Somehow

After a ridiculously long drive down to Cornwall (thanks London traffic), I’m pleased to report that we have arrived in one piece. It’s brilliant to be back down in Penzance and Newlyn, seeing some old faces and really getting a grasp on what In Our Hands is going to be about.

Narrative is a tricky concept for us. So many of our ideas and developments come from working practically in the room but at some point, we have to sit ourselves down and work out what direction we’d like to take the piece in. This is not so that we can dictate our process and eliminate the possibility to play, it does, however, create some useful boundaries for us to work within.

Saying that, I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is something that comes easily to us as a collective. Our minds tend to veer towards the visual imagery, the hows and whats of the moment rather than the why. This is definitely something we have become more conscious of over the past couple of years and has drastically improved with the addition of our dramaturg, Gemma. Although Gemma is not with us this week in Cornwall, much of what she says has filtered through and it now feels as though we are able to channel some of her thought process, albeit a very small piece, even when she isn’t here.

That said, working out a narrative structure for a piece of visual theatre is still really hard, particularly when the use of text is either minimal or non-existent. It’s all well and good sitting down and creating an incredible story that makes sense, has meaningful characters, relationships and events but putting that on it’s feet, with puppets has a whole set of challenges of it’s own. In previous shows and with previous creative process, it’s required a very long process of going backwards between the narrative sections we’ve put in place and the physical material we are creating. More often than not, the physical work informs the narrative, meaning a huge amount of change takes place but as long as the essence of the section remains, we normally manage to hold it together.

Today we embarked on the first stages of the above. Off the back of a long car journey and not much sleep, there was the classic pattern of “ooo, what about this?...”, “ooooo yeah and then we could do this…”, “ooo and then maybe we could do this…” (reaching excited climax), followed by, “I don’t know, i’m stuck”, “I don’t know, my mind’s gone fuzzy” (total and utter brain freeze). But somehow, we managed to get a structure together and somehow it makes some kind of sense and then tomorrow we will somehow start to generate material and ideas that will somehow turn into a show.