were
me and Nikki, working with Mayfest and there to give Chris and
company production support. There was much that was enjoyable,
beautiful, invigorating in this showing. I loved the layering of
composed and immediate/responsive texts: Angela observing life out of
the window while Heather walks towards the building in the red dress
and Heather's disembodied recorded voice tells a lie about jumping
from the window and soaring over the city. Pauline folding and
stretching into taut, eloquent shapes, Angela describing her
movements, James alone then Chris in urgent chorus reading out the
Follow the Line/tree of life text. I loved the communal dance, and
how the audience stuck faithfully to Pauline's voiceover
instructions, even as the performers embarked on a different dance,
raising questions of who we choose to follow, when and how,
suggesting the difficulty of keeping up with or adapting to the
unexpected changes inevitable in a fast-paced life. I loved the
wistful poetry of the inventory of the contents of the
Marie
Celeste. Most of all I loved the Kneel to Pray
cushion, and the invitation drawn from it to say something true, all
of us taking turns to speak honestly from our own lives. Pauline's
truth: “I want to stay with the people in this room for at least a
month.” Yes.
In Leeds the first showing was so
complete, as a work and as a statement, that it felt like an ending.
In Bristol the first showing felt like a beginning. There was much in
it that didn't really work, not least the characters of the
cataloguer and artist, the latter of whom barely emerged, the
relationship between them remaining opaque. The descriptions of
extinct animals tickled everyone but, as Chris acknowledged, they
felt like they belonged to a different show.
In fact, although we left the room that
evening energised and enthused, by morning everyone expressed doubts
about the showing. The tight structure had been useful in terms of
avoiding the sense of chaos that hovered over Open House Leeds, but
it also closed down or thwarted possibility, leaving the performers
with little room to play. The narrative they were building, said
Chris, felt too much like a story that could be made in other
circumstances, more traditional circumstances, and made better in
five weeks, not five days. It didn't suit the unique proposition of
Open House – and it was the kind of show Chris hadn't made for
years.
As a group we agreed that the most
exciting aspects of the showing had been the things that least
resembled the prepared material. Moments of intimacy, of talking and
responding to each other; moments receptive to chance, in which small
ideas could thrillingly expand; moments unique to that time, that
room, that grew from observing directly the world outside. Chris
realised that he had conflated a relish in the process of creation
with the creation of things (characters, narrative) that indicate
craft. He wanted to make something more porous. He also wanted to
leave the room.
This was a difficult proposal for the
team to negotiate, because it came from a place of disillusionment
not with Open House as an idea but with the impossibility of fully
expressing that idea without the people for whom it was created: the,
for want of a better word, audience. Chris wanted to find a park, a
local square, anywhere outside, and make up a game that could be
played with passers-by. After much tussling with pros and cons, the
dissuading argument was voiced by Tom: “The challenge is, we're in
this place: what can we do here?” What did Chris want
that he felt he could find in the park? Light and air. Half the room
had that at least. So what were the constraints of the room – and
how might they be resolved? How, by rethinking the room, could they
take control of the space? These questions would direct the morning's
work.
First, though, Chris made two decisions
that would prove vital and vitalising. One: that they would throw out
most of the narrative material built up over the week and start
again. Two: in response to a confession from Angela, that she had
hardly breathed during the showing, so anxious had she been about
forgetting what was next on the set list, Chris announced that
whatever they did that evening, there wouldn't be a running order on
a flip chart. Music would help to give a dramaturgical shape to the
showing, and each performer would be free to respond to that and to
each other with whatever materials felt appropriate and closest to
hand. In the impish code of Open House, the aim was more jam, less
bread.
With that, they set to work. Chris felt
it would be interesting, if questionable ethically – we'll come
back to that – to record and project a film of the street scene
below. Jamie positioned the screen directly at the end of the row of
windows, introducing light and extending the view to outside. Then he
and Tom set about reconfiguring the space. The dance mats were
shifted: instead of a square chunk in front of the stage, a long,
thin rectangle running alongside the windows. From a tunnel with
defined zones, the room became panoramic. The stage area was cleared
again, furniture and clutter pushed against the walls. The crimson
sofa remained, and this became the focus for an afternoon game: a
dance created by Pauline for herself, Tom, Angela and Robert to
perform, with four strategic positions, seated, perched, standing and
reclining. As they accustomed to the moves, the players began to
incorporate an element of storytelling, first using Consequences,
each taking it in turns to add a line to a growing tall tale. But
this proved cumbersome and overcomplicated. Chris suggested shifting
“say something true” from the Kneel to Pray cushion to the arm of
the sofa. Better. Tom requested a round of “tell a lie”: good,
but a verve was missing, an outlandishness. What would be really
exciting, said Chris, eyes glinting, would be for this to be the sofa
of truth and lies – and for us not know which is which. Perfect.
Except for one thing: unlike the Kneel
to Pray truth game, audiences couldn't join in – the speed and
precision of the dance left no room for intrusion. The extent to
which the invitation to visitors had shrunk became apparent when
Kieran
Hurley and
Gary
McNair, performing elsewhere in Mayfest,
visited for an hour in the late-afternoon. We've forgotten how to be
generous, Chris feared.
Instead of playing, Kieran and Gary
became snagged in philosophical debate. A new film had been recorded
through the window, of Heather walking down the street in the red
dress, and Chris invited us to invent stories about the people she
passed. But as we began to speculate on existential crises, fraud and
dreadful accidents, he felt misgivings: that to impose a narrative on
a stranger, with its undertone of prediction or twisting of fate, was
in some way unethical; that the film itself, taken in secret,
sinister as CCTV, was unethical too. But no, the company variously
argued: the commentary says more about the speaker than the person
being seen; these narratives were simply an exercise in imagination;
the figures on the film were so small they could hardly be
identified. The exercise stayed – on condition, said Chris, that we
played in a kind way, combating the heartless invasion of CCTV with
lyricism, humanity and warmth.
(For the rest of the day, the words
“ethical problem” were a cheeky running joke.)
As the time for the second showing
approached and nerves kicked in, a mild tension arose among the
performers: perhaps there could be a running order after all? Chris
remained gentle but adamant. He reassured them: they wouldn't be
working by wits alone, but following basic rules of engagement that
would allow jam to flow freely. (That is absolutely what it says in
my notebook. I suspect Chris also said it another way but in my
wisdom [cough] I didn't record that bit.) They could talk to each
other about what might happen next, and to the audience, too. If
there was a movement, a text, an idea or texture they liked, the
invitation was open at all times for them to do it, say it, introduce
it. They simply needed to remember the key pieces and notice where
the room was going. No set list. No running order. That one key
decision was all it took to unlock possibility and make the second
showing electric.
This, very roughly, because I couldn't
take all of the notes and do all of the watching, is how it played
out:
Angela and Pauline dance together; Tom
sits on a table outside describing – we hear him through James'
mobile phone – what he sees on the street, what we witness through
the window.
and I think about how we look at the
world, and how we record what we see
Observations from a post at the window
now, Robert drawing the scene on the glass itself, and while Chris
plays piano, James starts listing the things he would like to see out
there.
just then, a chorus of happy
birthday floats in from the cafe downstairs, and the world outside
and the world of Open House fuse
Pauline begins dancing, Angela
describing her dance, Tom and Heather trace the outlines of their
bodies on the floor, and Chris begins to read: “Follow the line.
The line forks...”
and the melancholy lilt of the piano
and James' dream list carries into Pauline's body, making her
movement seem more pained, more anxious, than anything she's danced
through the day
Pauline moves to the truth and lies
sofa; hesitantly, the others join her. A pause to establish rhythm
and then:
Robert: I once killed a man
Heather: I find it hard to tell the
truth
Tom: I'm not a man
Pauline: I once ate a frog
Angela: I have a dog
what do we even know about people?
Their secrets? How can we know “truth”? How can we distinguish?
While the sofa dance continues, James
invites the audience to take part in the communal dance...
and there's something about the way
he does this, so eager, so diffident; something about the fact that
the designated technician can switch roles in this way, that they all
merge roles, Tom directing and designing, Angela choreographing, all
of them writing; something about their boundless energy and embrace
of cooperation, that is so touching to witness
… and then: CCTV.
Pauline: this person came to a dance
class I once taught.
Angela: this man was just told he's
lost his job.
Me: [pointing at a woman pushing a
pram] she's wondering if she should have kept the baby.
what do we even know about people?
We know stories. The snippets of autobiography they're willing to
share with us, the yarns we spin around them.
And something I didn't acknowledge
until reading Angela's blog
post for the Mayfest diary: in telling
stories about others, we give away our selves...
Chris reads a text I haven't heard
before:
this is our time
after all the struggle, the pain, the
breathing deeply...
we are the sum of chance encounters
Heather returns to the window for a new
round of observations.
we are the sum of chance encounters.
The readiness is all. And how much, how much we see, when we only
stop to look
Angela begins listing them in chalk on
the floor.
**the piece of theatre that could
only happen now, of this moment**
Pauline is dancing. Angela is dancing.
We can hear James on the phone, reading out the Marie Celeste
inventory. And suddenly there, walking up the street, boldly, a
vision from a dream, is Tom, wearing the red dress.
and the world is too much, too
detailed, too full to take in
The next day, in a state of
exhilaration, I scribbled this in my notebook:
what made it so magical was how it
flowed without flowing, felt coherent despite its leaps from one set
piece to the next, how open it felt for them to improvise while
keeping within the parameters set for themselves earlier, how the
showing was infused with all the stories and all
the life that had come into the room, how it contained story without
story and narrative without narrative, how it relied on trust between
the performers and achieved alchemical transformation of the elements
that all the best theatre is capable of
By the time I wrote that breathless
note to myself I had left Open House behind. I left on a high,
thrilled that I had seen such extraordinary, eloquent, surprising
work. In less than an hour, through game playing and sharing trust
and feeling their way, those seven people had communicated so much
about how we relate to each other, talk to each other, talk of each
other. But also I left on a low: where was everybody? The audience
barely reached double figures for the Thursday showing. Why had there
been so few visitors; why were the evening numbers so small? Chris
and I discussed this on the Thursday: in Leeds, there was a strong
sense that Open House was needed, important, a signpost for a
possible future; at Mayfest, it was just another intriguing piece in
a fascinating programme. In Leeds, Open House was in the same
building with other work; people could wander in and out without
having to make a special or effortful detour to the room: that
opportunity wasn't there at Mayfest. Did it matter? We decided that
in the truest sense, not at all: Robert was there, integral, happy,
contributing, invigorated. To be able to affect just one person's
life, help them construct a world uncontaminated by another's
approval, gift them the opportunity to swim against the tide: to do
that for one person is enough.
What troubled me then, and continues to
ache in me now, however, is a terrible sense of bungled
responsibility: that what I had written about the Leeds Open House
had in any way stopped people coming in Bristol. That perhaps I had
given wrong impressions, created apprehensions. That the memory I had
imprinted of one quashed the life of the other. All that remains of
these Open Houses are the stories that are told. And while I know,
rationally, that there are no “true” stories, still I want the
ones I tell to be right.
*
A postscript: I've spent a couple of
days dithering about posting this, and I'm glad I did, because I in
the midst of that hesitation I finished reading Borges'
Dreamtigers
and found this bit of brilliance that articulates precisely what I
think this Open House did:
At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a
mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.
They tell how Ulysses, glutted with
wonders,
Wept with love to descry his Ithaca
Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of wonders.
I cherish that word humble, as I
cherish my time in Open House.
