It’s early October, 2018. It’s autumnal…leaves are beginning to turn, and fall…
I’ve just completed 9 months of (wonderfully) intensive creative/production work with Kaite O’Reilly as we developed, staged, and toured internationally with two major new world premiere productions of The Llanarth Group: AND SUDDENLY I DISAPPEAR—O’Reilly’s remarkable series of ‘d’ Monologues first staged at the Gallery Theatre (National Museum of Singapore, produced in association with Access Pathways in Singapore) in May with our Singaporean colleagues.
At work in Singapore last May on one of the Kaite O’Reilly’s monologues, ‘Red Scarf’ with the delightful Agnes (one of the ensemble members) toward the world premiere. Along with the world premiere performances in the Gallery Theatre at the National Museum of Singapore, we also gave a special ‘live-streamed’ performance (via the HowlRound platform at Emerson College, Boston, USA). Our videographer, James Khoo work with Associate Producer Nat Lim to organise and manage this herculean effort to share the performance with live audiences gathered in the Philippines, Taipei, and Hong Kong. It was a bit nerve wracking, but worked a treat!
Directing the three camera live-streamed performance from the hallway outside the Gallery Theatre.
We then re-staged AND SUDDENLY I DISAPPEAR with two completely new UK cast members who joined our core cast of four on stage for UK premiere performances as part of the Purcell Room Southbank Centre’s (London) UNLIMITED FESTIVAL (5-6 September) and on a limited UK tour to Oxford, Leicester, and Cardiff. Katie Bingham joined us as our UK stage manager and did a herculean job throughout! We had a wonderful response from audiences as well as reviewers.
With only two days rest after completing the AND SUDDENLY I DISAPPEAR UK tour, we were back into re-rehearsing richard III redux featuring the wonderful Sara Beer for an invited performance as part of the Grenzenlos Kultur Festival at the Mainz Stadt Kleines Theater in Germany. Thankfully, the wonderful Katie Bingham joined us for richard III redux in Mainz.
At work in Chapter 5!!!
OCTOBER, 2018: Reflection/Reading/Writing/Talking
Now…time to breath, take stock away from the pressure of production work…and to focus this month on my writing as I continue to reflect on acting as a phenomenon and process in toward a phenomenology of acting. So all of October I am at ‘home/office/studio’ reading and writing. A luxury! Working on Chapter 5 today, ‘The voicing body and sonorous speech’ in which I focus on my work in 2017 on Beckett’s Footfalls with Costa Rican actresses, Milena Picado and Erika Rojas. HOPING to complete this as well as Chapter 6 on temporality this month, and HOPING to complete the entire manuscript by the end of December! Looking forward toward publication in 2019 or early 2020 at the latest.
I’ll be back to the Drama Department in Exeter on 17 October to give a talk based on Chapter 4 of my book: ‘Subjectivity, Self, Character, and Figure in Performance’. Look forward to interaction with colleagues there about this ongoing project.
NOVEMBER, 2018: ‘On the Road’ in Ireland and Norway
From November 4-10 Bernie Cronin at Gaitkrash in Cork, Ireland, and on the faculty at University College Cork have invited Kaite O’Reilly and I for a week-long intensive residency working with students on the new MA program there. I’ll be leading intensive training sessions, while Kaite will lead writing workshops. Kaite will give a major public lecture, and I’ll give a lecture as well from my new book (as noted above!). We’ll also be working on a staged read of Kaite’s COSY, hoping to attract full funding for a long hoped for production of COSY in Cork in 2019. Sara Beer who played the wonderfully quirky role of Maureen—the outsider to the family—in the world premiere at Wales Millennium Centre, will join us. We have a wonderful Cork-based cast playing the family. Fingers crossed the funding comes through.
The final two weeks of November I’m returning to the Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrickstadt for a two week intensive training, with application of the principles to structured improvisations and Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis. Jeungsook Yoo will fly in from Seoul to work with me. And Kaite and I will be part of a two day seminar organised by NTA on ‘Elders’…Looking forward to also seeing some of the students from NTA I’ve worked with in the past who have graduated!
Into 2019
Plans are afoot for a visit to Soledad Garry Rubio at RESAD in Madrid, hopefully late February/early March. The summer intensive is about to be scheduled for July, and other plans will be announced as/when confirmed!