Valencia Week 4 by Matthew Harrison-Lord.
Here’s my week roundup of the 3rd week of the residency.
When every Monday roles around we make the comment of “Monday English” - this is because the common language between all residents is English and so we communicate through this… However on a Monday morning everyone speaks ‘Pigeon English’ and that includes us Brits (indeed we are the worst at the English language) It’s wonderful, it’s hilarious, and we share humour in our mistakes from “I’m going to make pee” to “I like to this fruit”.
Once we had woken up with our usual warm up. Monday was a fruitful day. It was our 3rd week as a collective, and we took on our roles. We’ve developed our process into working truly as a collective. Bhavesh is now writing monologues and text for the performance, to a better ability than the rest of us could do - he should be writing this blog for me. Damon has started to create some animations - and they’re absolutely fantastic. I’ve never had the experience of working with someone who makes animations, so seeing his process is delightful. It’s like the first time I worked on photoshop several years ago, you look at the programme and it’s just too many buttons and functions to cope with and he’s a whizz. We shared ideas with him, and he shared his - basic rule. Let the animator think of animations, he came up with better ideas than us combined.
Luna is our resident scenographer, where does the audience go, what props, what set, so many questions that have been made as a collective - this is because the performers are on stage, so some ideas would have left no room for us to perform - which would be an abstract performance! We also have Pepa who is a fine artist and videographer, we’ve spent the week considering stories to share for a video that will show the 12 artists with real, organic and authentic stories to share, to show our audience who we are - it’s a lovely concept.
Then this is where I share something that’s new, in fact it’s delightful. My original phrase for this is ‘funny’ but on reflection, it was actually very serious. I went to the studio by myself and spent time exploring embodied movement by my self. Dance isn’t my platform, I’m a humorous live artist. I’m considering a PhD in using ‘Play’ as a means to create… Well that’s another 2000 word proposal.
I’m just so happy that I’ve found passion in something that’s internal and embodied, I’ve wanted to grasp something similar for years and found it very hard for myself to get into it, but now I’m taking myself to the studio to work independently on it. That’s made the residency worthwhile for me.
On Tuesday the incredibly brilliant Pau Pons came and disseminated her practice through a presentation and practical workshop. She’s part of El Pont Flotant theatre company who create brilliant, intellectual, and amazing performances. I would fly back to Spain to see some of the projects she spoke about. They’re working process is to find a theme, one they are living, so when unemployed they created a show about jobs and the struggles in and out of work, then they say the most important thing to create a cohesive show is that the form must match the theme. So the scenography, audience, shape of the project matches that of an office, an interview etc… A show about generations includes children and grandparents on stage… A show of love, set as a site-specific wedding.
Then on Wednesday we did a collective improvisation, with no theme, structure, a creative crashing - this isn’t a bad thing. It made us realise (for us, in this project at least) that we need form, structure, and themes to make our work tight and cohesive. We also listened to Cristina share her amazing monologue that is written in three languages and she speaks this as a solo. It’s brilliant and raw with mistakes throughout. It couldn’t be better. She hopefully won’t ‘perfect’ it or learn the words, because it was so lovely to see someone organically share a work with the group - Fabio has a similar speech also that will be shared on the 28th, they’re both very honest with their delivery and it makes the work authentic and allows the facts and stories to be heard - making an audience member connect.
Speaking of Fabio - this is what was shared on the Thursday morning. Fabio and I went to see a local homeless man, who we see and speak to everyday. But this time we unfortunately met him in confrontation with a neighbour. Suddenly Fabio (and I, but I cannot speak the language) were in the centre of the conflict, with 5 people sharing their stories, their opinions on the man we see daily. It was a strange and eye opening event. We decided early on in the project that if we are in Valencia that the people of Valencia we should give attention to, understanding the people of, this morning certainly provided us with lots to talk about.
Friday is a short day to reflect on, we reflected - took the past months work and put it in order, making a process performance to share for the 28th. Let’s give it a good go. This residency has been amazing. I’ve learnt more than my entire first year at university in 5 weeks with references and how to create contemporary theatre.
I’m signing out with love, for Peshkar for the opportunity, for those in the residency, and for the city of Valencia
