Today we finally cracked into the sackful of costumes I've been dragging into the rehearsal room every day. We dressed up and played a clowning-game as a kind of failure warm-up. Then I set us an exercise I first encountered in a workshop led by Greg Wohead: create the Best Version of yourself - the artist you would be and the work you would make if you could back and do everything again. It's always insightful, because it makes me think, why don't I just make that work now? And it can be reassuring as well, to realise what things about myself I would never want to change. I feel like if I want to think about failure, then I have to to consider success as well, and this exercise seemed a good way to examine what we personally consider indicators of success.
Lara and I interviewed each other's Best Versions, and then, interestingly, we moved into a discussion of our actual selves and the journeys leading to where we are now - the opportunities we didn't get, either because they didn't exist, or we were advised otherwise, or simply because we didn't grab them. It seemed organic next to work on physical improvisations around those journeys, to explore what success and failure feel like as qualities of movement. We did individual improvisations around difficult times in our lives and the transitions out of them, and I also explored telling a personal story while moving, and allowing the movement to effect the story and vice versa.
It's felt like quite a substantial day, and it's given me a lot to consider about how I approach movement improvisation - how the tools I have as an actor are transferrable to a different practice.
We've not forgotten about Sergei and Beyoncé of course (how could we?), but it was good to take a break from them (and think about what we want to do next with those dances).
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