Giacomo 2.0 (The Player/Gamber)
17|01|21
Coming out of the other end of these two weeks with Giacomo, I feel very different. Why this is, might be more personal that artistic, but often they’re intertwined. If anything, I think this last week has reminded me how personally engaged I need to be with my work.
To be clear, I believe I dropped the ball with this project exercise we were tasked with by Giacomo. There was a lot going on for me the last month, in a personal sense, as well as artistic, and I just didn’t find the motivation for myself to dig into something over the time we had in the week. I actually found finding any time to do anything remarkably difficult. Nothing was making me feel motivated to do anything, across all my projects, and I really had to work to keep doing anything productive. At the same time, this productivity didn’t feed me at all.
Before Christmas, I had a wave of passion for the work I was doing. I recognised this at the time, too, and knew ahead that it would have to crash at some point. I’m in this crash.
Giacomo’s philosophy that you should always be finding what you want to do the next day on your work is a great mission to stick to. The problem, again, comes from the lack of enthusiasm for anything you’re doing.
It was really remarkably heart-warming to see so many works on Saturday that people were genuinely passionate about. In fact, I hadn’t seen this passion for their own work from many of these people before. It made me happy, and envious. I want to be able to find this passion, and motivation for my work again. I think, there are a few ways it could happen.
I found last night, travelling home on a bus alone, listening to a sad song, that I became quite emotional. More emotional than I have in a way, and definitely more emotional than I would usually feel comfortable being on a bus, alone. It was in this emotion however, that I found myself connecting back to my work (specifically the STREAM project). An unfortunate side effect of being the sole creative lead on a project like this, is that I am finding myself caught up in all the logistics of the work, and lose the personal connection that took me there in the first place.
Secondly, and this came quite soon after this wave of emotion, was the challenging of my own perception. I am usually an intentionally very independent person, with a lot of freedom and agency – but in this moment, all I wanted was to be looked after. I started to think about these churches, how they worship and take care of each other, and I felt this desire to be a part of it. This, as a completely secular person who has often disregarded religion and worship as a waste of time.
BADABOOM. I suddenly felt this interest and passion in my work again. Not to say that this is some magical “oh I’m back on the horse” solution or anything – simply that I knew why I wanted to keep working on this. I still don’t know how, and honestly am feeling still very lost on how to make this material with such a large group without just didactically directing the whole thing (that’s an entirely other issue), but this doesn’t feel so much like a crippling stress, rather one that spurs me on to find creative solutions.
I’m disappointed that I wasn’t in the right headspace to fully engage with Giacomo’s workshop, but I think despite this it has been wonderfully challenging and through this, I believe, I have learnt a lot.
The ludic practice, for one. Giacomo even said that this sort of work is a long engagement, and you can’t really use it for a single work as a one-off tool. In saying that, the simple takeaways from the practice form a relatively clear roadmap of techniques to find this certain ludic quality. Paradox and playfulness, for one, are really refreshing to explore as elements to kickstart a work. I’ve found in the past that having moments of absurdity or lightness in a work always allows for more depth. The practice of this Giacomo was introducing us to is more specific I think and nuanced, but I find the relation there. It makes me quite keen and excited to find what this could be in something like the STREAM project.
Another tool that was brought forward was this quality of never believing what you’re doing, and really absorbing the work you’re doing as you do it. In some ways I find this challenging, as this quality can sometimes appear as odd, and goes against a lot of the acting fundamentals I learnt in the past. At the same time, it doesn’t need to be used all the time, but possibly even just as a verbal encouragement for my dancers. To not be ‘acting’ anything or playing character or narrative, but really experiencing what you’re doing in the space as you’re doing it. Although I don’t actually know how this will all manifest, but just imagining this quality in my mind really excites me. I don’t want this work to be a narrative 4th wall physical piece that looks and sounds nice, but something that feels like it’s being made as it happens.
Finally (ha), is this notion of working from the end. I imagine that the ways we envisioned this in the workshop, like reversing video or text, maybe missed the mark of what this actually means as a tool. I don’t think I fully understand it either, but maybe there’s a nugget I can take away from it. When we first began discussing this concept, I related it a little to the way I’ve often found myself working on material, which is usually from an image of the work as a whole, or possibly the end. Maybe this is just me trying to justify my own practices in this new one, but what Giacomo was saying didn’t sound wholly unfamiliar for me. Especially when compared to the way of making material through a logical, step by step journey from beginning to end, which feels even more alien to me.
To apply it to my own work, I have started to imagine what this end point of STREAM is. Not necessarily the ending as a literal image in the space, but what the final feeling or sense that it brings is. This, for me, is easier to imagine, than the beginning or middle, and, like some of the other tools, makes me excited again for the work. I have a feeling I’ve been resisting thinking about these things, to avoid the sense that I’m not open to the process – but maybe, for me, the process can only work if I have these waypoints to hold onto.
I guess we’ll find out over the next 5 months, hey.
13|01|21
It seems at this point, that I have arrived in the world of crippling second guessing and doubt in this practice. We’re building towards these project showings on Saturday, that have been guided as being adaptations of The Gambler, yet I’m finding it remarkably difficult to keep putting one foot in front of another and work towards anything. For me, I think I keep getting stuck in this headspace of trying to actively think my way into something clever or interesting, before beginning work on it. I do realise how un-productive this is, but it’s so much easier said than done.
I also think it could be due to the relatively inconsequential nature of the work. As in, I have a number of other demands on my mental energy right now that have genuine consequences for me and people around me, so it becomes difficult for me to engage with this fully. I would wonder what this would be like if I had nothing else to think about, or it was leading towards something of consequence.
Maybe this is me being nihilistic towards the work, and demanding more from it than it needs to give me.
I’ve thought a lot about what Giacomo said regarding this practice: that it’s all about finding a rhythm for yourself where you can work every day with very little forceful effort. Doing what you can rather than doing what you think you want. This is very pertinent, to many things orbiting my artistic practice. I often think back on my 2nd year drama school solo, because that process was very much this effortless rhythm forward. I was able to work on the piece every day, chipping away at my interest, composing, building, and eventually ending up with a result that seemed to work quite well. The issue is, I don’t know how I entered this. I’ve thought that maybe it was because it was my first solo project, and I didn’t put any expectations on myself like I do now. Or, possibly I was in a state of blissful ignorance towards the “standards” of performance, theatre, and art, and didn’t second guess myself.
This could all be true. Ultimately, I find it very difficult to put myself in this state – rather, I feel like it’s something I can fall into.
In my final project, for the first month or so, rehearsals were a bit of a mess. People were missing from rehearsals due to isolations, we had to do a few online, and I don’t think we ever had a session where we were all in the space at once. The up-side to this, I found, was that I was so busy trying to adapt and keep working forward, that I didn’t get caught up second guessing anything. Now, we’re in a spot where rehearsals are a bit more consistent, and I’m beginning to lose myself a bit towards the anxiousness of what we’re making, when, how etc.
This workshop with Giacomo is painful in a lot of ways, but I also feel like it’s the most I’ve really reflected on my own practice as an artist. Maybe that’s why it’s painful.
10|01|21
In moving forward through Giacomo’s workshop, I have been finding some of the concepts he speaks of to be oddly familiar, yet strangely ungraspable. Almost in a similar fashion to how the depth in art is felt rather than understood, I think I am feeling some of these concepts without actually being able to make them tangible. This puts me in a strange place where I can’t really validate for myself whether I am really on the same page or not, but at the same time I am taking some of these ideas and finding ways to comprehend as best I can.
One major aspect of this work is the notion of working from the end, rather than the beginning. This is really something I can’t quantifiably describe without just regurgitating Giacomo’s words – although, I think I can relate it to my own process. I may be totally off, but I feel like I have often worked from the end of many of my pieces of theatre and art. Working from the end, as in knowing where we arrive, and building back from there. We spoke about what this “end” could be, and it might be an image, a feeling, or something more abstract. It just means you’re not finding a starting point and working naturally outwards from there.
This sort of work, then, has a sense of ‘unity of action.’ Not in the old Greek style of one location, one time, one plot – rather, a stranger sense that everything is unified in creating momentum around a singular object. I think. Ana and I spoke a little bit a while ago about works of performance and film that have the feeling of tumbling towards an inevitable ending. I think this may have related somewhat to what we’re exploring here. This is I fact the sort of work I enjoy watching the most, too. I used to relate it a little to ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ but maybe that’s a slightly different direction to this.
On a more functional note, Giacomo has been urging us towards a style of adaptation that is consistent and functional. Almost a little dumb, in some ways. As in, we set rules or conditions for ourselves to move through the work we’re looking to adapt, and by executing these tasks in a largely functional manner, we arrive with a draft of adapted material. This material can then be worked and re-drafted a number of times, before it becomes its entirely own thing. There’s something very attractive about this way of working for me, through simple tasks and methods; at the same time, it’s also quite intimidating as I always feel the desire to have to be making something creative or remarkable. Working through The Gambler in this way might be very good practice for me. Now, it’s just understanding the rules and conditions I want to set for myself to work through.
The final takeaway from this first week I would like to immortalise in this journal is that of the paradox of perspective. Again, it’s difficult to nail down in words, but to relate it to my own work right now on STREAM I can say that we don’t have to take a stance on the topic we are exploring. What is probably much more interesting and desirable artistically, is to understand that there are two or more opposing and equally as valid perspectives, and we can have them both present in the work as a paradox. That this friction is where we as makers and performers may find interest for ourselves in the work, and ideally the audience as viewers, also. It comes back to this ‘asking questions, not finding answers’ that I want to bring into the next stage of STREAM.
06|01|21
I’m both nervous and excited to be working with Giacomo again on his practice. Excited, because I had such a shifting of my own practice through it, nervous, because that change came through a great deal of stress and anxiety. I have a feeling that this time won’t be as stressful, as the focus is slightly different, and may be a bit more heavily following the trails of adapting material.
This question of adapting material is a big one already. We’re tasked with doing our own individual adaptations of the work, but this can really take any form. Giacomo has made some examples of possibilities, which has highlighted the idea that it’s not so much the material itself we can or should be adapting – rather it’s the concepts that can be played around with. Eg. Giacomo’s example of leaving a diary somewhere in the city and waiting for a stranger to pick it up before taking them on a journey.
Right now I’m quite interested in composing music, so I have a feeling my adaptation will have something to do with that…
Another benefit of revisiting this area of process is the refinement of the concepts introduced to us last time. For instance, I now realise that the transversal action actually needs to be a verb, something you can actually do. Great for clarifying that in my other projects.
Giacomo is also pushing us in the territory of asking questions rather than seeking answers. This sort of sentiment has come up before in other work and methods, but it always seemed to be a little too abstract and often unhelpful for me. For some reason, it has suddenly become more appealing and useful to me. Especially when creating a new work that is quite undefined, bringing up questions without the pressure of having to find or know the answers is nice. I think the relief of the pressure is that you’ll almost definitely come across the answers throughout the process anyway. Even if that’s in the final night of performing. It also helps keep the work open, rather than closed. We’re not pitching a thesis to an audience, rather a set of possibilities.
This links into another thing Giacomo said: that the work is like a flower, and the concept is just the stem. We’re not looking at the stem, we’re looking at the flower – that’s where the ‘art’ is – but the art can’t exist without the stem. A lot of it has to do with having faith, I guess. Faith that by just doing the stem/concept work, you will eventually grow a flower that you can’t really point at or quantify, and that’s where the beauty is.