Recharged

I haven't posted in a while.  It was not really deliberate.  I kind of had a bit of a wake up moment which involved instituting a new exercise regime, and reorganising the house a little bit to facilitate said routine.  I also restarted Suzuki workshops and was workshopping 'Entropia'.  With all that going on, I should have had a lot to say, but was kind of so into the actual doing that I wasn't ready to process any of it.  My life came to a bit of a screeching halt last week, however, as my mum came to town and stayed with me for a few days to celebrate her and my birthdays (they are a week apart).  Everything stops when she visits because I am too busy trying to keep her entertained to actually achieve anything.  She left three days ago, but with her departure came my 46th birthday and the flu.  As it turns out though, these couple of days of enforced down time has given me time to process everything that has been going on and it is all good.

I had a meeting with my residency mentor today to check on how I am travelling and where I move on to next.  I always enjoy my meetings with Ben.  He asks stimulating questions and refers me to stimulating sources.  These conversations with him are probably the most exciting interactions I have at the moment.  Don't read anything into that!

We chatted about what was happening with 'Entropia'.  For those of you who don't know, 'Entropia' is a short play I have been trying to develop within the constructs of Vorticism.  It started as an exploration of Humpty Dumpty, but has turned into a political polemic about Tony Abbott's lies and the budget proposal.  The process has been really rigorous and I have added a dramaturg to my team.  Zeynep has challenged my work and content in wonderful ways, demanding that I adhere to the constraints of the style.  My hardest challenge has been to avoid symbolism.  It is so woven into my concept of theatre making that it is really easy to overlook where I have put it, or not realise that is what I have done.  What has emerged is quite fascinating, and certainly different to most of what I see on stage at the moment - in Melbourne, anyway.  I should point out that it is not in the style of Wyndham Lewis's "plays".  I don't consider them drama - more word art - and he was not a dramatist himself, he was just experimenting in a different direction to Ezra Pound.  I have written four drafts so far, and have one more workshop to go.  I will then finalise the play and put it to bed.  It is too short to perform on it's own - it probably only runs to around 25 minutes - so it will need to be performed as part of a mixed season somehow, somewhere.  I guess I will have to write a companion piece - which is exactly my next step in the residency over the next two months:)