Sunday, 27 July 2008

The beep stops her smiling

The beep stops her smiling
She enters
Her hand in her pocket
She says

Out in the foyer
There are lots of people waiting
Two people sitting down
One standing
One is listening to his i-pod

Music comes on

Ildiko makes 3 steps
Somewhere she's never been before
They play Grandmother's footsteps
via text

Ildiko hides behind the sea
She has a screen for a head
She dances on a flight case
She hands over her phone
And her hand

They dance
The distracted dance of a texting teenager
Their technology leads
They follow

One is asked to strip
One whistles
One dances
One stands with her back to me
Knock knock
She says

He wears his shades
Nobody puts baby in the corner
Time of my life
Goosebumps
Three legged pig
Gene Kelly
Can't eat him all at once

The music stops

There is something engaging about watching you text
Wondering who is going to pull the trigger first
Waiting to find out what happens next
Rosie sleeps
Ildiko leaves

The phone is left on the floor
I am watching
Waiting for it
To vibrate
To wake up
For us to move on

They spoon

The End

Monday, 23 June 2008

Hurry sickness


I am thinking about the idea of waiting and waiting for something or someone and being a waiter. I was a waiter once and there was something interesting about the passing of time. Fast when you were busy and slow when you were not. As if it was better being a waiter when you weren't waiting. I like the idea of serving our audience food and the idea of waiting for your food to arrive. There is a point in a conversation where you are distracted by the food either arriving or not arriving. I like the idea of the real time of cooking in performance. I was thinking maybe we should perform to less people at a time but be there for a longer duration as the food is served. Possibly from the kitchens at Clarendon. Possibly from a microwave - the idea of readymade meals. This made me think of Hurry Sickness - the need to do everything fast and cut down the waiting time e.g. putting something in a microwave for 99 seconds instead of a hundred seconds so you spend less time keying in the digits. I think of the waiter in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life waiting for Mr Creosote to explode or taking us on a journey. I think of Manuel from Fawlty Towers and the drunken waiter in Dinner for One (A German film Ildiko will be able to tell us about). I think of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and the hierarchy of the restaurant. I think of waiting for your dinner guest to arrive. All these ideas are somehow connected and I would like to try and draw them together more during the Readymade Residency.

Friday, 20 June 2008

The Waiters

How much of human life is lost in waiting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


Waiting is a trap. there will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count
Dr Robert Anthony

I never thought it was worth it, you know waiting for your love, and then I felt your kiss, I could wait forever for this
Anon

People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting
French Proverb

Waiting is Painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering
Paulo Coelho

Rosie

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Waiting


I like this idea of waiting and waiting spaces. Have briefly worked before with the idea of non-places; places in between, where only waiting happens, before you go, before you arrive, waiting for time to go by, waiting for someone else to appear, just waiting.

Also been thinking about gestures - un-concious and conscious as we wait, aware that we might be being watched, unaware that we are being watched, the effect that waiting has on our bodies physically.

Also - as I am eager to play with merging film footage and performers (particularly black and white) I like the idea of everyone collecting one waiting moment /sequence from a film to play with.

Rosie

Friday, 6 June 2008

Waiting for Time and Space

Well I am proud of myself for actually working out how to write an entry on this blog! Well done me. Anyhow, I am very intrigued and excited that other people are interested in the idea of waiting, in all its forms. It is something that keeps rearing its head in my own writings and work. When the inclination takes me, I write rather sporadic diary entries in my note books and waiting seems to be a recurring theme that runs through them all. Some of them are just drunken, self-pitying rambles but there is some good material to be gleaned from them all and they all have a time and place. As I said at the initial meeting for this project, I am particularly interested in durational performance at the moment and this seems to be the perfect subject matter for such a performance; everyone, even the audience, is waiting. Also, the idea of waiting spaces mentioned early in the blog interests me. I'm sure we have all spent a vast amount of time waiting in such places, especially transport buildings and hotels where the anticipation levels are always high. I think there is something in this idea which we could explore, even if it is just one of many starting points.

Tim

Thursday, 5 June 2008

Finally...

Finally I have managed to get in the BLOG and have some time for some ideas!

I like the idea of a waiting room, I also like the idea of someone lost. SOme of the ideas we have been playing with for Them and US circles around this but the idea that someone is stuck somewhere and is trying to find a way out, is in a place that comes from nowhere and leads nowhere but they are trying to find a way forward...

I started a game on my MA which was about a woman haunting people's desktops which I thought I could mention. I will try and put the file online for people to download and try out if we are succesful with the project.

This is an old inspiration but I think it is still interesting from a performative/game/narrative perspective:
http://www.onlinecaroline.com/

Rachel