Failure Project Day Nine: Making Friends

I didn't really know what we were going to do today. I'd thought maybe we could return to some of the improvisations I'd done on Tuesday; some of them had reached the point of feeling satisfactory, but others hadn't. But for some reason we decided to start with an object manipulation improvisation - I'd tried to bring in random objects to use in clowning last week, and one of them - a sprinkler - was still hanging about. Improvising with the sprinkler led to a challenge from Lara for me to choose three items from the costume bag to create a "safe space" for the object (I built the sprinkler a nest). That led in turn to animating the object, which in turn led to building a whole puppet out of the sprinkler and costume bits... which led to two more puppets and the passing of the whole morning.

Unexpected, and actually through-provoking. I love puppetry, and I've not had the opportunity to study or explore it much. So it felt in keeping with the failure ethos (I've not forgotten failure) to get stuck in and play without caring whether I was "doing it right". Puppets may also prove a lighter way to explore dark themes - I couldn't help recall a fantastic puppet show I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe years ago (saw twice actually, it struck me that hard) called Lily Through The Dark, which told the story of a young girl so grief-stricken after her father's death that she tries to kill herself and goes on a journey through the darkness to find him.

In the afternoon we explored falling, and stumbling - being off-kilter generally. It's possibly a very obvious visual metaphor in a study of depression, but I'm trying generally to build a physical vocabulary.

I had a photographer with us all day as well - Jorge Lizalde, of Studio Cano. His work is definitely worth checking out. I'll post some photos as I get them

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