“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Framework that I initiated establishing with ‘Masakali; Dancing Pigeons’ reached an interim intellectual zenith in the Lisbon Chapters of ‘Parding your Beggon.’
All my characters, every scenography that I create, the contexts that I deal with, each and every piece that I craft finds itself under the larger umbrella that I have deemed as a ‘Decommissioned Domesticity’.
I treat domesticities and our intimity as mythical. Like every myth, the worlds I create seem real but almost unattainable. It is peculiar that I more often than not reconcile seemingly unlived moments with such earnestness.
The forms of common ‘natural’ or ‘real’ behaviour discussed in ‘Parding your Beggon’ obscure the truth. I compose my domesticity as a system of signs which demonstrate what is behind the mask of common vision: the dialectics of human behaviour.
WHO KNOWS PERHAPS, I MIGHT BE CONSIDERED A SAVANT SOMEDAY.
I have pea soup every night.
Just so that I have something
In my tummy to vomit.
It is just something
I have to do.
To keep myself
From tipping south
Of normal.
The bitter turns sour
The sour turns sweet
The sweet turns savoury…
‘No oral sex
For two weeks
After tooth extraction.’
It is possibly the greatest racket
I have ever heard off.
These myths are primeval situations. In being so, they are also complex models with an independent existence in the psychology of social groups. They prostrate, argue and challenge group behaviours and tendencies. In other words, while retaining our private experiences, my domesticities attempt to incarnate myth, putting on its ill-fitting skin to perceive the relativity of our problems, their connection to ‘existence’, and the relativity of ‘existence’ in the light of today's experience.
My characters subsume a lust.
They all share an unyielding sense of their own potential, which more often than not leads them into hopeless situations and unwise decisions. That being said they still imbibe a peculiar contentment.
I present a Sedated Longing.
The characters just unapologetically be.
My process of writing itself has little methodological meaning because it is not the product of long-term practical investigations. It is an astounding prophecy, not a program.
I realised that I as a creative and most importantly as member of an ensemble had made a gross error whilst working towards the London Chapters of ‘Parding your Beggon’.
Through the entirety of Term 2, I vacillated between practice-born impulses and the application of ‘a priori’ principles. I was constantly romanticising the scholarly approaches towards Devised Theatre, that I had had in my head, rather than trying to define one for my own self and the ensemble.
I was continually considering what I would do as director if I were working with professional actors rather than directing my ensemble in a way that would benefit the needs of each member, and the production as a whole.
What I had taken to be applications of theoretical assumptions were actually more functions of my personality than of my intellect. I realized that the production led to awareness rather than being the product of awareness.
That was the benign catastrophe.
As the Director and Dramaturg of the piece I proposed one baser, fundamental axiom for myself to follow through the Term 3. I had realised that we had successfully placed a framework for the dramaturgy during Term 2. All our intentions had transpired to cultivate that framework.
I decreed that that Framework that has been established shall be used as a foundation or bedrock to support every other member as artists, their singular and collective intentions.
“Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.
Boxing can be an art. Loving can be an art. Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style. Not many can keep style.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.”
- Charles Bukowski
Within our ensemble we had two exceptionally talented visual artists in their own right. Both Farah Aly and Charon Hu have their own unique and peculiar modus operandi. Charon has an affinity for grotesque and absurdist doodles. Whereas Farah is a surrealist oil painter. I came to the conclusion that we needed to feature both these methodologies and let them define how the dramaturgy would evolve.
The two approaches of Visual Art that Charon and Farah brought into the process of the Ensemble, provided ‘Parding your Beggon’ with a vicarious dialectic of subjecthood. The piece began to negotiate subjecthood in an embodied as well as a phenomenological sense.
Now, Not only were the characters that I had scripted subjects of the performance but they also became a subject | muse | inspiration for visual art. That turned them into objects.
‘Parding your Beggon’ hence made a total GIFT of itself.
As an aesthetic strategy, the piece imbibed an AVANT GARDE EMPATHY.
There is a precarious power in objecthood. As conflicting as it might be especially whilst dealing with sentient subjects, objectivity has historically added value to its recipients.
Both Charon and Farah hence, made the characters that I scripted, exponentially more valuable and bankable for an audience than they were originally.
I wished that all of us, use the expanses of stage presence at our disposal to concentrate on the ‘ripening’ of our character. We decided to optimise expression, percolate it, strip it down, and in doing so lay bare the character’s, not to mention the audience’s own intimity - all this without the least trace of egotism or self-enjoyment.
