I have been - like many theatre workers - mourning all the projects that were en route on the day that theatres were closed. I was in a rehearsal room - one that had been incredibly rich, creative and driven. The last afternoon was fraught - with all of us finding it hard to keep going as the accumulating energy from Europe was buffeting this company. We hailed from all over….lockdown in Italy, Spain, Germany had artistic and domestic implications for collaborators. It was a Monday and travelling home, I was fortunate enough to be with a director who I hadn’t seen in a while so we were together when an hour later we checked facebook for the news of cancelled shows. My As You Like It Company were due to play that evening on their regional tour. So on March 16th 2020, I scampered out of a rehearsal room with all my stuff in that room ready for the next rehearsal. Weirdly I often think of my beautiful research books sitting quietly gathering dust, bits of clothing, a water bottle, pencils, post its - sitting next to my little perch that I shared with a wonderful assistant movement director - and I still find it really hard not to well up at the thought of that little imagined still life of redundant and abandoned rehearsal room life. There is a story for every theatre worker on that day.
The ensuing weeks was a series of plans toppling, crumbling and landing in dust - the nuance between cancelled and postponed became critical. My agent called to say Chichester have cancelled The Village Bike, ( stomach lurch and mourning for the potential of a new creative relationship with Nicole Charles). I want to call her and then I desist because I feel sad and shy. The week of R&D with Dante or Die to return to a project that I have found completely revelatory…and here I mourn for the ex prisoners whose stories were at the centre of that week, I mourn for the student assistant movement director who was so excited to observe and learn….and then there was the opening night of Europeana….we were a whisker away from the premiere of an extraordinary piece of work tracking a full century of ‘progress’ full of movement and song and humanity. That work will happen one day, but when and how are embedded in hope and in the kinship of that company and the resilience of Maria Aberg.
I saw that company many times subsequently and with a group of actors we continued to meet on Zoom for a movement session all through the months that followed.
That hour saved me.
Maybe that is overstating it - it is the hour that let me feel like a movement director. All of us moving ‘together’ in readiness for a future date. It was as together as we could be and we did always emerge centred and connected even though I was desperate to hear their breath and to be in the presence of their full bodies…I missed seeing their legs and hearing their breath the most…. Embracing all the making ‘do’ and ‘it will do until we can be together again’….is heartbreaking and funny at the same time. Embracing and loving imperfection is what I love about movement with actors….and we are really really good at imagining …’ as you place your fore head to the floor imagine me adding a tiny weight on your sacrum and the back of your head, with that weight your spine would lengthen and open”….or ‘glance to your right shoulder and locate one of the ensemble - know who is standing next to you on each side’…we are masters of feeling and imagining and every lock down session has been fuelled by both. I was lucky I knew everyone’s tendencies really well as we had moved together for hours since January, so it was incumbent on me not to fritter away our embodied memories and experiences. It was however a process of constantly filling in the gaps like being present in three times zones simultaneously - a live movement session with live memory and an enth of connection built through the screen - I learnt though that I had to always bring the best energy that I had and I had to care for them and their actuality, and that we had to reach our finger tips and breath to the its most expansive and generous capacity.
I now sit on the cusp of going back into new creative relationships whilst holding on tightly to those that have weathered the uncertainty