Future Conditional Notes for Tomorrow

An anthology of women in theatre

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known and hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the copyright holder.

Cover Design: Marco Donati Future Conditional Cover Painting: Notes for Tomorrow Dorthe Kærgaard

Lay-out: Rina Skeel

Editorial Board: Gilly Adams Edited by Geddy Aniksdal Gilly Adams Maggie Gale Julia Varley Geddy Aniksdal Maggie B. Gale Production Co-ordinator: Julia Varley Luciana Bazzo

Translations: Gilly Adams, Ana Imširović Dordević, Julia Varley and the authors

Thanks: Sarah Duthie, Lars Vik

For further information concerning The Magdalena Project and other events mentioned in this book please consult www.themagdalenaproject.org

Published by The Open Page Publications with the support of Odin Teatrets Forlag, Grenland Friteater and The Magdalena Project Preface

Whilst the last book of The Open Page Publications, The Magdalena Project@25 - Legacy and Challenge, gave us an opportunity to look back at the early beginnings, as well as the later years of our theatre network’s existence, this new book is an attempt to take a step in a different direction, into the future, asking where we are going and what we will do when we get there. The Editorial Board of The Open Page Publications has always been driven by the need to encourage theatre women to record their experiences of making work, whether within the context of a group or working alone. The thirteen volumes of The Open Page journals and three books, the latest of which is this Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow, have given us much more than we asked for: personal stories, notes on significant influences, practice, pedagogy and, frequently, reflections on the perplexing question of how to pass knowledge and experience on to another group or generation of women. The Open Page has woven together the threads of different women’s lives through and across time and different conti- nents. In particular we have enjoyed celebrating the work of women who have survived whilst always seeming to be swimming against the current. There is a coherent development from the early Magdalena Project Newsletters, which consisted of short articles and announcements of upcoming events, to The Open Page, in which we explored subjects more deeply and stimulated first-time writers to publish alongside more experienced practitioners. The shift from the Newsletter to The Open Page came about naturally in the same way as going from journals to books, from articles to longer essays has done. Twenty-five years of work with the Editorial Board has given us the opportunity to develop our own writing and to keep an ongoing critical and constructive dialogue amongst ourselves and with the other contributors. In the last few years, for different reasons and in different ways, we have found ourselves deeply affected by thoughts of tomorrow and the place of the future in our current work. In the process of making this book we discovered that we had chosen a difficult theme - something many of the authors reflect upon. Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow is an anthology of essays, poetry and articles, short and long. The common aim, expressed in individual ways, is to articulate hopes and fears, demands and aspirations for a future that we share with each other, while also remembering the women who have walked before us.

Gilly Adams, Geddy Aniksdal, Maggie B. Gale and Julia Varley Holstebro, July 2017 CONTENTS

81 Gilly Adams (UK) Walking Westwards 5 Preface 99 Patricia Ariza (Colombia) 9 Maggie B. Gale (UK) Knowledge Future Thinking 107 Madeline McNamara (Aotearoa New Zealand) 17 Anna Andrea Vik Aniksdal (Norway) Divine Doubt Thoughts from the Future 120 Luciana Martuchelli (Brazil) 19 Brigitte Cirla (France) Mare Serenitatis Utopian Dreams 126 Meg Brookes (UK) 22 Marisa Naspolini (Brazil) Get Sh*t Done 100 Years and a Few Stones 129 Julia Varley (UK/Denmark) 25 Jill Greenhalgh (UK) The Swing Facing Up 159 Lis Hughes Jones (UK) 39 Margaret Cameron (Australia) Lis - Sian - Ann: Moments of Retrieving, Remembering, Recreating Lay Me Out 170 Raquel Carrió (Cuba) 52 Kordula Lobeck (Germany) Building a Structure Present Futures 172 Dawn Albinger (Australia) 57 Jo Randerson (Aotearoa New Zealand) Reflection on Hope Amazing Babes 186 Pilar Restrepo (Colombia) 60 Parvathy Baul (India) Living and Dying as a Dream Practising Ancient Wisdom 190 Zoe Gudović (Serbia) 64 Katarzyna Kułakowska (Poland) One Part of Me Somebody’s Daughter 197 Geddy Aniksdal (Norway) 68 Carolina Pizarro (Chile/Denmark) Notes for Tomorrow Changing the Present 218 Dorthe Kærgaard (Denmark) 76 Jess Brookes (UK) Paintings Magdalenas 221 Notes on Contributors 78 Roxana Pineda (Cuba) 227 Photo Credits Crucial Moments Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Maggie B. Gale Future Thinking

Like others whose work is in this volume, the task of writing down thoughts about the future has been remarkably difficult: I have resisted writing my contribution for some time. The future feels bleak in many respects and the world feels like a place in a great deal of trouble! I am a historian. We write about the past. We construct ‘versions’ of the past in our writing. We bring imagination to fact. We work on a balance between ideas, hunches, nostalgia, memory and data. If I am being honest, I don’t want to have to write about the ‘future’: the ‘future’ feels insecure. However you look at it, things are not great in terms of ecology, escalations of armed conflict, psychotic or mega- lomaniacal presidents, social and economic inequality. And in the area where I work, things are not looking good in terms of educational provision. There is an overwhelming feeling of ‘the end of things’ in the air: the end of good times, the end of plenty, the end of the ‘known quantity’, of the familiarity of things around us; the end of political sanity, and not just because of the situation in the middle east, or the recent Brexit vote in the UK and the US elections.

Future time I am in my early fifties. My hair is going white and my bones creak in new and strange ways, many of which are none too welcome. If I feel like this now - how will I feel in five years, ten years, twenty years or maybe even thirty years? Or maybe five is more than I will get. When I was young I spent a lot of time thinking about the future, in quite concrete terms - I will do this, then I will do that, then maybe I could do the other. Now, I often fantasise about a future where I do only my favourite things, but all of the time - reading, poking about in the garden pretending that I know what I am doing, making things - knitting, sewing, writing - lying around watching old films in my pajamas, travelling, visiting friends, the sea, museums and art galleries, going to the theatre - but only ever seeing performances that will move me and stay with me forever - cooking food for friends, playing with grandchildren, having dogs again, swimming… In this future I will have had enough of ‘work’ - no more meetings, no more difficult colleagues, no more problems to solve, no more sinking feeling when I sit down to a computer screen - maybe no computer screen at all? Here simply speaking, life will be my work and I can bring my ‘work skills’ to use where needed or where I see fit.

8 9 Maggie B. Gale Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

This is a future imagined in the here and now though, as a response to my own being funded. Our Arts Council, the UK’s main subsidy body, until recently paid sense of feeling unsettled in the present. I am in a well-paid job where I have some reviewers to review shows that they had already funded - to make sure the work is status, I have a lovely, clever, and funny partner, I have two great kids - young men good - and that they were right to fund it in the first place. If it is not good then… who are tall and strong - one son who has just gone off to do a seven-year course at well it may not be funded again, or, in fact, it may be. It depends on who looks university and another who is sixteen, funny, thoughtful and a bit at odds with the at the funding form. I recently was told confidentially, by an arts officer for the world - like his mum. I have a deadline on a book that I don’t really want to write Arts Council, that if an application for funding ticked certain boxes then it didn’t - the research is sometimes exciting, mind-boggling, surprising, thought-provoking really matter about the projected content of the work - it would get funding. I - but how to put all of this into a book? And a book that I suspect, in reality, very would be giving it away to say here what the tick-box categories might be, suffice few people will read? But now I have a contract and a submission date with a to say they are generated by the most bizarre criteria which place theatre as one of publisher and so… I have to write it and maybe you will be one of the few who many tools in the toolbox of social engineering. read it in a year or two! Will theatre in the future have no state funding? Domestic and professional I had a desire to write this book when I applied for the money to do it. I was driven life has changed for artists and theatre makers and the old world, from which I sat by an absolute conviction of its worth and its potential as a future project - I imagined and imagined a future, is no longer available to offer support. If I am honest, some a future for it, which included it. That’s part of the trouble with future-thinking: you theatre makers of my generation have exploited available funding, they rely on it think up a future you might not want when you get there. When I future-think my with a somewhat smug sense of entitlement. They will not survive without funding own future as full of pleasures, I know that I will, in reality, always work in some way or streams. They are also unwilling to move over and let new work flourish on their another, and that if the things I truly enjoy now become everyday and not activities for pitch. Yet at the other end of the economic spectrum, many companies in Third special days I work towards, then they just won’t be the same. Theatre are giving over rehearsal space and administration and touring support to young companies for free or as a barter. This is rare outside Third Theatre, but there are so many funded companies and building-based organisations in the Imagining a future UK who could afford to do this. I sometimes wonder if subsidy produces inequity, One of the new younger generation women in this volume of The Open Page struck competitiveness, resentment and - more than anything - waste. This is not a a real chord with me, when she wrote that she has no idea what she might be doing popular view. Maybe I am being unfair, but I did have to remind a friend the other in ten years’ time: that if she thought back to ten years ago, she would have been day that whilst they found having to write a two thousand word ‘statement of completely surprised to know then, exactly where she is now, and what she is doing intent’ for funding tedious, they were likely be given £32,000 to make some work with her life. Future-thinking is very different for different generations. When I was at the end of it, and that this didn’t seem like too much of an ask to me. Nor, to be her age thoughts of the future helped me to pull myself forward in time from the honest, did it seem like their budget was reflective of their actual need. present. A distraction from the present, they were more about being open to possi- There is lot of new work going on though, many new generation theatre bilities, placing myself in a position where I might have life choices. I don’t know makers are beginning to flourish and to design a future that rejects the existing how much this is possible now. constrictions on the making of work. They want and need to make work, and they For young people there is no question that it is much, much harder to survive are finding new ways to make it. This makes me feel very optimistic. Many artists in the here and now, in the present. I think that for many, just being able to stay are taking the initiative and working with organisations other than arts funders in the present takes up a lot of time, focus and energy: so when we ask them how - using old commercial buildings to work in, on low rent, bartering their labour, their thoughts about the future affect them in the here and now, we must seem a placing arts practice at the centre of urban regeneration projects, working for low bit crazy. They don’t have time to future-think when they have so much future wages, but making the work they want to make. Some in academia have criticised to think about. When you are in your fifties, the future is shorter and yet seems to this makeshift, insecure environment: it is inevitably exploitative, it is not sustain- creep up on you much, much quicker. able and so on. Some of the best theatre I saw in my twenties (in the 1980s) was For artists in the UK rents are high and wages are low. In the UK arts sector made in such a way though - it was intense, inventive, raw and full of integrity. I state funding for new, makeshift, experimental work has largely dried up. Theatre am not saying all good art is poor art, but I am saying that for those who are future- companies have to engage with different and often pointless cultural agendas to thinking about the possibility of making theatre, there are lots of tried and tested get the funding upon which many have become dependent: they have to quan- models which come back in cycles: some for times of plenty, others for times that tify their ‘impact’ - this many people saw this much of our work, and this many are frugal. So when, as a historian, I future-think theatre I remember the many people commented on it positively, and this many people shared their thoughts times we have been told theatre is in crisis, theatre is a dying art, theatre has no on facebook, twitter, whatever… Theatre has to have an audience who can artic- social function other than for an elite and so on. But I just don’t believe it - and it ulate its worth as framed by a ‘questionnaire/data culture’ in order for it to justify is important for our future generations that we refute this belief.

10 11 Maggie B. Gale Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Future educating learn, to help them fulfil their potential. For me, teaching is about ‘encounter’. I am not great however at seeing work by new young companies: I feel a discon- There are different kinds of knowledge: firstly, information is readily available and nect in a way their regular audiences may well do when they see ‘old’ work that I we should not be ‘delivering’ this. But knowledge in the shape of tools for critical am more drawn to. I am drawn to performers who have worked for many years: I thinking is not readily available and this is what we should be teaching. We should connect to them because of their assured artistry, their conveyance of confidence - be training students to be critical and creative thinkers, to operate as cultural enough to energise a risky presence on stage - they are artisans with a level of skill observers and interventionists. It is not what you have in front of you that matters that can only be developed and embodied over time, they can perform on an edge as much as how you see it, what you think it is doing, what you do with it and how because they know precisely where that edge is. This takes slow time. Slow time is you articulate this to the world. This is what we should be teaching students. hard to attain. The economy of the future does not feel like it will allow for such Universities should be places of learning not of consumption. a slow time: the time to absorb, ferment, explore. I don’t know how these kinds of performers and theatre makers will develop in the future if there are no economic structures to support slow time, slow training, slow processing. But then again - Writing history: the past in the present many of those I pay good money to see now started with nothing - a bit of training, and a will to explore, to work - they earned money outside of theatre work and so … I confess that I am often lost in all the dimensions of time, had less time also. Maybe our new generation makers will reject the speed of quick that the past sometimes feels nearer than the present lucrative work in order to force a slow learning into their professional lives and and I often fear the future has already happened. practice: or maybe they will do one, to pay for the other, just like their forebears. Deborah Levy, Hot Milk, 2016, London: Hamish Hamilton, p. 188 Maybe they will keep the future at bay for a while. Maybe they too intuit that art can make small changes, with great frequency. So the future does not have to be I am a historian. At the moment I spend most of my working time digging into the about loss, even if it is a very different world that we are future-moving into. past, or digging up versions of the past: in books, in archives, in public libraries and in my own imagination. I do this to find useful ways of bringing the past into the present: to find ways of understanding the past and the present in relation to each The future is rolling towards us other; so that in fact, we might better shape our future. It is sometimes a dynamic Some of the chapters in this collection talk a lot about the disaster that is rolling exercise through which I gain a better understanding of who writes which history, towards us from the future, into our present. This future, which we might have why and for whom. once imagined to be very different, feels more inevitable. I don’t know how we I am aware that I am trying to write another history, a new history that will survive emotionally with the weight of evidence about forced migration, rising probably only end up being just a nuanced version of a history already written. I levels of unimaginable poverty, ecological catastrophe. Technology is a distrac- want to be convinced of my own objectivity as a historian, but to pretend I am tion: whilst those who imagined the future in the 1910s and 1920s might have any more objective than most others would be a bit of a self-delusion. Most of seen the robotic machine-world as one which would make life better for humanity my career I have written predominantly about the work women do in theatre - as as a whole, technology now is largely concerned with consumption, money, profit performers, writers, directors, producers, observers and so on. So in all honestly any and colonisation. If I future-think with this in mind too much, then I just give up: history I write will ‘over-feature’ women’s work as a means of kicking back at their it is too much to contemplate. constructed absence or marginalisation in histories written largely by men. I am not So what can I do? I am primarily a teacher and a researcher. With regard to so bothered about this. It is a good thing. teaching, universities are very concerned with delivering to their ‘customers’. My work on The Open Page over the years has been underpinned by a similar This filters down to us as teachers in terms of the demand that we deliver through kind of driving force. Women are making vital work in theatre all over the globe, new interfaces - podcasts, moodles, online supervision and so on. I don’t really and the network born out of The Magdalena Project has given at least three gener- mind about any of this, but I think many universities are missing the point. They ations of women a connection to each other, a sense of lineage, of heritage and exploit students - the cost of inflexible accommodation, the high cost of basic continuity. I want to be part of this, to know that the work we do - whatever shape provisions - and assume that students won’t fight back. As a teacher I would it takes - can be marked in time, somehow documented, somehow located as our encourage them to do just this. Universities don’t need to make so much money own history but also as part of wider histories from which too much women's work out of them - they make enough from the fees students have to borrow money to has been excluded in the past. pay for their education. As a teacher I remind students that we are educators who The tides of history keep drawing women's achievements back into the general work ‘in relation’ to them, we do not ‘give’, rather, we ‘engage’ them in a journey ebb and flow of the sea of history. In my research I constantly come across women of learning - it sounds trite, but it is true - we are there to help them learn how to who have had extraordinarily creative, productive and long careers writing plays,

12 13 Maggie B. Gale Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow acting, writing screenplays, running theatre companies and so on. Yet their work The V & A archive contains hundreds and hundreds of letters, bills, scripts, just seems to get washed away in time - even though they were household names in photographs, press cuttings and so on. We wanted our book to reflect on the their day, their achievements are rarely embedded in our histories. They still have different aspects of Leigh’s personal and professional life which her status as very little written about them. In researching the book I am currently working on, one half of a couple who for a while represented British ‘acting royalty’ had I have to be conscious that I am writing a social history of ‘performance cultures’ often obscured - always someone’s wife, muse, leading lady, errant mother and in the early decades of the twentieth century - not about gender, not only about so on. The letters reveal the depth of her friendships with other actors and film- women’s work. But it is very difficult not to become distracted by finding an odd makers, they reveal her as a sharp critic and an avid, voracious reader. There is play by a woman, or a piece of unpublished autobiographical material by an actress, little vanity, but a great deal of acerbic wit, and much evidence of the respect in crumbling away in an archive box. Perhaps the trick is to write women into history which she was held by her professional colleagues. In these boxes of ‘stuff’ left without anyone noticing that this is what you are doing? Oddly, if they become behind and filtered and catalogued by two generations of her family, as well as one of many - male or female - used to build a historical picture then their presence by the museum itself, there is much to facilitate a complex portrait of an actress becomes somehow normalised. usually either depicted as too beautiful and oversexed for her own good, or as an One of the aspects of history and history-making which I guess comes out actress who was never as good as her husband, but rode on his reputation and his of working on women's oeuvre, is a fascination with the ‘things that get left industry connections in formulating her own career. We should of course note behind’, the ephemera of professional lives which seem unimportant, the flotsam that Olivier was not a film actor of any consistent repute until much later in his and jetsam, the kind of historical ‘clues’ that we rush past in search of the more career, and that in fact Leigh shot to stardom on a global level well before and ‘significant’ things we might find. The things left behind for someone from the beyond Olivier - she is also amongst the few women awarded two Oscars for her future to ponder or explore. I have written a number of ‘biographical’ studies of film work. theatre makers, where I have tried to build links between the person, their lives Vivien Leigh did not throw things away, she recycled clothes - regularly selling and the work they produced. In doing so I made use of such clues as others might the best ones to an up-market second hand clothes shop in Chelsea, London - left have passed over - why would a well-known actress keep scrapbooks of letters lists of furniture and household items to be mended while she was away, meticu- where she has only included cut-outs of the signatures of those who have written lously catalogued clothes, shoes and possessions when she went away on tour. She them, and a few simple lines? Why did a well-known and lucrative playwright managed her domestic life carefully and with great humility. She also carefully and novelist keep all his plumber’s bills and reminder letters to the BBC about managed her relationships with the huge number of fans who wrote to her on a non-payment of fees? Why did a woman playwright write an ‘autobiography’ of regular basis - some even hounding her with requests which clearly evidence their a place (Covent Garden), but left almost no autobiographical traces of herself? inability to understand that she wasn’t actually Scarlet O’Hara or indeed Blanche Some artists perhaps have more sense of their futures than others? Or perhaps Dubois (her other Oscar winning screen role in A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951). they can’t let go of their past and so keep it all, catalogued and ordered, or Leigh kept her correspondence with friends who had nothing to do with theatre or jumbled up, for someone else to make sense of? But does anyone really have such film, alongside her letters to and from people like Noël Coward, or George Cukor, a strong sense of the future? Constance Collier, Bernard Shaw and John Gielgud. This was an age where I recently wrote a chapter for a collection of essays on the iconic mid-twen- people wrote to each other - and one can re-build half conversations, encoun- tieth century actress Vivien Leigh: someone about whom much has been written, ters - both pleasant and unpleasant - and even track the development of friend- although very little by way of critical evaluation of her actual work. Much of ships over decades through these ‘leftovers’: a short letter from Martha Graham the existing writing about Leigh focuses on her role as Scarlet O’Hara in Gone congratulating Leigh on her moving performance as Blanche Dubois; a letter from with the Wind (1939), or on her relationship with the actor Laurence Olivier to Coward admonishing her that she needs to rest more; a note from Marlon Brando whom she was married for some twenty years. The book we edited required that telling her that she is much more ‘groovy’ (he actually used this word) than he our authors made heavy use of the Vivien Leigh Archive, miraculously acquired had assumed. For someone with such an extraordinary life, these are the markers by the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Theatre and Performance collection in of ordinariness - lists, birthday letters, reminder notes. They are also markers of 2013. I say miraculously because Leigh memorabilia is still hugely marketable history. and museums have little money for such purchases. Even as a historian I find it The Open Page as a project, collects the same kinds of evidence in the ways difficult to understand how private collectors pay so much money for what are in which theatre women reflect on their everyday lives and their work. Whilst essentially bits of paper! Call me a philistine historian but it feels ethically and some of us on the editorial board often sigh at the difficulty in finding new women morally insane that a script from a film - albeit one of the best-selling films of not connected to the Magdalena or Transit networks to write for us - it is quite all time - with working markings by the leading actress could be auctioned for as amazing that the publication makes ‘history’ from these networks. I work on the much as half a million pounds. journal as someone who spends a lot of my time looking at the past as a means of

14 15 Maggie B. Gale Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow critiquing the present. But with The Open Page my work as a historian has often Anna Andrea Vik Aniksdal been to shape and preserve the present for the future. When artists make work I don’t believe they spend much energy thinking about its future - I don’t think Leigh was thinking about the future when she kept all of her ‘stuff’ in boxes - she Thoughts from the Future was concerned to document the present and the immediate past. As a historian however, I have to engage in what I call ‘future thinking’ - I am writing for my own generation but also with some hope of writing for an imagined future generation. I don’t know if an ‘un-gendered’ history is even possible - and so for now, I will carry on sneaking in women’s work in the histories of performance I write, work which the sands of ‘masculinist time’ have allowed to be obscured. At least if women’s theatre history can be dragged into I find the future to be a somewhat abstract term. The future is in ten, fifty, eighty the present from its past - from production histories, adverts in trade magazines, years from now, and it is tomorrow. When I think about the future, maybe five or autobiographies, books and unpublished works, from higgledy-piggledy archives ten years from now, I first imagine my daily life. I imagine my morning routines, or meticulously catalogued ones where you have to really search for the oddities my office space, my home. I imagine still looking forward to the autumn every and bits of ‘stuff’ deemed unimportant, to fan-based online collections - then year, looking forward to the beginning of new seasons and projects. I might have it might become an assumed presence and necessity for future generations of moved house. Maybe I have children. women in theatre. I imagine my life and work being as intertwined as now, and hope it is still not a problem. I hope I ride my bicycle all the time, and that I have mastered new skills. I imagine the world around me being more turbulent. I fear there will be more religion-related conflicts. More greed and fear, both rational and irrational. I fear there will be more inequality. I worry about the climate, and I worry that things in general will have taken a turn for the worse. But I hope I am wrong. Sometimes there are some notions pointing in a better direction. Maybe it has to become really bad for us to take some of today's biggest issues seriously. Maybe a common global crisis is what we need to unite for a better tomorrow, to stop focusing on our own people, our own city or country. How do these thoughts shape what I do and how I do it now, in the present? I try to stay alert to what is going on in the world, and to stay opinionated. I try to speak up. I boycott. I try to be open for new experiences and to learn new things. I try to educate myself where I feel I am inadequate. I try to appreciate what I have. I try not to take my current privileged situation for granted. I try to work with talented and inspiring people, and acquire new knowledge through teamwork. I try to work focused on accomplishing goals. I try to stop and think about which direction I want things to progress, and Anna Andrea Vik Aniksdal

16 17 Anna Andrea Vik Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow not necessarily take the most beaten path. I try to make decisions based not only Brigitte Cirla on what is best for me, but what is best as a whole. The Magdalena Project has influenced my life since I was very young, in several ways. Since my first memories of the Magdalena in Wales in 1999, to the Utopian Dreams last one in Santa Clara last year, in 2014. At first, when I was a child, it was just a part of what my mother did related to her work. I was used to tagging along, and did not comprehend the meaning of The Magdalena Project. As I grew older, I understood more of the Magdalena's impact. I was so proud to contribute as a child to The Open Page. And slightly embarrassed later on about what I had said. By hearing about and participating in the different Magdalena events, and by meeting the women involved I perceive the world in a more reflective way. It I profoundly believe that the historic times we are experiencing are moulding and has taught me about solidarity. It has taught me the importance of having a space influencing us. of your own. It has taught me about being a woman and the different conditions Being twenty years old at the time of the sexual revolution, having inherited for women internationally. Most of all it has taught me about dedication to and our mothers' feminist achievements and taken up the torch of their battles, being passion for your profession. the offspring of the post war baby boom generation, the children of parents who experienced two world wars, having lived and worked all our lives in the western Ten years ago, I was eighteen years old, and working in a gallery to save up money countries that make up the G7, we find ourselves at the dawn of old age in a world for a trip to South America, inspired by my mother. I had just turned down a that is being turned upside down. place in a school for New Circus, because it also included horseback riding. (And More than ever I am convinced that the only things that can save us are slightly because of a boy). I had a plan of becoming an artist, and I knew I would art, culture and the capacity to establish relationships, even if these have never be moving to the capital in a few months. I knew I would live in the old loft that prevented war or violence. In a world dedicated to efficiency and money, artistic so many of my family have lived and worked in. creation, deeply vain and useless, proposes imaginary spaces where we can meet I did not know that I would apply to architecture school, or that I would and share. cry when I got in. I did not know that I would move away from everything and In the innocent games that we everyone I knew. I did not know that this would happen on the west coast of used to play - If you only had a year Norway, and that I would stay for five years. I did not know that I would meet my to live, what would you do? - we best friend and boyfriend there. Nor did I know that I would start a company in constructed a complete vision of all the before mentioned loft with the before-mentioned boyfriend, and I definitely that we dreamt of accomplishing did not know that I would regret the decision of not going to the New Circus/ or experiencing... If the same ques- horseback riding school for so many years. tion were put to me now, I would With this in mind, I suspect my thoughts on the future will be as inaccurate as not change how I spend my time, they were ten years ago. But here are my hopes. I hope that the ten years will have my work or projects at all. The made me wiser. I hope that starting a business with my boyfriend was a good idea. future does not exist, we are only I hope that this now three-year-old company will have become more set, and have contained by the present - the a solid base. I hope I will feel more confident in what I do as an architect and what present and its inaccessible dreams. I am as a person. I hope I will become more like my mother. I hope I have learned Our utopias and dreams have not how to solder, build furniture and carve wood. failed: they have constrained, I hope I will not get complacent. shaped, and moulded us. We continue to dream of the impossible and the impossible remains our future. I'm not expecting miraculous solutions or formulas for the difficulties met along the way. In artistic work, the space for liberty is defined Brigitte *Cirla

18 19 Brigitte Cirla Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow by the oppositions, the framework and the limitations. When I was younger I power' but a system that works through contagion) was not an obvious choice at believed that, one day, later on, I would become wise and serene, that there would the outset. Jill Greenhalgh, the founder and inspiration, was looking for an alter- be a successful outcome, a hidden meaning. Now I feel I have fewer resources than native to the usual hierarchical, pyramidic model. She had for a long time acted as before. I still don’t understand the hatred of the 'other', but I have discovered the a kind of Devil's Advocate herself, sometimes even against the gathering itself, and power of time passing, the strength of relationships and the attachment to happi- persisted in inventing other ways of functioning. It is one of the great successes of ness. the network - the viral function of contagion more than direction or authority - On the day that we disappear, everything will continue as before. On that day, because it is the strength of conviction and the energy of one or many women that we will only exist in the memory of those who knew us, who will disappear in their goes to create an event or a meeting and that energy is exponential. turn. We have believed ourselves immortal; we have dreamt of answers, changes, One of the charges against the Magdalena relates to the group of 'grand- transformations, without envisaging illness, death, old age, everyday loneliness. In mothers', the historic channel, who were in their thirties at the birth of the the end, all of this is banal, it is only in going through life that we discover it and Project. The usual reproach is that this is a disguised autocracy, but there is realise its uniqueness, in the same way that each of our neighbours and our contem- another interpretation. The Magdalena Project exists in the first place because it poraries is unique. was essential to these women, for them it was a vital necessity. Each one of us has It was important to dream our lives; it is important in the present to live them, made an impression in a different way: some have created festivals and meetings shaky and dramatically real though they are, in the context of organised terror. We - because they had the facilities that allowed them to envisage that, others have live more and more in a world that seems to dictate our emotions and our thoughts. invested in other ways, but all of them have given an enormous amount of time Confronted by all of that, I re-experience the absolute necessity of reflecting and thought because it was important to them. These regular involvements have calmly in the face of this acceleration of history, to surround myself with all the resulted in faithful friendships, and in these we have discovered that the network tools necessary for thought, for reflection and above all to take time for that of relationships is at least as important as the work itself. reflection. The death toll from the actual migrations in the Mediterranean and I believe that a network like the Magdalena will be extremely important in the elsewhere is greater, however terrorism and isolated acts of terror remain the only years to come. We are no longer defending or employing the rights acquired, but topics that mobilise the media. It is also curious how language slips and slides. We stating philosophically, politically, and socially, the rights of women in a histor- no longer say 'immigrants' but 'migrants' as if people no longer have a country ical period where they are being completely denied and even stamped out. We of origin, as if they came from nowhere; they migrate, they displace themselves, return to the fundamental principles of freedom: freedom of conscience, of the and that single word 'migrants' reduces them to that state. When language slides, female body, freedom of decision making, sexual freedom, the freedom of creation, thinking slides too. all those basic rights that are more and more eroded and trampled upon by the It will never stop: not pointless or significant violence, nor horror, but neither conflicts and battles for power in the world. will beauty, always and above all futile but essential: in our lives, our work, our rela- We never imagined The Magdalena Project could be a weapon but I believe tionships. it will be part of our armament, of our way of fighting, of resisting, of affirming our Having been part of The Magdalena Project since its beginning, has allowed existence. We don't have a choice, whatever our future will be, it is necessary to me, among other things, to perceive different social, political and artistic realities continue to sow the seeds in the belief that one day they will germinate. and finally to let them influence my vision of my own reality. It's easy to believe I believe in the life force. Societies that alienate women, even if those societies that one's own 'place' is the centre of the world; changing that attitude also achieve overwhelming successes, will not be viable in the long term. Other genera- changes one's relationship to one's work and space. tions will come, with different aspirations, different dreams of happiness, of love and I understood very early that, for some of us, to be an artist in one's own reality equality. That will never stop. We will leave our traces on the earth, impressions of and country was a utopian folly that demanded constant courage and determina- our lives, our songs, our words. And those who come after us will catch them. tion. That knowledge has not softened my own challenges and the battles I fight in my own country, but I have also been able to look more clearly at the privilege of my own life. The Magdalena Project was first invented in European democracies to ask questions once again about the place of women in the live arts, but also in society, and to defend the rights won through determined struggles. Certainly, The Magdalena Project swiftly outgrew Europe; the position of women remains a fundamental and unresolved question for many of the women and artists in the world. The horizontal structure of The Magdalena Project (there is no real 'central

20 21 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Marisa Naspolini was not in my rational plans but is essential to be done, lived, and accepted? “Slow down, Marisa,” I say to myself. “Be quiet for a while”. And then images of my thirty-five years of theatre practice come up like scenes from an old movie I saw a long 100 Years and a Few Stones time ago. My first group was in Brasília: we were working with devised theatre using our own teenage experiences and having a lot of fun. It was a pleasure to be together and the work was driven by stories inspired by autobiography. Then came the discovery that creating a character gave an opportunity to be someone other than myself. I understood that theatre could create this means, still strange to me, of experiencing another me. I could be as many women as I wished, in a single life. Last year I turned fifty. Half a century. Half of my life, if I’m lucky enough, some In my twenties I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. At a certain point she would say. Do I want to live for a whole century? How many transformations describes a fig tree as a metaphor for her choices in life. would I be able to go through? How many wars? How many technological revolutions? How many theatre revolutions? Will theatre be important to anyone within From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and fifty years? Will theatre still be important for me? winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was To be fifty has meant diving into crisis. Looking forwards and backwards a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, throughout my life, many times a day. Will I be able to retreat as an artist? For how the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and long will I be able to continue to survive as an autonomous artist in the way I have another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with done for most of my life? Will I be able to reinvent myself as an artist? Every year, queer names and offbeat professions. every day, every second? Have I got enough energy to keep working with the same speed and intensity that I have been doing? I used to identify myself with Plath’s fig tree. Today is the first day of the year: 2016 is just rising. I write while sitting on a chair Time has passed since then. My figs became stones. Now they are part of by the sea. The wind blows without pause and I feel the salty drops of water on my the landscape, no matter what I think or do about them. Theatre has had many face. I am spending a few days in a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Brazil. other shapes and meanings along the way: a means of survival, a dream come true, I come here every year if I can. This is my refuge, my place on earth to look for empti- writing, researching, teaching, acting, directing, publishing, organising festivals ness and find space for new ideas and feelings to emerge. My private paradise. and seminars, stimulating groups and networks. Above all it remains the tool with I walk west and east along the beach as the tide goes up and down, more which I can express my personal opinion to and about the world. than three metres when it is high. Within twelve hours the landscape changes I drink coconut water from the coconut tree beside me, the tree that my father completely - from dozens of planted. It tastes like the sap of life. As I drink it here, looking towards the sea, I wonderful stones shaping natural feel as if I could live forever, more than a hundred years, as some people do in this small lakes on the sand where chil- simple place. Sometimes, time seems to stop here. I talk to my father about legacy. dren sit and play and have fun, to He is seventy-five now. He has always been the one who best encouraged me in a deep green emerald ocean where my theatre career. He used to bring me books and pictures from Greek theatre one can swim and dive without fear. from his international trips when I was young. I look at the sky and see a wonderful To think about legacy becomes a choice, a pleasant choice. It is time to pass the rainbow making a perfect circle around baton on to younger generations. My father and I decide to write a book together the sun. I never saw such a perfect about his work and life. My six-year-old daughter wants to be a dancer, a singer, rainbow. And it has not rained… a “pop star”, in her own words. And she dances with the waves by the sea while I Nature here - and everywhere - is contemplate these two extreme poles with perplexity and joy. I have the feeling I amazing and makes me think everything should write more. Maybe this is my mission and my challenge for the next few years. is possible, including reinventing myself. The stones are there again. They look solid, well structured, firm, but within Every time I come to this place I a few hours they will disappear again, covered by the water. Unusually this year I put myself in a state of openness and don’t feel like preparing a list of wishes and plans. Future is my land of uncertain- try to listen with all my pores, with ties but also my land of dreams and possibilities. What if I live for fifty years more? Marisa Naspolini all my body and soul. What is it that Maybe it’s just time to turn the page and see what comes next.

22 23 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Jill Greenhalgh Facing Up

Things are changing fast. The future, as one ages, seems to rush towards us at a more accelerated pace than in the busyness of youth. The future is of course unknowable - the only certainty is death. But we have had many signs and warn- ings that might predict the consequences of our present actions. Whether we have listened and acted in response to these signs is debatable. This is what has come to my mind in the course of this writing. This piece is made up of fragmentary reflections, stories and contradictions. I have failed to find a tidy circle of thinking because everything I think about just throws up more questions and a deeper sense of subjection.

***

There is turmoil infecting the populations of Europe in the wake and in anticipation of hideous terrorist violence and the lashing out of the alienated. In the Middle East the death toll daily escalates and as families try to find safety, they are incarcerated in inhumane compounds. We see un-fathomable images of the destruction of ancient monuments as though they were merely virtual images on a video game destroyed for titillation. The toppling of remembering. We are heart- broken, but what do we do? History repeats and as we watch what is happening, transmitted with unprecedented immediacy to our TV screens and Facebook pages, there is a scent of Armageddon.

the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

I have no answers only a growing sense of impotence. So I bluster through my confusion in these pages. My concerns and questions are all, for now, that I can offer. And some glimmers of positive movement that might offer possibility.

***

24 25 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Politics in the UK is in the chaos of change. The vote for Brexit surprised I went straight from the last uneventful day at the university to a weekend everyone including the many who regret their protest vote. Government is led meeting in Nottingham with a group of ten British women I have known through now by conservative Theresa May, the second woman prime minister in the theatre for the past thirty-eight years. We have reignited contact and committed history of my country. The opposition Labour Party is in confusion but led, to meeting every four months to debate the next stage of our lives; to support, to at least for now, by a man who holds fast to traditional leftist values and who challenge, to share our theatre journeys. We eat well, drink wine, and take walks refuses to enter the game of mudslinging abuse that characterises our politics. He perhaps. Each time the host proposes provocations that ask us to reflect on our past stands as firm as he can, with his gentle nature, against inequality and racism. promises to ourselves, on what we are now wanting to do, let go of, or to let in, on Simultaneously and opportunistically, all the parties are clamouring to offer their the women who have influenced us, on work we are now engaged in or aspiring to. credentials to advocate balanced gender representation in the halls of power. Our disappointments and regrets. These meetings are reminiscent of the women’s Parallel to all this clamouring a new political party is emerging in Britain consciousness raising groups that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that fuelled the called the Women’s Equality Party. WE. It is gaining momentum and although feminist revolutions we are all now familiar with and beneficiaries of. We have all claiming itself a mainstream political party has a pragmatic approach that levels reached our sixties and we have each achieved something in our careers but we its policies at lobbying for the changes that the feminist movement has long called are together because we are asking “what now” of ourselves and - more poignantly for: equal pay, opportunities and access to education, effective legislation tackling - of our daughters. We all grew with the Women’s Movement and this is the most domestic abuse and violence against women, equal parenting and - so important potent legacy we leave them. Are they prepared? Do they have their survival strat- in this age we live in - equal media treatment. It was founded in March 2015 at egies aligned to their ambitions and dreams? I think so. It feels as though we can do the Women of the World (WOW) Festival in London by Sandi Toksvig, a well- little more for them now than be at the end of the line, with clean linen, central known TV broadcaster and Catherine Mayer, a journalist, and it now has upward heating, tea and home cooked food and wish them luck. of fifty thousand members. For the first time in my life I have joined a political party and I will attend the first annual conference in November 2016. My main *** reason for attending is to witness and to seek faith in the way women, acting in solidarity, might organise - differently. At the very beginnings of The Magdalena Project in 1984/5, when I was just turning In my most optimistic moments it seems to me that the future might hold thirty, I had gathered a large group of women in Cardiff who were inspired by the promise. That the pendulum may at last begin to swing away from the patriarchal idea of making an international women’s theatre festival happen. I had an ideal- politics that have dominated for the last two thousand years. We can acknowledge istic vision of a women’s co-operative endeavour that would allow all voices to be that white, western supremacy includes the privilege of women to ‘further’ them- heard - of decisions reached through a process of consensus. Instead, my impatience selves, to engage equally in politics and commerce without fear but is there danger got the better of me and after a year of meetings, where little more than discussion of ‘liberated’ women simply applying polluted neo-liberalism for their own gains? about a logo ensued, I rose from my seat and angrily stated that I had had enough Will we merely accept the inch when what we have always called for is the mile? of words and I was going to make this Festival happen myself. I flounced from the Sadly, I can, in my less optimistic moments, predict this happening. meeting and went to the bar, ordered a drink and then realised what I had just said, and I shook. Within five minutes Vanya Constant was at my side at the bar. “Okay *** Jill, you are right,” she said, “How can I help?” I am not proud of my behaviour but, in that moment, I understood that it was I who had to take responsibility and lead On 31st May 2016 I left the university job that I have been in for fifteen years. I if I wanted this thing to happen. Thus began a massive learning curve that meant am glad but I also have trepidations. What will I fill my days with - what will get confronting the reality of action over idealism. Over the years of The Magdalena me up in the morning? It took a very dear friend to let me know that this was crazy Project so many women have taken up this baton of leadership to make ‘it’ happen thinking, and was exactly why I should leave. This interjection led to my final deci- and those women have formed the real horizontal collective structure that exempli- sion to take the voluntary severance package offered and flee. I recognised that I fies what can be achieved when first of all taking the reins of responsibility. was on the cusp of becoming a slave to my fears. I leave this secure, well-paid posi- A second lesson that emerged in those very early years was a moment at the tion at the same time as both my daughters and my final students complete their end of the first Magdalena festival at a party in our restaurant. I was standing at education and step out into the ‘real’ world and begin their careers, their lives the door bidding goodbye to many of the artists who had travelled to participate supporting themselves. I have always tried to encourage my students to spend their and I was, for the first time, basking in the glow of having done it. Warts and all, twenties, post university, exploring all they can, finding out what they really want we had made it! One of my closest friends suddenly, six inches from my face, began to do as opposed to panicking and feeling that they have to find immediate mean- a drunken tirade of insults culminating in the condemnation that I was arrogant ingful employment. Some have listened. and self-seeking. I wanted to cry… but something in me understood this as another

26 27 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow lesson. The more one tries to do the more one will attract criticism, possibly justly greed but our own. Somewhere, lining our stomach walls, we have known for a so, and that I had to grow a thicker skin. I didn’t cry. I know that all the women long time that our desire for a convenient, comfortable lifestyle is not sustainable, who have organised Magdalena festivals will have experienced this same confron- but we continue to deny that we may have to curb our spending. Have we deigned tation, in different forms: it comes with the job. to question a capitalist system that relies utterly on the continuing creation of more goods to sell to sustain itself, sucking the earth dry of its natural resources? *** Capitalism relies on us all wanting more. We know, in our bare bones, that this is unsustainable. What if we wanted less? If we demanded less? If we insisted that our I admit I am afraid of the stillness of the mornings I might face when I am no share was smaller? longer responsible for the students who expected me to lead them, inspire them, Neo-liberalism, loosely defined as “a policy model of social studies and challenge them and insist on a daily basis that they strive to be the true authors economics that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the of their lives. I wanted them to achieve much, much more than they had already public sector”,1 has so invisibly seeped itself into our psyche as the natural order decided they were capable of. I wanted them to extend, to reach, and to test of things. What if it had been challenged, by my generation, with more acute themselves; to fail because they were brave enough to risk failure; to be proud of awareness? What if we had noticed the weakening of the Left and played our part themselves because they had risked failure but had not failed. My style of peda- to strengthen it? When did the primary role of government become confined to gogy is less and less accepted in the higher education establishments of the UK. creating and defending markets, protecting private property and encouraging the The universities have become businesses and the students consumers. The image rise of wealth created through unearned income as opposed to earned income? of the hungry soul passionate to learn seems to have withered in the time since This has all happened on our watch. I became a teacher. As a logical consequence to higher education becoming a Can we, as women, strive more effectively, through the Women’s Equality commercial entity the customers are in danger of thinking that they can simply buy Party, our meetings, our organisational endeavours, to offer a potential contempo- their education rather than achieve it; they become aligned to that commercial rary antidote by patiently and fearlessly progressing and taking up more space on paradigm as opposed to defying it. They are being groomed for the global world of the political and social forum? commerce. I wonder how many will survive as artists. Or will Lilith dance in the flames of destruction? The ‘real’ world they enter is so very different from the one I entered forty And the young inherit the Climate Crisis: here again can we deny that our years ago. When I left drama school, I moved to London, squatted in a crumbling actions have created global warming? That our desire for meetings and exchange street of abandoned terraced houses in Camden Town, with windows ‘double and need to defy the isolation we experience justifies the increasing journeys we glazed’ with plastic and a paraffin heater that warmed my tiny room. I worked as a take by plane and car? We know what the emissions from these vehicles produce singing, dancing waitress in The Cockney Tavern near Leicester Square for £5 ster- and what they are doing to the atmosphere. We know that our ecosystems are ling a shift, serving six hundred tourists a night. I worked as a cleaner. I worked in a being destroyed… but still we travel as much as we can. We continue to burn fossil garden centre just off the Kings Road (I loved that job). And I worked as an actress fuels, ignore the deforestation that feeds our desire to eat meat whenever we fancy in anything I could find - all non-paid work. I have no recall of any of this being it. Are we keeping our heads firmly buried in the sand? Are we telling ourselves hard even though I was living on a pittance. I had begun. Money did not seem to that our part in trying to save the planet isn’t going to make any difference be a guiding imperative. anyway, so we might as well keep getting on the planes and driving the cars? What The street of squats where I resided is now gentrified prime and fashionable if we committed to the local and not the international? What if we stayed at home real estate - each of the tiny terraced houses able to command £3,500 a month in and engaged the new technologies to sustain communication? What do we need to rent. Neither my students nor my daughters will be able to afford to live there as lose - to not have any more? they embark on their careers. The housing market in London and increasingly the The young generation’s world is dominated by the internet and by all which outer boroughs is now only accessible to the very rich or speculators in the lucra- it offers and threatens: the ability to connect with anyone on the planet in a split tive buy-to-let market, which has elevated the huge rise in rental costs. second would seemingly have opened up lines of communication but… They, our daughters, our students, are also facing a threatened world with We know that our children spend more and more of their lives on line, on globally interrelated problems. Arguably a world in crisis. They have a different social media, gaming, Twitter, Instagram, communicating through machines as mindset, different fears, and different courage, but similar dreams. They will have opposed to spending physical time in contact with others, playing together and to invent their own strategies for survival. I have to reflect on the legacy we, the learning to tolerate and interact with each other. They are exposed to informa- older generation, may have been complicit in evolving for them. tion and images that we yearn to protect them from, but we cannot. We have We know that the global financial crisis was a result of not only the bankers’ lost control. Internet technology has connected us all virtually but also we have

1. https://vimeo.com/164140117

28 29 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow stopped speaking to each other. Loneliness becomes endemic as does the rise of mental health problems, self-harming, identity crisis and paranoia. I am in India at a Magdalena. My bedroom opens onto the communal lounge. I leave my room to see all my international colleagues gathered from Cuba, Italy, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, UK, sitting together in silence, each one on their laptop communicating with someone else who is not here. We have all come half way around the world to be together and yet we are not together, we are still, more comfortably, in our virtual world. But, of course there are positives. Technology can also be a tool for resistance and change. Paul Robeson, the extraordinary black American singer, actor and Civil Rights activist was, in the 1950s, prevented from travelling abroad after the US government rescinded his passport. He was scheduled to perform in London, a place where he had lived for a while and had begun his acting career. He had a huge fan base in Britain who awaited his return. As a tireless pioneer, he accessed the very first technology enabling cross-Atlantic telecommunications, which was just being developed at the time, to bring his voice to those who so wanted to hear him sing and speak. This advanced technology allowed him to be broadcast despite the attempted silencing imposed by a state so afraid of his political influence. In the 1990s my brother was involved in the Anti-Globalisation movement demonstrating regularly at the G8 conferences. This movement bred the first video warriors. Camera people who could film footage of the demonstrations and any police repression aimed at the demonstrators. They would then send these videos, through the new Internet technology now empowering immediate global commu- Daughter directed by Jill Greenhalgh nication beyond the borders of the law in any particular situation. In the late 1990s Electronic Disturbance Theatre, founded in Mexico by writer and performance artist, Ricardo Dominguez, began developing ‘anchors’ (wireless video servers) to upload real time net cast videos of human rights abuses by para- militaries and the Mexican Military. These technologies were primarily developed Walk on the Wild Side.2 The training was rigorous and demanding beyond anything with money from the corporate and military communities in the first world to they had previously encountered in their studies. watch activity in indigenous territories. EDT made this technology available to Led by their concerns, the piece evolved as a treatise on the cusp between those who were the target of surveillance so they could also document the abuses child and adulthood – it explored their fears of the inevitability of growing up. I that they were regularly subjected to. The very speed of the web cast transmissions, do not remember being afraid of growing up. So what engineers this fear in them? across and defying borders, employed the camera as a weapon of defence. Having to begin to take responsibility for themselves? Fear that their dreams will The Arab Spring will go down in history as the revolution that employed never be realised? Fear of having to make a living? This generation is the first in social media to mobilise and organise acts of resistance. history that will, it is predicted, be economically worse off than the generation that In some of my teaching I tried to impart these potential strategies as tools for precedes it. Is this shameful or something we must recognise as simply a sign of the an approach to making theatre actions using technologies that my students are times? Is this the moment of the pendulum swing returning to the opposite direc- now so competent in handling. The possibilities are endless. What could tech- tion, when capitalism and western white supremacy can no longer sustain itself as nology mean for theatre makers beyond the potential of projection to create beau- the forces of rebellion in all its myriad guises are rising. They face the theatre of tiful images for our performances? terror filling them with its most potent weapon - fear. The performance was a visceral, highly physical and ferocious piece, full of *** childlike rage and venom. At a certain moment I proposed using Leonard Cohen’s song The Future. The students had not heard of Leonard Cohen (!). I proposed Just before I left the university I made a last performance with my second-year they memorised all the lyrics and as a final image the sixteen of them shouted the students, the majority of whom were nineteen or twenty years old. We called it A 2. https://vimeo.com/164140117

30 31 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow words furiously and simultaneously over the playing of Cohen’s song - an old trick and desperate to make amends. I calmly told him it was not my forgiveness that but an effective one. I am not convinced they knew what they were shouting about was required. The pride I felt at the result of this simple, perhaps insignificant but the learning by heart of his words has entered their bodies and will remain. event was that my daughter had ‘faced up’ and fearlessly claimed her right to shame habitual predation. I've seen the nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all *** but love's the only engine of survival3 Today I wake, in my own bed, it is mid-June and everything in the garden is *** super green, drooping lusciously with the weight of full growth, the air damp from some days of rain, the roads still quiet pre-tourist season. There is space - there is My father was pathologically verbally abusive; his destructive, critical, mean, nothing I have to do. I am exhausted after Julia Varley’s triumphant Magdalena retorts to what I did or said were frequent throughout my childhood and adoles- tri-annual Transit Festival. Her eighth festival since 1992. As always it has cence. I recall a transformative day when I was just seventeen years old, whilst I demanded full attention sixteen hours a day for eleven days of theatre, workshops was visiting him at the Royal Air Force base where he was stationed as a high- and symposia. I cracked a rib on the last day and therefore feel guiltless at being ranking officer. He had invited me to lunch. He was not a generous man and so still today. I was excited and almost honoured. As we were walking into the restaurant he During Transit 2016 I was passed the news that on June 6th, nineteen Yazidi suddenly turned to me and said that I looked an utter mess in the clothes I was girls had been burned to death in iron cages, in a public square, for refusing to have wearing and he was ashamed to be seen with me. As we nevertheless took our table sex with ISIS fighters. This deep evil infected me for days. I could not help but I refused to sit down and left. He followed me spitting under his breath: “What the silently count nineteen of the young women present at the festival and make the hell do you think you are doing? Where the hell are you going?” In this moment overwhelming and painful comparison that it could be any of them. But I know something in me snapped. I turned to fix my eyes on his and started to scream, I that we cannot afford the luxury of being emotionally overwhelmed. With such cannot remember what I screamed but it was loud and full in his face; he shouted vile, brutal and incomprehensible acts such as this, being daily perpetrated against back, but the louder he shouted the louder I did until suddenly I could see in his women in places we cannot enter, what acts can we make in response? This is the eyes that he knew for the first time he could not shout louder than me - he could prevailing question that haunts me. not shut me up. He bustled me into the car accusing me of being mad, on drugs, deliberately shaming him inside the sanctity of this environment of strict male *** protocol, and he drove as quickly as he could out of the compound. From that day, although his habitual abuse was still often unleashed, it would take no more than “Men are afraid of women who are not afraid.” an echo of that same look for me to silence him. I remember the deep pride and joy This statement shared by Susana Nicolalde at the Transit Festival offered me in my mother when I related this story to her. endless reflection. Until perpetrators are afraid enough of the consequences of Many years later I experienced the same pride in my own daughter. I had their violence against women and their assumption that women will not respond is taken both girls on a luxury trip down the Nile from Luxor to the Aswan Dam. vanquished, it will continue. Six days of sailing through that glorious ancient landscape. Although the boat Do we applaud the Pink Sari women in Uttar Pradesh, the so called Gulabi was meant to carry twelve passengers we were the only ones aboard, attended to Gangs now thousands strong, who carry bamboo sticks and are prepared to use by a crew of twelve men. One young man, the manager of the tour, was handsome them as weapons against those suspected of acts of domestic violence and rape? and charming and became very friendly with my family and we spent many hours Are they vigilantes or heroines? It unleashes a vision of unbounded fury - a million passing the time on deck in convivial chat. Towards the end of the trip, he offered Kalis enraged and enacting revenge - opposing force with force. Is this an answer? to show Meg - my youngest, then nineteen - the most luxurious part of the boat It is inevitably perhaps one answer. that we had not had access to. Once inside the cabin he tried to kiss her. She pushed him away and she retreated back on deck. I had no idea what had happened *** but she suddenly stood up and said: “No, to hell with him” and she disappeared back below to confront him and to shame him for his action, his betrayal of trust, I think of the potential of the Art of Rage as a concept or a strategy. I have often his assumptions. The next thing I knew was the young man begging my forgiveness spoken, as many of us have, about the necessity to find the image - the act - that opposes, and is opposite to, brutality: to seek, as Julia entitled her Festival, the power of Beauty as a Weapon. But this pursuit of simple, effective resonance, 3. Leonard Cohen, The Future

32 33 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

through image and action, that can provoke change, that can move, is not easily achieved. What in our field and our Magdalena can we manifest beyond of course doing our work well? What ways of thinking and making action can we employ that might create resonance? We define ourselves as artists - as theatre makers - so what is the work that needs to be made now? In India I was witness to a ritual performance that Parvathy Baul made to honour the god Shiva. It took place in the bowels of the extraordinary and massive Chidambaram Hindu temple. I am transported and silenced. My body becomes motionless, my breathing still and shallow. At the end I understand something distinct. For Parvathy art is an act of devotion - in the west it is an act of self-expression. This realisation has begun to transform the way I want to think about theatre making. What is the equivalent of devotion in contemporary western art? Today I heard about Alketa Xhafa Mripa's Thinking of You installation, addressing the silence of rape as an act of war and dedicated to the twenty thousand survivors of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo. In Pristina’s football stadium, arguably a bastion of male endeavour, she amassed and hung, on washing lines, five thousand dresses, all donated by women from the region, many victims of the awful abuse. This act gives new meaning to the idiom “airing ones’ dirty laundry in public”. Herein lies a work of art, a simple yet utterly resonant image, to scale, that confronts, makes visible and insists on the breaking of the silence engulfing these atrocities. A work that requires huge administrative and organisational commitment. In Belgrade, Zoe Gudovic, a tireless feminist activist shows me photographs of a recent action created by the group Women in Black, in which twenty women stood in a line in front of the state presidency building holding mirrors that faced towards the windows of that edifice. They titled the piece “Look at yourself Serbia, twenty years - twenty mirrors”. A simple, small, eloquent and elegant silent action that speaks volumes, that faces up and demands facing up. I have followed the work of Lebanese born installation and video artist Mona Hatoum since her beginnings in the 1980s. She is a feminist political artist now exhibiting at the most prestigious international galleries. Her recent retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern in London was also testament to this eloquence I am speaking about. Her images and objects resonate the ever-present threat of domestic and social violence that permeates contemporary injustice. She confronts torture, incarceration, territory and surveillance and offers us echoes that resound the dangerous distortion of humanity. A huge empty globe with all the countries outlined in glowing red neon filaments - the entire world a danger zone. A kitchen space in which all the appliances and daily utensils are electrified. A beautiful, apparently delicate, floating cube of thin rods, which on closer inspection are revealed as barbed wire. Being in the presence of these objects is more powerful than I can do justice to in words, but all these ambiguous and abstruse offerings reflect somehow the internal threat and fear that, I sense, is saturating our current Daughter directed by Jill Greenhalgh existence.

34 35 Jill Greenhalgh Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Hatoum’s work makes me shudder. I need art to make me shudder. She has I read Margaret’s books, those that she has spoken to me about on Skype - formed some terrible beauty. Patti Smith, Irigaray, Claris Lepeski, Marina Abramovic. Among these books, I discovered her last notebook. The script was scrawling *** and laboured but the ideas were resonant. It contained the notes for her final poem, Lay Me Out - a fory-nine-stanza work. This poem is a powerful, tender, A last word. Margaret. uncompromising and unrelenting articulation of pain, her nearing death and her October 2014: I am in Greenwich, London, having just returned from Ecuador need to describe, confront and walk with the cognisance of this inexorable and and am taking a flight to Melbourne in twenty-four hours to begin my two and half imminent reality, to say goodbye, to speak of writing, in words excavated and then month collaboration with writer Margaret Cameron on a new performance The sculpted from the very flesh of her dying experience. Book of Space. In a single week I have consciously stood on the point of 0°0°0° lati- tude on the equator and 0°0°0° longitude - the prime meridian. Edge points. Zero 23. points. This is not what is real I am in a coffee shop when I receive an email message from Julie Robson in Nothing that has value is like that Australia asking me to ring her as soon as possible. And I know exactly what this Meaning does not jail means. It moves you, it moves in you Margaret was battling cancer. At one stage she was given the all clear and And it moves to you performed her long awaited PhD research performance Opera for a Small Mammal It does not leave you out to delighted audiences. But in recent months the battle had resumed. She was far It does not leave you behind4 more ill than I chose to acknowledge and the news of her death shattered me. I had to consider only one thing: whether or not to still fly to Australia. I *** decided I should go and figure out the future of the work from there. Very heavy heartedly I caught the plane the next day. The search for meaning, amid all the collapse that we are witnessing and seem to Thirty-six hours later I arrived at Margaret’s house where her family was be impotent in truly redressing, remains, I believe, a truly human pursuit. assembled. Five sisters, two brothers, her son, her ex-partner, various nephews, I have stopped for a while, partly imposed by a fall that meant I had to have nieces and artist friends. They welcomed me very warmly and I was billeted in my leg elevated for ten days, and partly because I sense deeply that I have to the house across the road. The funeral arrangements were underway and the empty myself before entering a new phase of life. I could busy myself with infinite service was to take place five days later, just two days before Yani, Margaret’s distractions but I am trying to choose those events with more consciousness, now son, was due to fly to London to begin a year-long contract with a media organi- that I can. It feels as though my whole life has revolved around the busyness of sation. doing what I had to do, much of which was rewarding of course. But now there is a Do we choose the timing of our death? Do we decide when it’s enough? Did constant call at the back of my mind to surrender. Margaret? I place a lemon in her coffin - but I don’t recognise her empty body. This notion of surrender haunts me. To me the word doesn’t mean giving Only her hands seem to be hers. We poured champagne on her grave. up or giving in. Nor does it signify defeat. But it evokes a yielding to forces that After the huge funeral and tsunami of tears of genuine homage to a woman may seek to hurt or belittle. Surrender evokes strength, I believe and the ability who was deeply loved as a great artist and poet, I was granted five days alone in to accept whatever is. In my theatre making I have many times been drawn to the Margaret’s house a few steps from the sea, the pelicans, the cormorants, the gulls, gesture of surrender - arms risen palms forward, face and eyes directed towards the the parrots. The outside of her house is painted bright orange and pink: a beau- antagonist. It is somehow a beautiful stance signifying strength and fearlessness. I tiful act of protest when a community of settled trailer living Greek immigrants, read it as, I will not defend myself. I do not need to. It is a pure gesture of resistance. living just behind her, was uprooted to make way for a new holiday housing devel- Perhaps a fight only ends when one side surrenders. opment. She named her house Crickneck in response to the local uproar at the This does not of course mean that I accept the violence and oppression that audacity of her going ‘off colour’ among the consensus of monochrome homes. It is perpetrated - endlessly - but I want us, women, girls, to recognise what our is a beautiful haven of a house, full of discarded objects that Margaret had gathered authentic strengths are - our resilience and resistance to being forced into what we from the beach or opportunity shops and props from past performances. Books and do not want and against what we know to be destructive. I want us to ‘face up’. I paintings line every wall. It is full of light and five days there alone renewed my know we are warriors; all my experience in The Magdalena Project has affirmed soul as I quietly reflected on the loss of a dear friend and hugely valued colleague this; but we still have deep, hardly unleashed, feminine resources yet to be fully and collaborator. 4. Margaret Cameron, Lay Me Out (unpublished in 2014)

36 37 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow employed in service to our planet, to our communities. This may sound somewhat Margaret Cameron prosaic - but there, I say it. And I want to believe in the power of art to affect change. I want to believe in the solidarity of women. I want to trust that if we continue to question our Lay Me Out action or lack of action, with intellectual and artistic rigour, whatever that means, if we continue to try to write, without any obscenity of self-congratulation, if we continue to question the existing hegemony and follow our deep instincts, without thought for personal gain or fear of condemnation, we might redeem ourselves in For David the hearts of our descendants. If a critical mass is reached things transform. In physics, Critical Mass can be defined as a state where bodies are gathered together - attracted to a common Deathbed ground - until they reach a volume and strength and weight that tips them over An awkward burnt-black boat a boundary from one state or form into another. Is the women’s movement, Or pristine folded white women’s art and poetry, women’s politics affecting, finally, the potential and Or bloody tangled, straw-filled possibility for future forms? Or sandwiched between walls Or locked in with poisonous gas Or swallowed in watery collapse

Deathbed, pillow sweet with lavender With sheet, prayer, incense, candle and incantation O deathbed of the wild, or the wrack of fire Or pallid, grey malaise Or day’s rage and savage fever Or bleed out and out and out I, the phantom of mother’s grief

Contemplate deathbed I, the energetic child of suckling The milk of sadness I who am not a person Who has made herself up Enjoy unimaginable freedoms Way beyond the walls of mother’s mind

For I choose innocence As the first, second and third pages To ride this bed to heaven I choose to know the world through feeling And its brilliance, light, and a sense of wit, of witness too Releasing words that kill the dead and wake the living Words with wings Margaret Cameron

38 39 Margaret Cameron Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

O poor body that I must leave - There are sweet mortals at my bedside You make me feel Their ships are docking in the terminally ill port With your ragged wounds and medieval gashes And carrying mortality like a white flower O sacred body that I must leave It suits one such as you, and one such as I You make me feel To see surfaces so willing to rest O tender body, once a hero, in vainglory O lay me down! Lay out a fragrant burka How you revelled in the rudeness of health - This shield and mesh of being betwixt us

Now struck, cut and devoured - Where holding hand to hand See my name dissolving in warm tears We can unwind endless time Come back to my arms, sweet animal being Here in a conversation where everything agrees With your purple wounds One such as you and one such as I, smile Take a form that is breathing And smiling is enough to destroy doubt And rehearse it as a hollow actor And encourage love. The sun chooses to stay Until what is said is done and joy is made How can this be?

Sisters, bathe me if you will and turn me Tears become sun-showers In a dance that I have known I love you Of a love that cannot be uttered It is quite sure Here where the great witnessing breath departs And you agree And holds each being’s cup But sometimes in thin reassurance Brimful All nourishment is sucked from an air - The last breaths are forever That is made of regret -

The day is dying; this is the dying day Amid too bright visitors Getting weak and doubtful Popping in for palliative care It is so pleasant to feel important - My eyes become shining baubles But one is not at all noteworthy I would shatter them Unless one is useful in some way To carry my death with both hands Let us get used to that and laugh In every line of poetry - The crumpled up brown, paper-bag of Monday Dear mortality is not in the brochure

- That woman who once lived there But I will have death They say, the seers, that one has purpose With me when you visit If only to live in the same street as another We will be so kind Or cross and light another’s path Our silent tears will fall silently But after so many days, thoughts gather around We will cry for children, The bottom of the wash-bin, a little bit of lace Cry for you, cry for me Betrays a wish to be more and to do more - Till the bed is sodden

40 41 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Behind the white sheet I am listening To the panting breaths of a creature That cannot be still, shifting from here to there O little one you cannot grasp a second of relief Not here, not there O never to be relieved, never to be relieved Until it is done and hence - to pity

Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear And dear little one With your puncturing gasps And grabbing breaths, your soliloquy Shifts from here to there O never to be relieved, never to be relieved Until it is done and hence - to pity

Inside gobbling food on all fours The wind is giving rise to unexpected feeling It mimics clothes too intimately touching the house A misery is invading; I will lose this, then that - The ability to sit and to stand Ticking clocks are banned when time is white With a frightening nothing to do but gobble, gobble

Perhaps I will just grieve things The apple and the chair The cup and the curtain The book and the bowl The pencil and the plate Their perfect beauty Their unimaginable giving-ness

Ah but this will be a journey that is more than one day My loves we must prepare for that For the meaning of things changes with light And also with food, after all it is hard To be unhappy around cheeses and fruits of all kinds Especially lemons, even if and especially if I am to die soon or even sometime

42 43 Margaret Cameron Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

As you, as you, especially if I am to die sometime At the white window Just like you… you, just like me I am collecting bits of things All we have is some time That might otherwise be lost Sometime and sometime I will die In the white bay And then perhaps take some time to die White ships sound white horns Though some do not And arranging the world of things Some take no time at all to die, but do… die A lemon makes my prayer

We have time How could you deny me? How blessed we are to talk Simple animal that I am Ah but perhaps you would prefer I do not use the words Looking so longingly at you - The words of death and dying An animal whose heartbeat cannot help but They are so full Join in the crash, beat, whip and swell of life Of a fire that burns by itself Contagious life - animal that I am All the way to and past the point I cannot help but pant: quench me

A fire that burns by itself Quench me with all the fluids of being All the way to its meaning Would you deny me a satiated sleepy end? And one such as you is thrown against walls As simple as any day Where words are prisons O tucked in, treasured and perfumed Where words do not carry you Folded in soft cloth ye shall receive But leave you behind The love absorbed in baby’s eyes Burning to cinders in your ear The gentle care of hands, the quickening breath

This is not what is real A top up with a snatch to catch up the rhythm of a suckling Nothing that has value is like that Fingers that furl and unfurl Meaning does not jail Going vague, so vague with heavy eyelids closing It moves you, it moves in you And blessed with the birdsong of evening And it moves to you O so simply a cup of tea, goodnight to thee It does not leave you out With honey and with love It does not leave you behind Yes you can die on your way to visiting the dying

Ah yes, perhaps I will just grieve things Shush, shush, the sisters are close Corners and cobwebs Gathering wool they suture my needs That particular scarf With needles, hooks, hands, water and tears The irreplaceable one To close by opening and open by closing That beauty! Folding sweet, irreconcilable hues The one that changes my demeanour so Into a mossy stitch With a colour and a twist to make the heart leap Cradling the most little I

44 45 Margaret Cameron Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

The most little I… and then I lost her Mother, body, sister dear Then I fell into a hollow void, Of panic, of desperate, latching fingers From expressionistic novels on thundery nights You know the ones, so contagious Sobbing in pelting wind

Frightening one such as you and one such as me Unnecessarily so, unnecessarily so For after a long day of piercing and bruising Sobbing is appropriate but not this Not this horrible escalation of fear One such as I, and one such as you Taking blood, a tribal fluid

Taking blood, carrying unspoken All that is needed for travel To great land of furs and feelings But what does it mean in terms of treatment plan? Treatment plan - death by firing squad Nil by mouth, nil by mouth, nil by nothing Nothing by mouth, never nothing, never nothing

And deep within, deep within all my soft organs Are sifting the too manys of everything The cares and the woes and so much talking Talking, talking and all, and all, - Falling, falling away to silliness. Isn’t it lovely? My body is an animal, it needs to curl up and rest It needs to purr - a resonating sound

46 47 Margaret Cameron Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Deep within all my soft organs, that cures. I am writing agonies in the middle of a cold path In the enclosure is a kind of stillness And caught in the rain like an interesting writer Barely the swish of a tail I am taking shelter with a pen To clear the buzzing eyes In the Teatree and She oak, hurt sky, wet book These jungle days are hospital cold One cold raindrop, one broken poet The pots around the bed I cry anytime I understand what is happening Are filling with internal fluids Seeing a great distance between me and life

And boats can be heard in the still night The afternoon storm has passed On the dark water of this vigil People are wandering No wonder the surgeons are weeping There is a nagging pain, homesickness And once when I was falling I am cold I felt a hand supporting my skeleton My soul is shivering When I woke I tried to remember One such as you and one such as I How to stand Should never feel alone

Oh this verbal limping And the animal body grows heavy The words brave and kind are making me cry Deep in my bones I am on the floor speaking to a you on a phone Taking it from my marrow Here in the middle of my nowhere This faith I am making up I cannot help but weep, open like a wave With the help of seers, this credo… Your voice presents arriving land That it is right to care deeply about something And I break against its witness If only to honour beauty

And so I put a headscarf on The colour of light, the opacity And pretend to be a person of interest Of things and words otherwise meaningless I am walking for that is what I am meant to do That are making the world sing Not languish here for people and places elsewhere How can I explain that the ordinary After the shark is eating, after the surgeon is wounding Is more, more, more, more than enough What is left will always be what I make of it That it is holding me in faith That much has not changed That the world is holding me in faith

Should I become unfamiliar enough to die? What is breathing behind that silence? And so I look in the mirror for a moment reassured Locked behind these sisters’ eyes By the warmth of flesh The sound of footsteps on a gravel path along the thin driveway - A familiar sister there The house, the house where he is spinning an axe And I am telling her not to be fooled Where he is flogging a daughter to the screams of a wife and a child Only one day from death I am likely to feel like this Where he is knocked out night after night after night That she is I and I am she By his own sons to keep us safe, to keep us safe

48 49 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

And another morning when the sea-mist fog Shush! Is rolling down the road all white, all white, I am sleeping through the diagnosis Breaking into a day made of honey Letting them think what they will Where all things sing And we are all looking magnificent Giving me good pills On this morning of breezes To make me better, better, better, better With bright sunlight flooding rooms For I am better now, better than before Are there no edges to glory?

Perhaps I will just grieve things Such a gentle night-time breeze is caressing my body The wash-basket, the cardigan It is barely audible, barely sensory The red blanket O Sweeping across the land This day there is no line between - I feel so embraced The sky and the sea and the thick blue paint is still Its dominion is my soul So still… and blobbing with boats Indeed I would name it my soul wind And I have my arm around you and finally I am saying Turning me so… gently… I barely move

I don’t want to die Sorry to say the obvious! It’s the bit you can’t say It’s the bit that hurts When you look at the thick blue painted bay As the just-warm sun of late winter falls down And your arms are buried in other people’s jumpers

And you feel Gathered into them Best to say it It would be a terrible thing to want To want to die But please… Don’t send me horrible flowers

50 51 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Kordula Lobeck racism, Islamophobia, misogyny… I think everybody knows about all this and has seen the pictures on television and the Internet. I feel both the desire and the necessity to put all my creativity, power, strength and experience to this purpose Present Futures right now. In this very precise present moment, which divides German society that threatens to step backwards into archaic, nationalist and fascist behaviour, it is necessary to resist. Right now. We are really on the edge. Germany may break apart and Europe as well… maybe it has already broken apart. At the very least some of the most important values are in danger of disappearing: solidarity, compassion, human rights. Egoism, self-interest, the guarding of sinecures, and disloyalty seem to be the driving forces. Europe has given birth to a new 'Eastern Block' and confederates with extremely non-democratic societies. Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, I think right now we are paying the bill for our past, a past which has gener- concentrate the mind on the present moment. ated our 'good luck', our wealth, on the shoulders of those who are now coming to Buddha ask for help, solidarity and participation. It is only fair to share now. I don’t want to moralise; I simply want to explain my priorities as a theatre practitioner at this “Tomorrow’s Work and Present Futures”: these Magdalena titles! They always very specific moment. provoke philosophical reflections in me at first. They are enigmatic, wide open to interpretation and response. They cause my thoughts to travel in every direction… Let’s make a brief parenthesis at this point: as if I had to explain the world… Impossible, there is no other solution than to go As early as 2001, Ariane Mnouchkine, the visionary theatre maker, and back to the original words… the Théâtre du Soleil started to prepare a piece (which has since become a very Present is present, thus the present moment. Future is future, thus a not yet powerful film as well): Le Dernier Caravansérail - Odyssées (The Last Caravanserai existing dreamed moment. I think the future can never be predicted, because you - Odysseys). In this she describes very clearly a 'tsunami', which at that time could never know what will happen. Happen to you, to your environment, to the world. already be seen on the horizon and which has now rolled over into my present very So the only thing you can do concerning the future is to project your wishes and violently. At that time Ariane Mnouchkine made valuable research collecting life dreams, speculations, imaginations, anxieties… stories (“… of those we call refugees, illegals, immigrants and who call themselves In this very precise present more nobly travellers,” as she said) in refugee camps all over the world: Sangatte moment - February 2016 - theatre near Calais in France, Dover in Great Britain, Lombok in Indonesia, Villawood in is not my main focus anymore. It is Australia. not important right now! It doesn’t In an essay titled “Bewußtwerdung” (Raising Consciousness) she wrote: “Why interest me! It doesn’t make any make theatre? […] Because you find pleasure in expressing yourself through theatre sense to me! - then you have to ask yourself the question: what is the pleasure in it and which I stopped making theatre, I path should I take? It is not a matter of justifying oneself - pleasure doesn’t need stopped making art, I stopped being any justification - but you have to know what you will do in order to develop an creative and building artistic prod- awareness, which is as valuable to you as to the audience. I have the need to speak ucts. Instead I started to work in to people! I have the need to change the world... although this ambition seems to a camp with a group of sixteen be overblown and my contribution only a tiny drop of water. To change the world: young refugees from Afghanistan, you cannot dispense with politics, because politics is the science of life. Something Somalia, Pakistan and Syria. I feel is wrong in the state of Denmark, how can you accept this?!”1 it really makes sense to abandon my artistic profession in order My own theatre work had always been connected with political and social issues, to put all my energies into this in both process as well as outcome, even in the 1970s, when I began my career and everyday fight for these young was very much occupied with ‘finding myself’ and ‘self-realisation’. people and against the right wing Kordula Lobeck political movements with their 1. Ariane Mnouchkine, Eine Bewußtwerdung, in Josette Féral, Ariane Mnouchkine & das Théâtre du Soleil, Alexander Verlag 2003.

52 53 Kordula Lobeck Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Looking to past history in order to understand the present and perhaps find a Encouraged by these experiences, I focused my work more intensively in the projection towards the future I am able to see a clear red thread which passes field of non-formal education, using cultural tools in areas touched by social and through my life. I note some significant moments: cultural exclusion: psychiatric patients, convicts, troubled young adults, most often In 1976 a remarkable encounter with the Peruvian theatre company with an immigrant background. Cuatrotablas made me take up acting. They presented a piece called El sol bajo In the years that followed I have realised seminars and theatre projects with las patas de los caballos (The sun under horse hooves) in which they told the story troubled young adults as well as artistic educational courses and creative projects of the Incas and the Spanish conquest and the subsequent social and political in prisons. The desire to share and to present the results of this work led to a development up to the reality of their own time. Some of you may remember multimedia installation and road show, called Invisible Spaces, which now exists Eduardo Galeano's book Open Veins of Latin-America. This was the issue they in German, English, French and Spanish. I am happy to continue to present this discussed, and they spoke about it in an original and, for me, staggering way. in the future. It is possible to collaborate and create new materials which can be They talked with their bodies! Although I couldn’t speak Spanish, I understood inserted into the technical and artistic structure of this installation. I have often every gesture, every spoken word, intellectually and emotionally. At that time, used it in prevention and education projects at schools, but I also connected it theatre as I knew it was based on highly literary texts, using nice costumes, with new artistic projects in prisons. sophisticated decor and great scenery. Never before had I been touched so In 2014 a future dream I had in the past suddenly became true: I was awarded deeply. I decided to learn their way of working and so I started my artistic career. a grant to work on a theatre piece with the actors and actresses of Cuatrotablas, I trained my body, I plunged into my emotions, I explored my mental universe. the company who made me decide to become a theatre practitioner. Together I learned about sequences and improvisation, about collective creation. I still we decided to accept the challenge of working on the life story, contemporary maintain these principles so it seems I am very old fashioned in the way I make history and literary work of the German Jewish poet Else Lasker Schüler, who theatre. was born in 1869 in Wuppertal and died in 1945 in Jerusalem. The performance In 1980, with my own company, we worked on our history and that of our Else Blue - a Sappho Whose World Had Broken Apart is the result of a wonderful parents: German Nazism and the Second World War. In our mid-twenties we and painful journey into the period of the First and Second World Wars, the searched for an answer to the question “How could this have been possible?” This Expressionist movement, the life story of a strong woman, the destiny of a Jewish research was intended to help us liberate ourselves from a kind of heavy collec- poet and heroine of her time. Her poetry is full of strong, embarrassing, fragile, tive guilt. Although we hadn’t even been born then, we were confronted with delicate, metaphorical images, touching and ripping into the heart. She was this issue as part of the relationship with our parents and relatives and also when a caring woman, tough minded and uncompromising, who demonstrated soli- we travelled to neighbouring countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, France, darity and compassion. Though she was about to starve, she organised a charity Denmark… during conversations all the older people returned to and confronted for Palestinian children some months before she died. This past future dream us with their war memories. becoming true in the past present was a big gift. It was as if I had found a treasure Around 1990 the women’s issue became very important to me: I got into that I wanted to share: to transmit the story of this extraordinary, powerful woman contact with The Magdalena Project and all the lovely, strong, intelligent, creative through theatre performances. and aware women (who are now the Old Magdalenas or Grandmothers). Until 2000, with my association Unter Wasser Fliegen, we organised several huge inter- The rebellions of the 1970s, dealing with a painful past in the 1980s, women’s national meetings on the subject of “women in the arts”, and researched different issues in the 1990s, social theatre in the 2000s, Jewish segregation in 2014… as I aspects of women’s work in theatre. The meetings were always divided into three said before my theatre work has always been connected with political and social parts: a laboratory (encounter, exchange and co-operation among the invited issues, in terms of process as well as results. women artists), one week of seminars and workshops and a festival which was open I am 62 years old now. Looking back I note that I have always been involved to the public and presented the artistic work of the participating women and their with the present - trying to understand the past in order to reveal the present. The often ‘mixed’ companies. future only matters to me in the sense of the future of human beings, the future of In 1997 one of these international meeting “Bridges Back to the Roots - a social group, the future of society. It was never the future of theatre itself which Theatre with Marginalised Social Groups and Cultural Minorities” which took preoccupied me. place in Wuppertal, invited women artists who, apart from their ‘normal’ theatre Theatre is the language I decided to speak with. And with this theatre work, were engaged in different social fields like psychiatric hospitals, prisons, language I try to communicate. As with a real language I have to adapt my words homes for elderly people, places with homeless street kids, etc. The objective and way of speaking to the conditions of those with whom I want to communicate. was to bring theatre where it was needed, to gain a new purpose for the creative With the process as well as the result, the outcome or product, I always adjust the process and to give voice to excluded sectors through the results of this work. form, the aesthetic and the media I use so that they are appropriate.

54 55 Kordula Lobeck Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

My work is that of an interpreter. I don’t need to say anything important Jo Randerson to the world, but often the people I work with do. I love to help them find the words to express themselves, a space to present the work, and to give them the opportunity to be heard. This seems to be the task I have developed in recent Amazing Babes years. Something, some theme, some issue which I feel is important crosses my path and at once I become completely committed. I catch fire. Deeply involved in this present I dive to the ground and give all my energy. In itself this is a kind of creative process of organisation and structure. It is a collective journey in which I am the leader of the expedition whilst following the flow which emerges in the group, trying to base what we do on the resources everyone brings in, and under- You told me that sometimes you have to scream. That while you try to approach standing what is coming up and needs to find its expression. everything with sympathy and compassion, there are times when you just have to I deal with the emerging material as if I were an artisan who creates a master- fucking yell your lungs out. And kick hard. And sometimes smash things. piece, in the sense that it happens in the best way I am able to work it out, within You made me throw sticks around in a small seaside village in Wales. We the limitations of all we participants. Every detail, every look, every breath should did this for hours every day. You said we needed strong quads so we could fight. be clear and conscious. Of course it could always be done better. You said we should get used to having our legs wide: you said we needed a strong I love to awaken the creative power which can stand against destructive forces. base. Throwing sticks around for several hours was not very exciting. When we It is important to build instead of destroying, to heal instead of wounding. I think complained you told us to “put it into the work”. Always you told us to “put every- if my work makes no impact on society, if it does not change anything, if only one thing into the work.” Especially when we were angry, you told us that is the time person, it makes no sense. to write poetry. That that is a great way to fight. Going back to the starting point: Present, Past, Future, the time line. You told me that what I know is enough. You were teaching a workshop on Everything that I do, whether I allocate a task or if we begin some research, writing. I was writing about Norway. “Are there reindeer in Norway?” I asked. “Do everything is a projection towards the future, because it is not yet done. But in you think there are reindeer in Norway?” you answered. “I think so,” I said. “Well, the moment we start work, it becomes present. So future becomes present. And you should write what you think is true,” you told me. You were right that the the past determines the future we pretend to create in our present (of course there truth is relative. Now in my stories there are reindeers in New Zealand too. exists a kind of future, the trivial one of project conception, organisation, funding You showed me how to make something out of nothing. You were on stage applications, realisation which always has to do with the immediate future). improvising and you needed a hat. You reached around, picked up an empty plastic My future as an artist? I only work from project to project. I don’t think in a milk bottle and put it on your head. It was the perfect hat. Whenever you looked long-term way. The projects are radiant for a moment, then die down like shooting for something, you just reached out stars and become memories. What remains are individual and collective experi- and it was there. Even if it really ences. How and if they contribute to the future has to be examined. didn’t look like the thing you As I said at the beginning, in view of the actual situation of the world, dealing needed, somehow in the reaching with theatre and its future is trivial and has no relevance to me. What I see clearly for it and in the embracing of it, is that theatre is ephemeral, life is not. it became what you wanted. You showed me this kind of magic, this kind of trust that the world will provide for you, for us, with a bit of imagination. You also showed me how to get through long lines of people. You start by throwing your arms out wide and singing opera. It doesn’t matter if you get the notes right. Everyone moves out of the way. Or you just carry a large double bass case. And say, “We are the musicians!” Jo Randerson

56 57 Jo Randerson Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Everyone lets you through - but then you have to sing, that’s how that deal goes. me that you could love your children but not necessarily love being a mother, not You showed me how to get into a show for free. You can say that your mother is all of the time. That not all mothers sit and hold their babies and smile and say it already in there with your ticket. Or grip the usher’s hand really, really hard and was the best thing in the world that happened to them. That you could also say, tell them you will die if you don’t see the show. Or do what we did that time when “This drives me crazy”. And you could still love your children so much that you I didn’t have a ticket - you picked the busiest time, then when we went past the would hunt and kill by hand a flock of wild pre-historic demons to protect them. ushers, you handed them a receipt. They yelled after you, saying that’s not a ticket, That both these realities could be true at once. you apologised and handed them a parking ticket. They kept yelling but by then it You showed me it’s okay to die. In many ways, at many times. That it’s okay was too late - we were inside. to fall on your sword. That you can make as many swords as you want to in your Once, when I was very tired, you showed me how to party. You enter the room lifetime. That you can fall on other people’s as well. That actually you can do what- yelling that you have arrived. Then you quickly skull a drink in front of everyone. ever the heck you like. That there’s no right or wrong, not like that. That people You turn the music up loud, leap up on the table and dance at two hundred and who judge you can eat their own hierarchies. fifty percent. Ideally you also break several glasses, yell aggressive phrases and You taught me that the most revolutionary way is to say out loud what is. air punch with your fist. Once you have fallen or leapt off the table, about ten That’s all you have to do: just keep saying, out loud, what is your truth. You don’t minutes later, you leave without saying goodbye. Maximum party effect, in a have to change the world - just don’t let it change you. Someone smart said that. minimal time frame. But you showed me what that looks like. You showed me what it looks like to hold You showed me that not knowing if something is funny or not is a terrific place your fist high in the air, your finger up and out, and to keep yelling out loud when to be working. One time we were listening to a dreadful man speaking. You started you see injustice. And most importantly to find a way to do this which keeps you coughing, really badly - I was worried for you. You left the room. I came out to full of joy - to do this with a smile on your face and not a knot of anger in your check if you were okay - you were sitting and calmly smoking a cigarette, with a stomach; to find a way to fight with love, to fight not because you hate the world smile on your face. “I’m just a little bit allergic to that man,” you said. You showed but because you love it so much that you can’t bear to see it sit around being me how to make magic lies when you are too tired to fight something head on. mediocre. That there is a way to slide around things, that, like Lao Tzu said, the highest way is like water - it opposes nothing. You just flowed around everything, and nothing stopped you. You showed me how to bend and flow, and sometimes to avoid. And how to move in curves, when straightforward logic tries to dominate the narrative. You taught me how to deal with boring situations. Say that your back is sore and lie on the ground. Say that you have period pains. Say that you are pregnant, that you are in the menopause. That you have to leave the room to buy tampons. That your breasts hurt. That somewhere in your special women’s parts you get a pain when there are too many white men speaking. That a part of you starts to die when the words get too long. You showed me a photo of a hospital ward that said: “Women and Other Illnesses”. You showed me how much power lies in being ‘other’. That we are all ‘other’ in some way. Once, at a horrible meeting with your husband and his friends, you went into the toilet, took off all your clothes and stared at yourself in the mirror. “Who am I?” you asked, looking at your body. “Who am I?” I ask this in my head sometimes when the conversation has become alien. You said that making art is like doing a big poo. It builds up and builds up and then you have to release it. If it gets sucked back up into your body - this can be very painful. You said that expressing is like making coffee: you have to force it out through a high-pressure machine. Powerful expression comes from containing it before releasing it - so it comes out in concentrated form. This is different from letting every single thing you think come straight out of your mouth, “This is not expressing, this is just blurting,” you said. Expressing requires control. You abandoned your children because you wanted to keep writing. You showed

58 59 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Parvathy Baul future, I reflect on the difficulties and challenges I might have to protect a knowledge that needs to be deeply rooted in our body, mind, emotion and the divine consciousness. Practising Ancient Wisdom There is a beautiful way to look at time. Time is actually timeless. We have tried to bind time within the measures of minutes, seconds, hours, days, months and years. For a Baul Sadhaka there is no past or future, there is only here and now, only the present. So when it comes to the question of how to enable these ancient practices to survive in modern times, we are actually asking how we can be timeless in the flow of contemporary life, which always demands the possession of more and more - an insecure and restless life with less patience and faith As a practitioner of the ancient Baul path, I travel non-stop and work continu- in oneself. ously. Recently, I had to say a prayer in a workshop with my fellow participants. I There is a beautiful story told by my Guru: explained that my prayer is a traveller's prayer: There were two Sadhakas in deep meditation. The only aim they had in their hearts Wherever I go, I go to find you, was the desire to see Lord Vishnu. They spent many years meditating under the tama- Whomever I meet, I meet you rind tree. Lord Vishnu wanted to test their true aspirations, so he sent the celestial Whenever I sing, I sing your song messenger, Lord Narada. Narada asked them why they were meditating for such a Is there anywhere I can go where you are not present? long time and withstanding such hardship. They said they wanted to see Lord Vishnu. Narada replied to the first Sadhaka, “Yes, he will meet you, but you still have to be A long time ago, after my first visit to a western country, I told my Guru, born three times and make the same intense penance, then he will meet you.” The Sri Sanatan Das Baul, that I was disappointed to see how the Baul tradition first Sadhaka was furious, he said to Narada, “I have sacrificed everything and have was represented overseas. I felt the correct message was being hidden behind come to do the Sadhana. You will find there are no Sadhaka like me. Your Lord is no the veil of some external under- good, and I will go back and enjoy my life. I have no desire to see such a filthy God.” standing of this path. My Guruji To the other Sadhaka Narada said, “Yes, Lord Vishnu will meet you, but as many told me, “Then you must travel leaves as you see on this tamarind tree, you will have to be born that many times, and and give them the message of make your intense penance, only then will my Lord meet you.” The second Sadhaka the Sadhu and Gurus; become a was immensely joyful and his eyes flooded with tears. “Is this true?” He asked, bridge between these two worlds, “My Lord will really show himself to me? And more than that, I am blessed with so the inside world and the outside many births in time to benefit from doing my meditation and contemplating my Lord world.” I asked him, “But how will always?” I travel?” He gave me ten rupees: with the grace of my Guruji, I I would say the attitude of the first Sadhaka is the attitude of most of the Sadhakas have been travelling ever since, today. What we need is to stop running and become less greedy. As it is said in but I have never had to spend the song of Kambalambar Pad, the 8th century Buddhist poet, “the path itself is those ten rupees he gave me. the beloved, the journey itself is the destination, so there is no destination to Travelling deeply through many reach.” The ancient practice of Baul shows us a way to celebrate and cherish every cultures, and working closely with moment of life in complete divinity, with a pure sense of joy, non-attachment and people from different cultures, compassion. There is nothing to achieve, only “to be, to be here.” I have learnt that everything is To practise Baul is to practise timelessness. How do you teach timelessness? one, there is no difference. The How do you learn? spiritual heart of the vast and When I am working with one of my songs, which were written by great Baul diverse cultures beats in the same Gurus, I sometimes take ten years to learn to sing it. Neither the song nor the liter- way. ature were complicated, but the complete understanding of the song didn’t arrive When I look forward to how I until the tenth year. My Guruji taught that if you don’t fully enjoy your own song, Parvathy Baul will carry on this tradition in the you can’t expect others to enjoy it.

60 61 Parvathy Baul Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

But when I see a modern practitioner learning the same song from YouTube did. The energy of the Guru remains, but the active teaching and learning and attempting to sing it by copying the composition, I feel the whole point of this doesn’t happen the way the Guru did it. Our Masters have encouraged the best ancient practice is lost. We can sing any song, but in order to internalise it we need disciples to create another space for their practice and teaching. The relation- an attitude of timelessness without fear, and complete love towards this ancient, ship between Guru and disciple becomes stronger through this process. It has wise practice. inspired many Sadhakas to create Gurukul: schools in the ancient tradition. If we look at any ancient tradition the basic elements are simple and few; These schools ensure a close bond between Guru and disciple, and the knowl- sometimes we can learn them in a day, but to ‘inherit’ you need to have patience. edge that is practised here is without worldly expectations: a pure wisdom is There is a beautiful story my mother told me in my childhood. I asked her practised here. These spaces enable advanced Sadhakas to go deep into their one day, “Ma, why are you always asking me to do the same dance again and practice. I personally feel establishing such spaces will itself ensure the possi- again? When will I be perfect?” I was crying with boredom and fatigue. My bility of practising the ancient wisdom. mother said: “Until the stone has become smooth and curved.” I asked her: The true ‘documentation’ happens in the human body: the ancient “What do you mean?” She told me the story of a Buddhist monk, which I took as knowledge is archived through daily practice and maintenance; that’s how a great lesson in my life. She said: this knowledge is preserved. If we only archive through digital libraries we might have all the information, but we will not know how to use it practically There was a Buddhist monk who was studying many scriptures. His memory was through our bodies and our everyday living. That is why spaces such as Gurukul not good, and so he made a lot of mistakes; he remained in the first grade whereas are important to archive knowledge and embed it in the human body and all his friends graduated to advanced levels. He became so sad, he went to the consciousness. river and sat there at the Ghat. His eyes fell on a rock that was smooth with a little There is much more on which to reflect, but it cannot all be said in one curve, whereas all the other rocks had rough surfaces. He saw the village women moment… let us continue, working and walking our respective paths together... bringing their pots and before they filled them with water they placed their pots on As the Sufi poet said: that stone, washed them, and then filled them with water and went away. The monk came the next day at the same time and observed the women doing the same Many things must be left unsaid, thing. He asked one of the women, “Do you place your pot and wash it every day Because it’s late, on this stone?” She said, “Yes, we have done this all our lives and before us, our But whatever conversation we haven’t had tonight, mothers and our grandmothers did the same.” The monk was full of joy, and he We will have tomorrow... went back to his monastery with great enthusiasm. Starting to practise his scriptures again, he thought, if a rock can be smoothed and curved by daily washing, why not a human mind? He became an excellent scholar in all the scriptures and a great teacher.

In all ancient practices, daily practice is highly recommended. This becomes the motivation for living; this total dedication becomes the truth and joy of everyday life. After all there is no destination to reach; we are already at our destination. To practise ancient wisdom in our lives now we need to rework our attitude, to have patience, and also to leave behind the desire to become ‘successful’. I feel we always have a tendency to blame ‘modern times’, but we never blame our own fears and insecurities. These ‘modern times’ are the products of our minds and collective fears and insecurities. There is a significant responsibility for us as practitioners too. We have been blessed with this knowledge, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the next generation gets the right message and discipline to continue in this path. We need to create possibilities. We need to create timeless space. I have realised by observing the life of my Guru and the other great Gurus that the space in which they teach and practise is relevant because the knowledge can only be given actively during their lifetime. After their time no one, not even their best disciple, is able to use that space in the same way the Guru

62 63 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Katarzyna Kulakowska Ewa decided to stay in Casa Blanca. Since then, three times a year she has conducted her workshop In the Act of Creation, focusing on Mediterranean cosmo- gonic myths. Somebody's Daughter The participants in Ewa’s workshops forgo contact with their everyday activities for a few days of mutual work, in order to “shake off the burdens accumulated in our heads and shoulders, to relax, to discard everything that plagues us, like worn-out clothes, and transfer it all into an act of creation, an act of transfor- mation”. All this happens away from a rush of big cities and out of reach of the seemingly omnipotent Internet, without electricity and hot water, in silence and isolation. Ewa requires us to obey the rules of Casa Blanca and be disciplined in performing a strictly specified daily agenda which begins at dawn and ends when “I am not an actress, I sometimes happen to be an actress”, Ewa Benesz tells me, the sun sinks behind the line of the horizon. sitting on a sturdy trunk of an old tree which is standing in front of her Sardinian During the first few days of the Experience, maintaining the external silence house. I was happy, having participated in her seven-day paratheatrical workshop which is meant to lead to internal silence is an arduous undertaking for me, but in for a group of several dozen people from all parts of the world, which had just due course, it comes to seem appropriate, obvious and somehow natural behaviour. finished. “I am not a story-teller, I sometimes happen to be a story-teller. I am not Apart from close contact with nature and the daily wandering through the moun- an educationalist, I sometimes happen to be an educationalist”, she added. Ewa tains at dawn, which helps me synchronise my personal rhythm with the rhythm of is undoubtedly a great personality who works on the borders between theatre and the sun, the compulsory point of the day is the yoga session following dinner that para-theatre, literature and the art of telling stories. She turned seventy in 2013, Ewa leads and which lasts for several hours. celebrating fifty years of artistic work. Conscious work with breathing, with my body, helps overcome muscle resis- In the 1970s and 1980s she wondered through Polish villages with a huge tance and controlling the mind helps me to enter a state which is close to medita- knapsack and a pocket edition of Pan Tadeusz, reciting the national epic. She tion. The fitness of Ewa’s seventy-year-old body seems astounding to me. Perfectly frequently practised with Jerzy Grotowski, and at the beginning of the 1970s, assimilated by her state of mind, her extended, flexible muscles let her remain for with some friends, she founded a long time in the most demanding positions, which most participants can scarcely her own Theatrical Studio in manage at even the basic level. Puławy. When martial law was On the psycho-physical level, Ewa’s Experience is for me a search for what introduced in Poland, she could human beings can do with their loneliness amongst other people, and how silence not find a space for her artistic and loneliness can be transformed into a creative act, first individually and then as activities there so, accompanied part of the activities of the community formed for the few days of the workshop. by Rena Mirecka, a long-time “At the beginning”, Ewa says, “there are no specified tasks, specified roles. ‘Grotowski’ actress, she left the We begin at the point zero: here we are in an empty space.” I place roses, a basin country. In 1992, with Rena, with water and a stone in the middle of the circle and I begin to wash the stone. she found a house in Sardinia. Another participant begins to cooperate with me, and then another. We put our The house, which was located hands in the water. I start to sing. in the very heart of wild moun- Ewa says: “I am looking for sources that are human truth and generate the tains, spreading north-east of truth, in myths, in literature, in archaic techniques and practices, in dance and Cagliari, had simple, white, rhythm, in the oldest songs and vocal techniques. I believe that from generation plastered walls, and was chris- to generation, mankind has preserved the most important things but at the same tened Casa Blanca. Situated time, the most practical ones, both when it comes to singing and baking bread.” far from civilisation, the house In her activities, she refers not only to the melody and rhythms originating from became an ideal place not only various cultures but also to traditional everyday practices that guarantee the to rest after a long journey, but permanence of generations such as baking bread, producing wine or pressing above all as a centre for creative olives. “In this way, I transfer my knowledge,” Ewa tells me and adds “I am an old work. Several years later, when woman and what does an old human being do? Since the beginning of the world, their creative roads divided, she passes on what she knows to younger people.” Katarzyna Kułakowska

64 65 Katarzyna Kulakowska Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

One day, in an idyllic atmosphere, Ewa spreads out a piece of white linen and two participants in the Experience empty out onto it some bunches of grapes. Ewa begins to carefully tear off the grapes from the stalks and then delicately places them in one of the huge bowls prepared beforehand. We follow her example so that after a few moments, the bowls are full of dark violet grapes and the white linen is stained with burgundy juice. As self-proclaimed wine producers, we set in motion all our senses so as not to miss even the smallest grape. We raise the bunches of grapes towards the sun observing how its rays penetrate the pulp hidden under the skin. We turn around the picked-up grapes in our palms to appreciate their curved shape and the velvet texture of the skin, and then let them roll from the inside of our palms into the bowl. From time to time I taste the ripe fruit, letting my teeth cut through the skin so that the sweet juice explodes in my mouth. I perceive that, although this particular meeting is based on devoting our time and exclusive attention to these small matters of existence, it is paradoxically connected with each participant’s existence. “I think that important human experiences do not die when they are practical,” says Ewa, referring to the rituals deeply embedded in the European culture. Grotowski has written “There is a French saying tu es le fils de quelqu’un [you are somebody’s son]. You are not a vagabond, you are from somewhere, from a particular country, from a particular landscape…” Grotowski wrote about traditional, anonymous songs which we have also been Ewa Benesz with participants of the Experience singing during Ewa’s Experiences. Tu es la fille de quelqu’un, (you are somebody’s daughter), Ewa seems to be whispering to me as I tip the juicy grapes from one bowl to another, filling them completely as women have done for generations. her own life. Now Ewa says: “For many years, the subject of my work has been Assembled in a circle around our harvest, we sway rhythmically and sing a singing life” and I remember Clarissa Pinkola Estés writing in Women Who Run traditional Sardinian wedding song which we have just learned: “Rosittedda, with the Wolves “This is our meditation practice as women, calling back the dead Rosittedda ‘n tundu, ‘n tundu”. At one point, one of the youngest participants, and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dead and dismembered after letting two others wash and dry her feet with a cloth specially prepared for aspects of life itself.” the occasion, hesitantly steps into a tub to trample the first portion of grapes Participation in the Experience allows me to make a connection my own ‘I’, under her feet. She proceeds delicately, moving the weight of her body from lost or never activated, and to appreciate its value; it helps me become rooted in one foot to the other. The juice spurts to the sides, and the girl is radiant with my own experience again and to extract a creative potential from that. For now, I joy. She spreads her arms and shyly begins to share her earliest memories from just need to write about this experience, not knowing what will come of it in the childhood with the assembled people. It is a surprise to everyone that these future. are memories of her family tradition of pressing wine in her uncle’s vineyard. Looking at one another, we have no doubt that something important has This work was supported by National Science Centre, Poland happened among us. During the workshop each of us has experienced a moment (grant number: 2014/15/N/HS2/03863) of breakdown and Ewa’s presence guarantees a feeling of safety, achieved through dancing and singing together or articulating what is important for each of us individually at that moment. At the beginning of the 1990s, Ewa visited a village located at the foot of the mountain to buy some home-made wine. When she reached the farm, an old woman was sitting in front of the fire-place. Nobody paid any attention to her. She was singing. “My mother is singing her life,” said the woman who was selling the wine. Returning to Casa Blanca, Ewa thought about living on an island where an old woman sings her own life and asked herself why she didn’t sing

66 67 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Carolina Pizarro decided to dedicate myself to theatre and my brother chose writing, and this frightened our parents. Even though they wanted us to live differently from them, to end the repetitive cycle that determined our fate without giving us a choice, they could Changing the Present not accept that my ideas and those of my brother were taking a direction they considered pointless and, moreover, that would lead to poverty, instability and uncertainty. On the one hand, they encouraged us to change and made us believe that anything was possible; but on the other they didn’t believe things could really be all that different: we ought to find proper jobs, not the kind of part-time work that only helps us to celebrate Christmas with silly gifts. This way of thinking was like a brick wall to me. Ever since I was a child, I have never given much thought to the future, but I My mother always believed that effort is necessary to obtain future results: have always reacted clearly to what I did not like in the present. Over the years "School is all you have to get on in life, you must study to become someone I have tried to change the present in various ways, sometimes with amusement, better". She gave us disciplined timetables. As we didn’t write well in class, she other times less so, learning from my attempts and mistakes. I was inspired by the made us rewrite all our notebooks again at home. She often appeared at school, many people who were doing the same, dedicating themselves to changing appar- where everybody knew her, and this was not so nice as we grew older! My father ently ‘futile’ things. My first motivation for making theatre came from my need to wanted us to learn from his past and used himself as a bad example. He had worked change, even if this was futile. in a paper mill for thirty-seven years: "This is the future that awaits you if you I remember that at home we always felt the burden of having to economise. don’t study. I chose to enjoy myself, I didn’t study, I just wanted to play football The money that we had was needed to put food on our plates every day and to live and go out with women". Their words affected me: I was the best student in the in dignity. At least that is what my father used to say. At Christmas my brother school, but I behaved very badly and was intolerant of the militarised system. I and I always received practical gifts: new clothes, books, notebooks, pencils and played football, went to parties, got drunk more than I should have done and had whatever we needed for school. When I was twelve years old, I asked my mother a good time. But then I did not know that I had to dance with the contradiction for permission to work part-time in a sock shop. I worked there until ten o’clock on rather than resist it. Christmas Eve, but it was As was expected of me, I studied and got good marks every year, but when I worth it: that Christmas completed the annual university selection test I received a very low average that was the first time the was not enough to earn me a place. At the time I could not understand my defeat. whole family received All the effort I had put in was irrelevant against the disadvantage of studying in really silly presents! It was a local state school rather than a private one. I had never considered previously fun. that this would be really instrumental in terms of my future. Nobody had told me I like the fact that my that personal effort was not enough to achieve results. State policies defined the parents wanted the best difference in the quality of education and money, of course, is necessary for decent for my brother and me; it cultural conditions. was good that they thought There were many factors at play. Understanding that results didn’t depend about how to make our only on my own efforts led me to discover new contradictions that were also part destiny different from of the legacy of the dictatorship that had privatised education. The giant shadow theirs, better and luckier. of the past was more present than ever, seeming to place an immovable wall in But problems appeared the future. Was it possible for me to build in my own way? Sometimes I think that when what we wanted the vision my parents had for my future should not have bothered me so much. didn’t suit their plans; Perhaps I should have just listened to them without joining in the discussion? when our needs did not However, at the time, I could not understand why we continually referred to fit into the apparently the past. We examine our experiences for all their shortcomings and fears, while more comfortable frame- searching for potential exit points. We want to break through the constrictions of work they had laid out a future that repeats the past, whilst paradoxically not knowing what this future for us. We were taking will bring. Carolina Pizarro an unknown direction. I As I could not go to University, like many others I began doing what was

68 69 Carolina Pizarro Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow expected of me: eight to ten hours a day at a desk doing accounts for a commercial hell. The dictatorship is clearly part of this. I could see that my parents were firm. I cried helplessly every day. To spend my time doing something I did not like afraid, as everyone was at some point. Even though they wanted everything to be seemed empty and meaningless to me, and made me unhappy. It was just as point- different, they were unable to see a possibility of change for themselves, and even less as theatre was supposed to be, even though I had a fixed salary every month. less for my brother and I, because our country was stagnant and even gloomier At work there were two more people of my age in the same situation as me: one after the military coup. Some cultures say that we repeat ourselves because we studied psychology at night and the other dreamt of becoming a photographer. have not learned the lessons of history. Heal the Karma: it is important to know And we were the ones who had to process the wages! Once while preparing them, exactly what we have not learned. Because the future sometimes bites, devours and we locked the door of the office and played at being millionaires. The notes flew destroys you, as the past did previously. through the air while we declared how we would spend the money if it were ours. "Art is elitist, it is for people who already have money to live on. It is not for Our wishes emerged through this silly game and, without realising, I said that if I people like us, it is for the rich. We have to strive and make sacrifices for a better had money I would make theatre. Hearing what I had said, my friend prompted me future," my father said. It is logical that he thought like this in a country where to find out how this might be possible and we found a theatre school where I could education and health are a business. The minimum monthly salary is $225,000 study at night. At first I was uncertain, but finally I decided to try. For three years (not even three hundred Euro). If a whole family has to live on this amount, how I was split in two as the job I disliked paid for my studies. But it was hard because, can you pay for studies that cost more and more each month? Most people do so trying to do everything, I did not even have time to sleep. I admire people who do by taking out bank loans. How can a country be better off if basic rights are not this all their lives, enduring even worse conditions, but it defeated me. assured? I left the accounting job and the evening theatre school, even though I only In Chile students are being tortured in the same way as almost forty, thirty had one year left to finish. I could not think about the past and my future was and even twenty years ago; young people are beaten, female students are stripped cloudy. I didn’t listen to those who told me not to waste the time and energy I and humiliated by the police. There are demonstrations all the time. For ten had invested. I didn’t even pause to think about the money I had earned as an years, students have been suffering repression similar to when we were under the accountant, or imagine myself being a poor actress. I only saw the present. I was dictatorship. There are some differences: today they fire ‘coloured bullets’ and tired and bitter, but I knew I wanted to make theatre and the only way to do it many protesters, as a result, have lost the sight in one eye. According to statistics was professionally. My parents thought I was throwing everything away, but I was the situation has improved: there are no dead, only some wounded in the streets, just following an impulse that was stronger than me. I decided I had to change the splashed with colour, where free quality education has to be fought for. Is this the course of events. It was not so easy as when I was a child. bright future they promised us? Years later, an Odin Teatret actress, Roberta Carreri, told me she thought But the Chilean government tells us we are doing better than before. What are decisions take you and not the other way around. Even I did not understand from they comparing the situation with? They tell us that if we look carefully we will where the strength to go on was coming. I prepared for the University entrance see the changes. Many people abroad believe all is well in Chile: there is economic examinations, coinciding with my brother who was doing the same. We were the solvency, it is a secure and orderly country to visit. But they do not realise that the first members of our family to study at university. We received scholarships from democracy re-established after the 1988 plebiscite is that of a country that lives the state for academic excellence. I had decided to dedicate my life to theatre, in the past because it maintains the Constitution from the period of Pinochet. A abandoning the benefits of the financial field, and my brother left computer work better future has been being announced since 1989: "Chile, joy is on its way," we to become a writer, poet and teacher. sang the hit of the time with the innocence of eight year olds, seeing our parents My father could not understand it. Where did the interest in these subjects full of hope when the "No" vote triumphed. come from? No one in the family had ever done anything similar. My father teased Between January and March of 2012, five of my childhood friends committed me saying that perhaps my artistic interest was the heritage from my grandmother's suicide, one after the other. My father called me on the phone when the last one cousin who had been a famous cabaret dancer in Valparaiso. But he was not committed suicide. I was working in Belgium. His voice was full of fear. He was pleased envisaging my brother as a bohemian alcoholic. My father considered his afraid that I might have the same idea and become one of them. He could not situation to be worse than mine because, being a woman, I would eventually find understand their actions since they had children and families. He had even seen a man to keep me and my children, whilst my brother would be the man in the them at each other’s funerals; he had talked with them about how difficult every- family, the breadwinner. What was he going to do? Despite entering university, my thing was. They left letters that betrayed weariness and disappointment. There father said my brother had thrown our future away. Luckily today my father, who is was a theory that they might have been part of a sect, but finally this idea was sixty-three, thinks quite differently. discarded. They all hung themselves. The reason? I think it was the result of the I understand why my father thought like this. Too many Chileans have fatigue of waiting for the promised bright future. We were all ‘Waiting for Godot’. become shocking examples of how a future paradise can be turned into a present We all strove, studied, were the best, got our degrees. Although our paths were

70 71 Carolina Pizarro Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow different because I was the only one who went into theatre, we had all paid our have disappeared without explanation, like Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico. Theatre bills, worked hard every day and risen early. But the promised joy never appeared; helps us resist and change the course of history. It is said that you cannot be an for them it never came. They did not really listen to their past and could not artist if you do not have money, but there are millions of exceptions. How many perceive a different future. What happened? Perhaps they were exhausted by fear. artists succeed through hard work? It is clearly difficult, but I don’t really think it We will never know. As part of the ‘generation of fear’, we only have silence. requires more effort than those who work in a factory earning a miserable salary. I decided to go home and travelled back to Chile, but I did not tell my parents. On the other hand, there are many more important things than money. When I arrived I met my friend’s mother. She hugged me very tightly and told me I have been lucky enough to meet extraordinary people in different coun- that one day her son would also return from a journey. I did not know what to say. tries, living in more difficult contexts than mine, women whom I thank for the She invited me home with her and told me many things, including that she felt inspiration they have given me when I teach or direct and for opening my eyes guilty for not having guessed what her son was planning. She gave me a photo and to essential questions concerning my position in art. It is important to know our a memorial card they had made for his funeral. Another neighbour saw me and history, but it is not enough to know simply what has happened. I do not want to called my mother and father. They came to get me and hugged me, crying with joy be compelled to live only through memory or future expectations. This creates an because we hadn’t seen each other for over a year. I was happy as well, but I felt endless anxiety and rage in me that blinds me and does not allow me to acknowl- uncomfortable to show this in front of our neighbour. As I said goodbye I saw how edge and allow the present moment to happen. At times I only need to look at the past and the future cross each other. those who have spent more time than me in this world to know what I don’t want. While I was there I went shopping with my mother. I thought our neighbour- This shows me the way when I am filled with fear, because I can forget the present hood had not changed much since we arrived there in 1985. Suddenly I saw some and my actions when I listen to my true self, am faithful to what I believe. But other childhood friends begging for money on a street-corner. They were drugged what do I believe in? What do I fear? If nothing is absolute. When we are afraid, up to their eyeballs and did not recognise me. In their eyes I could see the reflec- the idea that the past determines our future takes over. Perhaps the past does not tion of my past and simultaneously, for a split second, my future. My brother and give us an identity, but without the past there would be no expectation for the I could both have been one of them. Why did that not happen? I don’t know. future and no goals to strive towards every day. We would not know who we are. We belong to the generation whose parents directly transmitted fear to them; the But am I really not the one I was? Or does my past make me who I am today, and generation that does not protest, does not fight for its rights, which is obedient and therefore who I will become? How can I remember what I have changed, how can I prefers not to take risks. Perhaps for a moment fear disguised itself as hope inside keep a clear sense of what I still maintain and how do I trust that I leave behind me my brother and me. what is necessary in order for me to grow? The economic model adopted in Chile during the dictatorship was for a future When we worked on my solo performance Land of Fire, directed by Julia planned by the right-wing and the United States, and supported by the ignorance Varley, I came to realise what my parents, my grandparents, and other women who of the whole population. They want us to believe that we are not affected by the have been on a journey, have been through. This helped me understand my present crisis of the first world and that we are better off than our neighbours. On my jour- better and be aware that my present does not necessarily determine my future. I neys to Europe I have often heard about the economic crisis, but I believe that the focused on the fear and sadness singing provoked in me, on the rebellion and rage whole world is experiencing a crisis of the soul, that comes from frustrated expec- I have unconsciously inherited. Perhaps the only place where a true change can tations of a better future, from not living in the present and anxiously focusing on occur and where the past can dissolve is in the present of the concrete and silent what will come to pass. action that I discover in the rehearsal room: in the space where I can resist being I believe neither in politicians, nor in religious institutions. I distrust them taken over by the future predicted for me, building it instead in my own image. I because these ideologues want to convince us that the end, the attainment of need to be awake for this, to be in the present. I think the present is very precious, happiness, justifies the means. The future has been imagined as a utopia of achieve- not to be wasted, and that is why I need to learn to use it wisely. There are many ment, liberation and equality. But the means to achieve this involve slavery, concrete, small, silent actions that can be used to change reality a little, even if torture, murder, and land expropriation. See how they even try to patent our seeds! they seem absurd. But which reality? Like many other people, I also have problems At the end everyone follows their own path, with their personal crises and long- with reality. I am convinced that one can build one’s own reality. Even though life ings, even though the manipulation of the course of history by those who write often hits me in the face and challenges me to see if it is true. This fight reminds the books and in the media is evident. Our different past and future identities fight me of my father who tells me off because I have always wanted to do what I like. each other every day, confronting what was with what will be. We never know But why not? which will win. I learn every day from what has happened before and hence there arises a need I have been to places where theatre is a weapon for peace, like Colombia, or to generate more and more radical changes. My only weapon to do this is theatre, where it seeks to be a voice in the desert demanding justice for the women who but I do not want to make theatre at all costs. I wonder whether it is ethical to be

72 73 Carolina Pizarro Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow funded by industrial companies that are destroying and polluting rivers, companies still hurts today, and perhaps his death will continue hurting all those who knew that use in one day the water a community would use in months, and that have him tomorrow. Past and future do not have their own concrete reality. Only the taken seeds away from the people. Minera Escondida and other similar companies present moment does and it is fleeting. It has already transformed. It has changed. fund theatre festivals and countless cultural activities to avoid tax. Is it consistent If we imagine for a second that we live with the simplicity of childhood, a to borrow money from them to build my future at the expense of the terrible, irrep- simplicity that I heard Jill Greenhalgh talk about in one of her lectures at the arable damage they are doing in the world? Transit 7 Festival, we could look each other in the eyes, trust being with one In a conversation I had with Julia Varley, in a state of personal crisis and another... Or, taking the idea even further, we could imagine that we are birds refusing to accept reality, I said I needed to make profound changes in my life. Julia about to fly... and just ‘be’. Would we then still carry the concepts of past and told me that sometimes you have to accept doing things you do not like. Well, yes. future with us? But I think this happens within a context. If I have to clean a bathroom I do it, of This illusion was broken to pieces in an instant. In the face of events, dedi- course. I do not like it, but it is not something that makes me really unhappy or cating myself to theatre is the only thing that makes sense to me. It is a space goes against my beliefs. Experience tells me that it was not good for me when I did of resistance where ‘I do what I like’. Be it useless or not. Whether it changes things I did not like in order to make money, because I was not true to myself and anything or not. Even if everything is falling to pieces, and there are wars and did not dare to change my reality for fear of an uncertain future. So what? assaults everywhere, and thousands of refugees with terrible stories and everything Inevitably I think of Augusto Omolú, who was an actor and dancer with seems absurd. I do not want to wait "for the joy that is soon coming" and hang Odin Teatret, and who was violently murdered in his home in Salvador de Bahía. myself because it never came. The only thing I can do is continue with discipline Augusto had decided to spend more time in his country because he felt it was in theatre, training to always be in the present both on stage and in life itself. I important at that point in his life to share his knowledge amongst his own people. want to build and share this joy. And if it never comes, at least I made my best We had planned that I would visit him, but because of work commitments I effort along with many other people who have the same belief. It may take years delayed my trip for a year. So it was not to be. We would have met in a future that to achieve this. Perhaps someday I will be able to understand that nothing ever did not arrive, and I regret not having gone. I refuse to believe that someone who is happened in the past but it occurred now. As nothing will ever happen in the no longer here doesn’t exist anymore. For me it is not so. Augusto lives in me. He future because it will happen now. is present so that I do not forget enjoyment and pleasure even in the toughest and So, I would like to try not to plan so much. The future is an imagined present, most tiring moments, so that I do not forget to smile or feel the joy of being alive. which can happen or not. The past is a present that already occurred and that The experience of Augusto's death helped me take more care of my current we bring back by remembering. I should respect that each moment exists with its relationships, not to delay what I want to do and to continue learning. Julia own eternity and nothing more. As I say in one part of my solo Land of Fire, they Varley’s words accompany me: "I have to think with my own feet, learn and, why are “only events that happen and happen again”. I accept that when something not, rely on the teachings of a teacher, whilst practising and working on my own, important comes out of the past, even though I know that it has already happened, and following her or his example". Sometimes this works, sometimes not. The the body inevitably awakens, relives the emotions and the past lives within me. It desire to follow in the footsteps of someone who has given so generously sometimes merges with the present, and then with the future. Past and future become insepa- confuses me. Perhaps I have to betray with gratitude what I have learnt, in order rable and coexist simultaneously. to live my own life and continue to discover, hoping that what I received yesterday This is essential for me to have dreams and ideas. To project is to “throw, will compel me to find and detach myself so I am able to change every today. to direct forward or at a distance”. Every project needs risks that involve planning, Maybe in this way, gently, like the Japanese persimmon, I will allow my bitter fruit some crises along the way and the ability to reinvent oneself again and again if to become sweet. things don’t turn out as we expected. I always want to be listening to the present Sometimes I feel wrapped up in another kind of time. I know this is an illusion, in the knowledge that I chose to make theatre and not to be in an office. I do not but I allow it to trap me, to the point where I cannot see, smell or feel, because I want to become boring, heavy and serious, but I want to be that little girl who experience everything too fast. This inherent human hunger to have everything, to changes the present when she does not like it, who is doing seemingly pointless change nature, makes us even want to possess time. But we cannot. We cannot go things and who is always playing. back in time or take a leap into the future. We cannot make life pause as if it were a film. But I also believe that a different kind of time exists. I need an inner time to be able to accept that such a loved one as Augusto Omolú died in such a violent way. I was caught by the illusion of a secure future, sure that I would see him again. I forgot I was a bird; I didn’t open my wings and I fell to the ground. It hurt and it

74 75 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

as children it is not up to them to be aware of the affect that the socialisation of Jess Brookes the significant adults in their lives will have on them. Feminisms have reached, I think, a weird but very real blockade. Susan Bassnett, another Magdalena, stated Magdalenas in 1986 that feminism, for some entails "a process of questioning the [...] world as we know it" whilst for others it is about "accepting the framework of the world as it is and proving that they can make their mark upon it".1 The latter is what I would consider to be the biggest barrier to feminism and to our children, who are born into a world where they are pigeonholed by the choices of their parents. There are many women, and men, out there, all fighting for the best of a bad situation, rather My mother works hard at her job. She travels for hours everyday to get from her than challenging that situation at its roots. As men and women, we can expect rented flat in the middle of nowhere to her office in a little city. She always makes the very best of ourselves and fight to reform our social structures so that no one is sure her daughters are safe and happy. She enjoys rubbish TV and reads inspiring positioned as a pawn in their own or others' oppression. The continuous develop- books. She drives her mother to the supermarket. She supports her friends. She ment of humanity in other aspects of society proves that we are constantly learning leads an ordinary life. She is also a Magdalena. and changing and creating new ways to be human. We have the power to alter Magdalenas are strong and they are vulnerable. They create beautiful things the structures of society and work together, men and women, to make them safe, that they believe in. They all have their battles that they are fighting every day. honest, equal environments for everyone. I want that for the children that I teach. Sometimes they meet. Sometimes they work together. But mostly they lead ordi- I will never forget the day I climbed Carningli mountain with my mother and nary and separate lives all over the world. And yet they are connected. my sister to say goodbye to the beautiful Sally Rodwell. I didn't know her well, The Magdalenas have taught me that humanity is beautiful. And broken. but her work and her passing on the other side of the world meant so much to my And fixable. The children I teach are growing up in a very strange world. It is a mother. The Magdalenas may lead separate lives most of the time, but they are world, at least in Britain, where women have more opportunities than ever before never really apart from each other. They will always care. About each other. And whilst also facing increasingly complex new about what they do. They may disagree with each other, they may choose different and evolving challenges. Young feminists fights. But they are all united in their determination not to give up. now face the task of tackling the repercus- I am not a performer, or a director. I hyperventilate if someone asks me to play sions of post-feminism in a highly sexualised a drama game. I will never have any work to offer at a theatre festival. Yet I have world, navigating trans-feminism and all never once felt out of place at a Magdalena gathering. This is because they have of its implications, working to mould our taught me to care. I care about being the best possible primary school teacher I can independence with the social expectations be. I have seen Magdalenas meet and work together and learn from each other and of being able to do so in a 'feminine' way. be free and strong and wild in the space they have created for themselves. They We are expected to be able to categorise have taught me how important it is to do what you love and what you care about, ourselves, not just in terms of our sex, but and to do it properly, even in the moments when you wish you didn't care. They our gender as well, fitting into one of the have taught me that it is possible to communicate things that seem impossible to increasing number of gender roles that are say. They have taught me that to be able to articulate what you believe is right being shaped. People are beginning to talk of does not mean saying it the loudest, but saying it in the right way. gender fluidity, a concept that has so much I want the children I teach to learn to communicate what they believe in, potential for positive social change, and in regardless or because of who they are and where they come from. I want them to doing so are forgetting the binary of sex that be undaunted by hard work or by trying things out and getting them wrong and is still, as much as ever, affecting the people trying again. I want them to be able to say, really say, what they think, and to be our children grow up to be. unafraid of contradiction. I want them to learn from each other and care about The children in my class are seven years each other and be strong and be vulnerable and be ordinary people leading ordi- old and already their whole lives, their reli- nary, beautiful lives fighting for what it is that they really care about. I want them gion, their social groupings, their interests, to be Magdalenas. and even their academic performance are so visibly dictated by their sex. They are, Susan Bassnett, Feminist Experiences: the Women's Movement in Four Cultures, London, Allen and in essence, victims of their own society and Jess Brookes Unwin, p. 176

76 77 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Roxana Pineda Founding Teatro La Rosa today is a risk, because it makes me vulnerable at a time in my life when everything seemed calm and protected. But without risk life becomes boring, and I prefer to take the necessary risks rather than succumb Crucial Moments to apathy or give in to bitterness. I have accepted the risk because I cannot live without making theatre, and I want to continue experiencing the infinite pleasure of building images, and the feeling that on stage I can pass through more intense and profound experiences than in many moments of real life. In addition, I started Teatro La Rosa because I am stubborn and refuse to accept that everything around us is sinking. Those who follow me and share a love of these ideas are now my You ask me where I imagine being in twenty years' time. I am aware that the strength in continuing to prepare the future I have described above. question is in itself about the future, but for me to talk about the future at the At a crucial moment in my life when I did not know if the door that was moment is difficult. My present is so troubled that all my energies are focused on opening was in reality a door that was closing, speaking of the foundation of Teatro organising and making sense of life today, of the here and now that we theatre La Rosa, believing that I was speaking of the future, I wrote: people know so well. After twenty-five years in the Estudio Teatral de Santa Clara, I decided to create I would like to lose words in order to find the energy of another kind of speech in my own group, Teatro La Rosa, to start from zero to try and write a new adventure for silence. An act of birth is an act of life celebration. However, I do not want to which I am now entirely responsible. I never imagined my future separate from the celebrate, I have no substantial reasons for celebration. I want - yes this I do want - Estudio Teatral, and I know I do not have enough time left in my life to repeat the to protect very quietly the profundity of everything that in these years has allowed me creative experience I had there. You cannot write a biography with two beginnings. to create and build an image of dignity. Because I know that nothing is as valuable as A biography is a skein that unwinds from start to finish, from north to south, without the dignity of being. And I want from the humble condition of quiet work to continue the possibility of cancellation or amendment. My professional biography is rooted in to defend the existence of worthy human beings who fight against the miseries of this the biography of the Estudio Teatral. This fills me with pride and allows me to engage world and try, in a desperate and crazy act, to distance themselves from all dark and with both strength and with open wounds in this uncertain future, a future like a barbaric, miserable and vain thought. nebulous cloud that simultaneously both attracts and frightens me. I believe more and more in an intelligence detached from pure reason. I believe In some indigenous cultures the future is not in front but behind us, and what we more and more in the strength of the soul, in a faith that mobilises everything and have before our eyes is the past. This past in without which our life is an empty container where nothing flourishes. I believe in front of us allows us to discover questions company, solidarity and generosity, in partnerships, in friends. I also believe in and possible pathways; it permits decisions treachery and cowardice, opportunism, mediocrity and hate, because I have seen informed by life experience, memory that them grow and take possession of bodies. But I believe more in care and affection; I provides us with the precise energy needed think nothing is more powerful than the power of affection. And it is not true that it to design the unknown without forgetting does not exist, only that it is more difficult to cultivate. Why La Rosa? I cultivate the who we are, or who we have dreamed of white rose in July as in January, for the sincere friend who gives me his or her open being previously. I like this vision of a hand, and for the cruel person who tears out my beating heart - for them I do not future that already contains us. I like cultivate thistles or nettles, but a white rose. the idea that the future is not a 'feast of illusions' where you think you can reach I do not know where I will be in twenty years. I do not even know if I will be everything you ever dreamed of, a future here. I do not look that far ahead. And if I see myself, I always see myself amongst that is a space we have carved from the characters and actions, in a black space with an atmosphere that invites us to let beginning of our biography, including some ourselves go in order to understand where we stand. I feel very strongly that my surprises that will have to be confronted. I future is today; it is today that I have to let go of all the handcuffed demons and like this vision of a future that contradicts free the threads of this skein that keeps on searching for a direction. My tomorrow the dedication to consumption that floods is today, and with this faith I believe I will find the energy to open the door behind and cripples our culture. I like it because it which the future hides mysterious adventures. Because of this I am in a hurry, is less transcendental, more humble, more because I perceive that my future is getting closer, and that it frightens me. human, more poignant and real. Roxana Pineda with Teatro de la Rosa

78 79 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Gilly Adams Walking Westwards

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of. Montaigne

It’s Day Thirty Five and I’m in a tiny place called Las Herrerías. I’ve arrived here by trekking through a valley which would have been pleasantly rural were it not for the fact that it lies in the shadow of the highest and most terrifying viaduct I have ever seen. Subsequently, chatting with others, I discover that, had I stayed in Ruitelan, I would have been offered a foot massage and a tastier supper; or, if I’d gone on to La Faba, my feet would have been washed and prayers said for me in the best Christian tradition, but today’s random choices have brought me here instead. And the company is equally random: Marisa is Spanish, works for the European Union as some kind of civil servant, volunteers for Mother Theresa once a year and is one of the few Roman Catholics I meet along the way; Hanneke is a Dutch primary teacher who just keeps popping up on my path; and there is a wan, older Korean woman, who speaks little, probably because we have no common language. Somehow I establish that she teaches nursing skills and is here because of the impact Paulo Coelho’s novels have had on her. This hostel is run by a Spanish woman and her American partner, who met some years ago whilst walking the path, and have set up this Refugio together. Our landlady’s first question is Have you brought any insects with you? Bed bugs are ubiqui- tous on this journey so her enquiry is fair, but we all shake our heads. I place my back pack on a narrow bed and shake out my sleeping bag. I’m hot and tired and grumpy but I wander around outside until I find a shady patch where I can be peaceful and get a signal. I ring my Aunt Margaret to wish her a happy eighty-fifth birthday. She is my father’s sister and the last remaining member of that generation of my family. Hearing her voice makes me homesick.

I’m in Las Herrerías because I’m walking the Camino de Santiago, a five-hundred mile path that goes across northern Spain from the Pyrenees in the East to Santiago de Compostela in the West. Sometimes known as the Way, pilgrims have been following this route for nearly a thousand years and I have decided to make myself one of them. I left Cardiff a few days after the end of Legacy and Challenge, the festival we organised in August 2011 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Mag-

80 81 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow dalena Project and in my first week of walking I concentrated on ridding myself of avoid, but I no longer care. Mrs Blister has her own mantra which she repeats as she the anger and frustration that were sadly the legacy of the festival for me. Five weeks marches along: on, those feelings have evaporated and I am mainly in the present tense of the walk. I began at a monastery in Roncevalles, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees Moan, mutter, where I filled in the form necessary to acquire my Pilgrim’s passport. The most Moan, mutter, pertinent question on the form related to the purpose of my pilgrimage. Religious? Heavy pack, Spiritual? Other? I settled on spiritual. The passport has to be stamped every day to Aching back, record my journey and prove that I have achieved the miles. It gives me entry to Sore feet, the hostels along the way, which vary in size and facilities; some nights I’ve slept Blisters! in enormous dormitories that are run municipally; on other occasions, as here in Las Herrerías, the rooms are small; always the accommodation is cramped and basic And I am not alone in being preoccupied with my feet. As soon as two or three are but it is cheap. gathered together in a café, there is a tacit ritual: collapse into a seat, remove socks I am walking an average of twelve miles a day, and I have less than a hundred and boots and adjust plasters, anoint feet with lotions or special remedies, flaunt miles to go now. The path goes westward so I orientate myself by the sun each day. especially dramatic injuries. Everyone has a theory about the best way to deal with As long as it is behind me I know that I am heading in the right direction. In the blisters: a young Italian doctor, thrillingly beautiful - a candidate for Michelangelo early morning there are tall shadows on the ground in front of me; I play games with to sculpt if ever I saw one - was an evangelist for the lancing with needle and thread my elongated figure, waving my walking poles and humping my backpack to distort method, which I distrust because of the impossibility of sterilising the thread; sea- my shape. Fortunately, it’s difficult to get lost. Not only does the position of the sun soned Spanish walkers favour bandages, iodine and a clear fluid called Alcohólico de act as a guide, but there are many way-markers, blue tiles with the symbol of Saint romero; the most surprising advice was delivered early on by a plump ex nurse who James, the scallop shell, embellished in yellow. And there are often yellow arrows runs a hostel in Cizur Menor, near Pamplona. She took one look at me as I limped painted on the ground too; I have a fantasy that a small Spanish man is running in in, led me to a seat and produced a first aid box the size of a hamper that suggested front of me with a large pot of yellow paint. I just wish that he would work his magic she was an expert in dealing with damaged feet. Since we didn’t share a language on the outskirts of towns where I do get confused, sometimes walking in dispirited our exchange had a pantomimic quality but, not content with re-lacing my boots circles until I spot someone else with a backpack and head in that direction. I do and draining my blisters with a syringe, she produced a packet of panty liners and have a guide book, the only book that I carry. It’s the work of a man called John Bri- demonstrated how to use them as sweat absorbing inner soles, securing them in erley, who describes it as A Practical and Mystical Manual for the Modern Day Pilgrim. place with the flaps that usually go over the gusset of one’s knickers. I soon had a As the days have gone on I find myself becoming increasingly irritated by the rath- packet in my pack. And given this obsession with chiropody, I relish a moment days er sanctimonious inspirational offerings he often appends to practical information. later at the entrance to a town, when I see a young Spanish woman in ridiculously More useful is a single sheet that I acquired in Roncesvalles which indicates the high pink shoes with peep toes. We are both hobbling! gradient of each day’s walk diagrammatically, thus suggesting quite how strenuous I’ve also learned that the instruction take the weight off your feet is meant literally the day is going to be, and allowing me to prepare accordingly. and is good advice. In preparation for the Camino I paid meticulous attention to the Indeed, the whole journey is more strenuous than I had anticipated. I am not contents of my pack, consulting lists provided by previous pilgrims and being rig- physically agile or bold, nor am I particularly resourceful, and my native British orous in excluding any optional extras. Hence, I have only the clothes I’m wearing reserve is a handicap as is the realisation that the Spanish I have been diligently and one change, the smallest size of toiletries, the minimum of wet weather gear - learning in advance can at best be described as basic. The greater challenge is that, and, in advance, I felt that my luggage was manageable. Two days of doing a kind of having chosen to walk in September to avoid the summer heat, there is an unsea- backpack tango, shifting from foot to foot as I attempted to adjust the straps or hoist sonable drought and the temperature is constantly in the upper thirties centigrade. the pack into a more comfortable position taught me differently. I’ve given things One day, staggering into Castrojeriz, where the castle rises above the town and acts away, posted items home, but my pack has not yet become my friend. Thankfully as a beacon for weary travellers, the hostel warden, who is straight from central cast- I’ve discovered an enterprising small business that will collect my bag and leave it ing for hippies - collarless tunic, baggy pants and a long grey plait - takes one look at at a nominated hostel so, on an occasional basis and as a special treat, I enlist their me, picks up my pack and finds me a mattress immediately. Later he tells me that it services. This is not a purist approach to pilgrimage but, hey, I promised myself not is still thirty-seven degrees although it is early evening. to undertake this project in a spirit of martyrdom, and the delight of walking unen- And heat and feet don’t go well together. I develop an alter ego, Mrs Blister, who cumbered outweighs (no pun intended) any guilt. has abandoned any attempt at sartorial elegance and stomps along in shorts and At least once a day I ask myself why I am here. Why am I doing this? Any at- boots. Not a good look for the over sixties, and one that I had sworn in advance to tempt at explanation seems to connect with a sense of hiatus. I am sixty-four and

82 83 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow preoccupied with existential questions about the best way to use the life that is left I have discovered by trial and error that I can only walk at my own pace, cannot to me. I no longer work full-time and, whilst I have constructed a framework of ac- compete with the young and fit who go faster. I am the proverbial Tortoise rather tivity, it is not enough. The Bible says that our allotted span is three score years and than the Hare, but I am tenacious and achieve my destination even if it takes me ten, which is frighteningly close, so I am in search of urgent solutions. longer than some to arrive. And something about the Camino fires my imagination. I have been reading And the simplicity involves the breaking of domestic habits. I have no radio to about it for years: in Coelho’s allegorical writings; in Shirley MacLaine’s fantastic keep me company; no books or newspapers or crossword puzzles to amuse me; my ramblings about spirit guides and wild dogs; and many more prosaic accounts of the only literature is the guide book; access to the Internet is sporadic and my phone is challenges of the journey from more ordinary mortals. I have been haunted too by basic and used sparingly. These are quiet hours. a recurring image of myself, seen from behind, with a pack on my back and walking Quiet hours redeemed by the landscape when it is beautiful and by occasional boots - a kind of prophetic dream? Finally, having talked for so long about the possi- vivid images that stay with me. I have no camera, am an indifferent photographer, bility of setting out on the Camino, I had a Carpe Diem moment and decided that I but every day I record in my journal a picture I might have taken. Somehow fixing must either commit to doing it or abandon the idea and shut up. an image in words has a special potency: Another way of describing what I’m doing might be as a kind of Vision Quest: I want to be taken out of my comfort zone, I want to have an adventure whilst I still Tall, black sunflowers rotting in a field like sinister sentries. can. I am taking time out to reflect. I am looking for meaning. There is a kind of God-shaped hole in my life. I was brought up in the Anglican A huge, cast iron sculpture of pilgrims, an image reminiscent of Don Quixote, that church, went to Sunday school and services regularly until I was sixteen, when I looms out of the mist as I reach the summit of Alto del Perdón. had the opposite of a Road to Damascus moment and fell out of love with the whole The sun coming up like a molten pink ball, illuminating pine trees etched against thing, even though my mother was so perturbed that she asked the Vicar to come the sky. and convince me otherwise. Now it seems to me that any kind of organised religion is designed to oppress and subjugate women, not to mention fostering hatred and A grotesque man-made scarecrow decorated with messages and small objects stand- intolerance, but, nevertheless, I mourn the absence of a sustaining belief system. I ing at a drunken angle beside the path. suppose I’ve become a kind of nostalgic atheist. I am still entranced by the glory of the English language that is the St James Bible, always moved by Handel’s Messiah A main road, glimpsed below through a fence of wire netting into which crosses and Verdi’s Requiem, but these passions are cultural rather than religious. After all, made from twigs and leaves have been woven. the Christian story is the biggest myth pitched to me in my life. I was indoctrinated with it in childhood and its vocabulary and iconography still speak to me. Part of my The Cathedral in León, a great white building with gargoyles and flying buttresses, deep affection for Leonard Cohen’ s poetic lyrics is that I relate to the metaphorical like an illuminated ship in full sail floating in the darkness. Judeo-Christian world he inhabits. I am writing as though there is nothing to enjoy on my journey and yet there is The smiling faces of a French couple as I say goodbye to them in Burgos. Observing much that soothes and pleases me about the simplicity of the Camino. The day has them in different hostels, I have noted their quiet devotion to each other. In this an inevitable pattern. Whatever the amenities of the hostel in which I’m staying, unexpected moment of leave taking, I want to convey how inspirational I find their I leave my bunk by six a.m. and re-pack my bag by touch in the dark so as not to mutual affection but I stumble over my sentence and sadly leave it unsaid forever. disturb anyone who is still sleeping. Every object has a specific home so that I can be certain that nothing is lost. I set off as soon as I’m ready and walk westward out of Images that speak, precise images that transport me to a particular location or emo- darkness into light until I find somewhere that offers coffee and breakfast. I continue tion.... walking until I reach my chosen destination for the day, or until I’m exhausted and decide not to go any further. I claim a bed in a hostel, wash myself, wash my clothes Although I am often solitary, often absorbed in a kind of walking meditation, I and hang them out to dry, write my journal, explore the surroundings, find some- meet fellow pilgrims along the way, in cafés or at hostels. Sometimes the encounters where to eat supper - menu del Peregrino, fuel rather than culinary delight, but cheap are brief, a polite greeting about the weather or how one’s body is holding up; on and accompanied by delicious local wine - fall into bed by nine p.m. and hope that other occasions the conversations develop, freighted with the sudden intimacy that not too many of my fellow pilgrims are snoring. can emerge between strangers who are unlikely to meet again in the post-Camino And the next day I start again. Keeping on keeping on, which is harder some world. Everyone has a story to tell and simply asking Why are you doing this? elicits mornings than others. My knees have lost their elasticity, making descent more a confidence. Sometimes it’s enough to have a companion for a while, to laugh or challenging than ascent, although learning to use walking poles effectively helps. complain, to offer or be given support. But the encounters that are significant, the

84 85 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow characters who people my Camino, linger in my memory and accompany me as I Hanneke: a Dutch primary teacher in her forties, who is clearly determined never to trudge forward: be alone. I am slow to realise that part of her attachment to me is because I am the same age as her mother, whose death she mourns. I have come to understand that I My, pronounced Mü: Danish, young, radiant, shining with anticipation, fearless and need to walk the Camino alone but find it difficult to detach myself from Hanneke. moving swiftly. We meet on Day three and share a conversation about Murikami’s I don’t want to be unkind. My various strategies to create distance between us fail. novels and her ambition to read Márquez in the original Spanish. I dissuade her from Finally, after she creates a scene in a hostel, Irish Gilly says This is your Camino. You walking barefoot but, many days later, at a bend in the path, I come across her boots must do what you want. After all you need never see any of these people again. I make hanging from a tree with her name and the date written across the leather. A story the break. whose ending I won’t ever know. Peter: German, cynical and opinionated. He is determined to carry his bag the whole Wilhelm: German, kind and courteous, a business man. We spend an evening explor- way and regards sending luggage on in advance as cheating, but he always stays in ing his anxiety about the daughter of his first marriage who is estranged, jealous of his hotels rather than hostels... His cynicism and constant criticism are a challenge to love for the young son of his second marriage. How can he be reconciled with her? me but I soften when I witness his delight at the imminent arrival of his wife and daughter. I remind myself that everyone has redeeming features. Simon and Sander: father and son. Walking through a chestnut wood on a humid day, uneasy because of the unwanted attentions of an old farmer and, for once, un- Cynthia gives me my most bizarre encounter; a small, black, overweight American, certain of my way, I scurry round a bend to find an unlikely sight. Simon is struggling I find her sweating and dejected on a seat in a particularly ugly place. She is walking to push nine-year-old Sander in his buggy along the rough path. When we fall into as a companion to her friend Nancy who overcame Cynthia’s reluctance for this conversation he explains that Sander is autistic, able only to make guttural sounds. adventure with promises of late starts and leisurely strolling. In the event Nancy Simon expects no miracle cure but wants to share this precious adventure with his shoots off at the crack of dawn abandoning Cynthia to follow behind, but harangu- son. When Sander gets upset Simon soothes him by holding the phone next to his ing her by mobile phone to keep up. Cynthia’s bosom is festooned with phones and ear so that he can hear a recording of his mother’s voice. other technical equipment, her clothes and shoes more appropriate for shopping than hiking. We walk a little way together while she regales me with her tale of woe Irish Gilly: first encountered in the women’s toilet in a hostel run by nuns, incon- but we keep having to stop because yet another of her gadgets has dropped off her gruously sporting one large roller in her hair which makes me giggle. Gilly is walk- chest and has to be picked up. I go on alone. ing the Camino for the third time. She walked first as a gift to herself when her sons left home; walked again in the aftermath of her husband’s unexpected death And then there are the two German ladies who seem constantly at odds with each but, made clumsy by grief, injured herself and could not complete the journey; other. I keep meeting one or the other, red-faced and angry, or shouting. I conclude now she is walking into her future, making decisions about work and relationships. that solitude can be a blessing.

Canadian Sharon: having occupied adjacent mattresses one night, we meet again Gradually I understand that every encounter is an encounter with myself in some in Fromista in the early morning where she waits for a bus to shorten the distance way. The Camino offers a neutral canvas on which to project my own behaviour, my so that she will make her plane on time. It is cold for once and, as we huddle over own strengths and weaknesses. I have plenty of opportunity to reflect on this, in this a coffee, she shares her grief at the death of a charismatic Canadian politician, Jack society of transient strangers. I ponder on what I might learn from each exchange Layton, who embodied values that matter to her. He left an open letter to the Na- as I tramp. tion: “Love is better than anger; hope is better than fear; optimism is better than In so many ways the experience of walking the Camino seems to me a metaphor despair, so let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.” Sharon reads these words to me for the Journey of Life, with all the elements of chance that occur in life, but are not from her notebook and I write them in my journal after she has gone. always so easy to discern. I realise that I could walk the Camino again and have a completely different experience: choose different resting places according to the state of Kyomi: a remarkable young, Japanese academic, who speaks clever English and adequate my feet, my energy, my mood - all these factors determine how far I walk, where I stop Spanish. She often walks with a trio of older Spanish men, whom I have christened the for the night and, of course, whom I meet. Sometimes I hear stories from other pil- Three Musketeers, but their pace is too rapid for me so I spend time with Kyomi in cafés grims that make me wistful for experiences I have missed, but nothing is guaranteed; or when she is content to walk more slowly. She is a veteran of the Camino, with fund- there is no perfect way of doing the Camino, no formula for ‘getting it right’. ing for a research project, but wrestles with the tension between her own wanderlust and It’s rather like a board game where I throw the dice and move according to the her love for her husband who does not want to travel outside Japan. number that comes up and, for me, the sense of game is explicit. In Logroño, etched

86 87 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow into the pavement near the Pilgrim’s church, there is a map that shows the hazards Amongst the images that have faded in the sun I see a quotation I recognise al- of the Camino set out like Snakes and Ladders, but featuring geese instead, as well as though I can’t identify it immediately. recognisable landmarks like the historic bridge at Puente la Reina. Perhaps it’s just that I can’t quite work out how to play? Later, when I visit Finisterre at the very end We shall not cease from exploration of my walk, amidst all the tourist and pilgrim tat on sale on the street that leads to And the end of all our exploring the sea, I find an imitation of one of the stamps from the Pilgrim passport that says Will be to arrive where we started simply Game Over. It makes me laugh so I buy it. And know the place for the first time. This phenomenon of meeting someone several times and then never seeing them again is curious. Where do they go? How have they walked so far ahead? In It comes to me that it’s the work of T.S Eliot (although it’s not until I check at home contrast, my sense of the Camino as a Metaphor for Life is so strong that I have the that I establish that it’s an extract from Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets). irrational conviction that everyone who has been significant to me on the way will Wherever they come from, these words, completely unexpected in this Spanish context, be present at the Pilgrims’ Mass in the Cathedral in Santiago at the end. The reality speak to me directly, seem to hold some special significance. A piece of serendipity? I is different, of course. set off in better heart. Knowing that today’s walk will be very steep, I’ve cheated and arranged for my bag to be picked up and delivered to the next hostel. I manage to shake But back to Las Herrerías and Day thirty-five: I am depressed, harbouring dark off Hanneke by insisting that I need to walk alone so I am unencumbered in every thoughts, irritated that Hanneke has appeared again. I feel grubby and am anxious sense. And the walk is truly beautiful! The path goes up and up and up, the leaves are about bed bugs. I haven’t stayed anywhere really clean for a while and this place is beginning to change colour and the sunlight dappling through the trees makes a kind not promising. The bonhomie of the Camino is wearing thin and I want to curse the of chiaroscuro on the ground. Looking behind me I can see the valley falling away and mountain bikers who speed past with reckless disregard for pedestrians, smiling and the steep ascent winding into the distance. The landscape reminds me more and more shouting a greeting as they go. I have almost given up twice because the pain in my of Wales. It is green and lush and, at some point, I pass a sign announcing that we are feet is blinding me to any beauty on the way. I bought new boots in León but they crossing into Galicia. Days earlier, in the church of Santa María in Viana, I experienced made things worse. Santiago is still at least six days away, there’s not a revelation in overwhelming gratitude for my parents and lit a candle for them. But today thoughts of sight, and I no longer know why I’m here or what I’m doing. my mother fill my mind as I walk and I feel sad. I can’t help focusing on the difficulties in And I’ve begun to feel that if I never see another church it will be too soon. I our relationship. It is eight years since she died but the melancholy persists. hate the bleeding Jesus iconography and the ostentatious wealth. I came out of the As I finally reach the summit there is a dry-stone wall on my right, another re- cathedral in Burgos in disgust at the plethora of pink, piglet-like, wooden cherubs minder of Wales, and then I arrive at a small, grey town. A large coach is decanting crawling over statues of the Madonna and the vulgar displays of gold. There are its load of Japanese tourists right in front of me but there is also a sign proclaiming enormous churches in quite small places along the Camino that must have been that this is O Cebreiro and that pilgrims have been received here for nine hundred built with alms paid by pilgrims. And famous markers like the Cruz de Ferro, (where years. I begin to weep. one is supposed to leave a token of love and blessing, to mark letting go of something I scuttle down the street to find sanctuary for my tears and go into the church. In from one’s journey), turns out to be a tawdry monument covered in bits and pieces contrast to the pomp that I have come to hate, this building is plain and unadorned. with a stray dog wandering about on top with a boot in his mouth. St James is not presented as a warrior with Moors at his feet and a sword in his hand, I try to focus on moments of joy instead. In contrast to the visit to the cathedral, rather he is a simple wooden figure in a blue robe, with his staff and the scallop shell I experienced huge elation walking along the river into Burgos, in amazement at which is his symbol. I sit and weep and weep in what I suppose is a kind of catharsis having accomplished the first one hundred and fifty miles. Many of the pleasures for all sorts of griefs, although I don’t exactly know what it is I am crying about. have come from being in nature before dawn, sometimes walking with both the Eventually I subside, light a candle, collect a copy of the Pilgrim Prayer of La Faba in moon and the sun in the sky. I remember one particular morning, when I left a English (Although I may have travelled all the roads, crossed mountains and valleys from claustrophobic room in Nájera to see church spires silhouetted against a rosy sky and East to West, if I have not discovered the freedom to be myself, I have arrived nowhere) then found coffee and toast at the perfect moment. Small but significant blessings. and go out into the sunshine. Irish Gilly is sitting outside a café and I join her in Try as I might though, it’s One of Those Days and I can’t shake off my gloom. some wine which is served, not in a glass, but in an earthen-ware bowl. She notes What will it mean if nothing changes as a result of this pilgrimage? If I have no sense that I’ve been crying and I tell her that I was remembering my mother. Ah, she says, of what should come next? I climb into my faithful sleeping bag feeling homesick was she a lovely woman then? Not exactly, I reply. and desperately lonely. The rest of the day is an anti-climax. When I scramble into the hostel where my But tomorrow, as the saying goes, is another day. I am sitting in the kitchen idly bag has been dropped, I find that it is grubby and unwelcoming. The poor woman who inspecting the clutter of postcards on the wall whilst I wait for a promised coffee. runs it looks exhausted and downtrodden. I wonder if she hates the unending stream of

88 89 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow pilgrims who pass through. I should walk on and look for somewhere better but I don’t We shall not cease from exploration know if I have the energy to walk any further and I’m full of the events of the day. What was it that happened? Why did I weep so profoundly? I’m clear that it It’s October 9th, 2016, five years exactly since the day I finally arrived in Santiago at wasn’t a religious experience, I am no nearer believing in any kind of God, but it the end of my ‘pilgrimage’ and I know that my life has changed in the intervening was... something. A moment of grace, a gift, a reminder, despite everything, of the period. I have received no definitive Answer to my confused Search for the meaning privilege and delight of being alive. of life but the sense of bewilderment and confusion has gradually, imperceptibly, Five days later I arrive in Santiago. As I walk from the outskirts of the city ebbed away and, I realise that I have acquired a new kind of contentment and sense local people smile and make encouraging remarks. I am touched by their good will of purpose. Serendipity has brought me unexpected ways to fill my days. since they must see hordes of pilgrims arrive every day; and then the massive bulk Most surprisingly, perhaps, I am ‘dancing’ again. A long-standing theatre col- of the Cathedral looms in front of me in the huge square. I make my way inside and league, Mike Pearson, has initiated a physical theatre project for over sixties. This look for somewhere quiet to sit. I don’t want to see the relics of St James or wander began with a series of workshops that were so successful the emerging group went on around, I simply want to absorb the fact that I have made it. I have walked nearly meeting and eventually became a company, which we have christened Good News five hundred miles because of an act of will and imagination and, despite the blisters, from the Future. We work with a series of gestural alphabets which, once learned, I’m actually here. The cathedral is full of people, many of whom seem to be intent enable us to improvise within an agreed structure. The sessions are often boisterous; on clambering over chairs in order to get a better camera angle. So, no peace; tired older people are no longer self-conscious and we laugh a great deal and get things and emotional just about describes my state of mind. wrong. After a while we decided to go for a public performance, which developed And then what? I treat myself to a small hotel and the luxury of a shower and into What Comes Next?, a title with both a metaphorical and a literal sense. I found sheets on the bed. There’s a lovely garden too, which is a serene sanctuary. I queue myself having to engage another part of my brain - learning words is one thing but up for my Compostela, the certificate that proves I’ve completed the Camino, and learning movements presents a different challenge - but oh, the delight of being al- burst into tears again when I receive it. Kyomi and I go to the next day’s Pilgrim lowed to prance about in a black and white striped frock and purple shoes and tights. Mass together. We position ourselves to have a good view of the Botafumeiro, but Even the limitations of wonky knees and a stiff back can be overcome or, at least, the great incense holder is not swung today, much to our disappointment. My fanta- incorporated. Now we are progressing to perform in open spaces like museums and sy that all the people I have met on the way would be in the service turns out to be art galleries. Not quite an elderly Flash Mob but we certainly aspire to be noticed. just that, but I hear Sander shouting and I manage to find him and Simon afterwards And my free-lance work has taken me in new directions. Re-Live is a Cardiff and give them a farewell hug. The next day we go by bus to Finisterre, the end of based company that uses Life Story theatre to develop and share the voices of mar- the world and the place where St James is said to have arrived in Spain. Tradition ginal communities who are not usually heard. I saw Memoria, a theatre piece about has it that pilgrims abandon their clothes at Finisterre but this feels a step too far; I the experience of living with dementia, either as a sufferer or a carer, and subse- abandon my worn-out walking poles instead and buy the Game Over passport stamp quently volunteered to work on the project as it developed. My mother had demen- from one of the tawdry street stalls. Kyomi and I sit in the sun, eat fish and enjoy tia at the end of her life and I wish that I had known then what I have learned now. watching the sea. Later that evening I meet Irish Gilly and she regales me with the I experience a tender moment in a writing exercise about hopes and fears for the decisions she has made about the future. I hug her, as I have hugged Kyomi, in that future where it becomes clear that everyone, whatever their state of health, shares strange but certain knowledge that I will never see either of them again. And then, similar anxieties about loneliness and loss. It is so easy to define people differently I’m at the airport coping with the humiliation of flying Ryanair and very swiftly, I because of illness. am returned to my tiny house in Cardiff. I write nothing more in my journal. It’s as I go on to work on the Coming Home project which involves military veter- though a tap has been turned off. ans and their families and looks at the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian life Now that I’m home, I’m bewildered and a bit disorientated. It seems that I after experiences of war and violence. As a pacifist and sixties leftie, I have always have inadvertently lost ten kilos but there are no significant revelations, no help- been impatient with those who join the armed forces but this project humbles ful pointers to the future. After all, the only Writing on the Wall belonged to T.S. me and makes me reconsider some of my long-held prejudices. Such decent and Eliot. I need to decide again how to fill my days. What was that all about, I wonder kind men, so supportive of each other and so damaged. Working with people with again and again. There was a moment of grace - and more blisters than I could Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is challenging because there are a whole set of new have imagined one foot could hold. Perhaps I am just an ageing woman who went behavioural rules to learn; nothing can be taken for granted. on a long walk on a whim? And yet. And yet, something was accomplished. And The workshops function in an ‘ordinary’ way but underneath there is a level of I’d go again tomorrow. Not necessarily to Santiago, but somewhere else. Setting emotional volatility that may erupt at any moment. We swing from laughter to tears out with my poles and my pack. Walking with the sun behind me. in a heartbeat. Walking Westwards. I share one such moment with D: he was with the UN peace force in Srebrenica

90 91 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow but helpless to do anything to prevent the massacre. We are working with significant Luis Bunuel objects and I am directing the scene. D walks forward wearing his blue UN beret; as Writing the Self appeals to me because many of the issues I discuss in that context he removes it to place it on the floor, I am the only one who can see his face contort are those that preoccupy me as my eighth decade looms. I am concerned to rifle my with the conflict between pride and shame. My eyes fill with tears too. memories to discern the patterns, to find a framework to talk about my life, to clarify This work confirms my desire to use whatever skills I have in the pursuit of being what has been and is important to me, to identify what I most want to do in the time useful, or “making a difference” to use a clichéd phrase. But there is room for joy that remains to me. and excess as well. I am invited to be dramaturg on a huge outdoor extravaganza, I used to imagine that ageing was a gradual process of decline. Now I rec- Ar Waith ar Daith, a Welsh journey of myth and magic that involves six hundred ognise that there are phases of accelerated decay, like the day when I discover participants and attracts an audience of more than twelve thousand to Cardiff Bay. that I have cataracts in both eyes and am about to lose another tooth, or the Miraculously, after weeks of rain, it is sunny and bright. Spectacular is the correct knowledge that the damage I did to my lower back when I fell three years ago adjective: giant puppets, specially composed music, pyrotechnics, film, lantern pro- is always going to bother me. I am literally getting shorter and, if I’m careless cessions, dancers on the roof of the Millenium Centre, boats rowing into the bay, a enough to catch sight of myself in a mirror, it is my mother who looks back at live performer narrating in Welsh and English from a mobile tower... Much of the me. All these things are intimations of mortality - I ache in the places where I process has intrigued me because there is so much technology that I have never seen used to play, as Leonard Cohen sang, but it’s important not to talk myself into before, but the event itself - this only-one-chance-to-get-it-right-occasion - fills me behaving like an ‘old person’, whilst accepting any physical limitations with as with such nervous excitement that I am impelled to run around the performance much grace as I can muster. space in advance to let off steam. Astonishingly everything happens as it should Perhaps the work that has most meaning for me now involves being an inde- and there are some breath-taking images. In the last few moments, as Ceridwen, pendent celebrant, creating bespoke ceremonies or rites of passage. For me this is enchantress and story-teller, is flown out from her magic cauldron high into the sky a rigorous practice that occupies a space somewhere between the formally religious over the bay into the firework stars that litter the sky, I am overwhelmed by delight and the vehemently anti-religious. The imperative is to create an alternative to the and so glad to be part of what is happening. orthodox that has integrity, imagination and beauty. I love the process of writing My regular work is more mundane but, nevertheless, has its share of quiet plea- and leading a celebration of a life or a partnership or naming, with and on behalf of sures. I have been let loose in the Creative Writing department of the University those to whom the particular occasion matters enormously. In a way, these events of Swansea where I teach theatre writing, which links back to all the years I spent resemble theatre performances and demand the requisite stage management, but the working with stage and radio dramatists, and something called Writing the Self stakes are higher because each occasion is unique, unrepeatable. It takes courage for which explores various forms of personal life writing - autobiography, biography, someone to use their own words, to speak their own truth; to describe the person diary, blog, memoir. I love this. I love discussing the questions that life story writing who has died “warts and all”; to make an articulate commitment to a marriage. I provokes. Who has ownership of the material? What is the most memorable way to believe this honesty allows us to reclaim the sacred in the everyday and access our tell a story? How to decide what to include and what to omit? When do the facts emotions more vividly. get in the way of the greater truth? Does a memory become a fiction as soon as it is written down? Last year’s group included a gentle, Chinese student who smiled We are seeking a new authenticity rather than falling back on old or exhausted forms. benignly through revelations that included marital infidelity, alcoholism, criminal This is difficult but it does not have to be worthy or ponderous; good ceremony is like a parenting and disastrous sexual relationships. Determinedly keeping us on the track dance. It incorporates love and grace. It has the power to nurture and soothe because of literary merit - the tears should not be your own - rather than True Confessions, I it allows us to emerge from isolation and celebrate our shared humanity. 1 often wondered what he made of it all and whether he was shocked, or just baffled, by the cultural and linguistic contrasts. His final offering reassured me: an elegiac In addition to being an independent celebrant, under the aegis of Dead Good account of his father’s funeral and his own decision to become a poet, assuming the Guides 2, my friend and colleague, Sue Gill, and I lead workshops for existing and calling that his father had abandoned. aspiring celebrants in all the skills associated with this kind of work. We often

The end of all our exploring

1. Gilly Adams: published in Playing for Time, making art as if the world mattered, Lucy Neal, You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise Oberon Books, 2015 that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… 2. Dead Good Guides is an artist led company, seeking a role for art that weaves it more fully our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. into the fabric of our lives. The company is the initiative of John Fox and Sue Gill who were the Without it we are nothing. co-founders of the celebratory arts organisation Welfare State International (1968-2001)

92 93 Gilly Adams Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow seem to find ourselves creating, or helping participants to create, less obvious cer- na Transit festivals have given me the opportunity to test these theatrical experi- emonies for other life events which need attention but get neglected. These often ments. In Looking for the Meaning (2007) I explored childlessness, independence and relate to loss of one kind or another: the end of a relationship; serious illness; a life identity; in Dancing with Desire (2016), with Maria Porter, we looked at how desire changing accident or a problem with mental health. The workshops provide a safe changes and mutates into different forms with age; in Mrs Blister Changes Boots (yet space to address such issues. I have vivid memories of ceremonies to restore con- to be performed) I am trying to find a humorous, dramatic equivalent to the real fidence after being made redundant; to acknowledge the pain of childlessness and life experience of walking the Camino. I aspire to achieve a way of telling that infertility; to burn and let go of dark secrets; to make private farewells. I believe will resonate with the listener, so that she hears what is being told but is reminded that a ceremony is a kind of journey through liminal space into the next stage of simultaneously of something in her own history and, thus, of how our stories unite life. It happens only once and, if entered into with commitment and witnessed by rather than divide us. others, can make a lasting change. Our workshops often feel like precious respites In the time that I have been writing this article, I have arrived at the mile- from the demands of the everyday, and, if it sounds as though there are tears, there stone of my seventieth birthday. The imminent approach of my three score years is a lot of laughter as well. Often a sense of continuity, of connection with previous and ten, as the Bible describes it, felt like an enormous hurdle, something loom- generations emerges, a reminder that our personal experiences of pain or joy are ing large in my imagination. Is it an end or merely the beginning of the next common to others too. phase? Something to be marked or just endured? I don’t know why this birthday A recent workshop coincided with the terrible loss of refugees drowning preoccupied me so much, assuming the status of a threshold or major rite of in the seas off Lampedusa. After sharing our grief and impotence in the face of passage, but it certainly absorbed me for weeks in advance. After much thought, these disasters and wondering whether the only practical action possible was I decided to choose the celebratory route, particularly since, as a single woman to send money, we decided that we could also take time to really pay attention without children, there have not been many formal opportunities in my life for and focus our imaginative energy on the plight of those travellers. We went to gathering friends and family together in one place. The preparation was stress- Morecambe Bay, where the cockle pickers drowned in 2004, and carrying im- ful, wanting to “get it right”, paying attention to the detail, but the event itself ages of journeying - flimsy paper boats, birds and maps - each took a moment to was overwhelming and joyful, with dancing, good food and wine, affectionate make a blessing or a wish and cast it into the dangerous waters of the Bay. It was greetings, shared stories and friends and colleagues from every decade of my life. a different kind of ceremony, a form of secular prayer, an intimate gathering, a It confirmed how lucky I have been, how privileged, with a richness of friends being with, an attempt to enter into another’s experience. Futile? Perhaps, but and family, and nieces and goddaughters to compensate in a special way for the I am glad that we did it and glad to have participated. I often think of that an- absence of offspring of my own. So much emotion and so much to treasure in my cient Chinese proverb that tells us that it is better to light a candle than to rage memory box! against the darkness. Nevertheless, if I think about the future, as this book requires me to do, my main questions are: how long do I have left and how best can I use the time that remains? Like many people, I hold in my mind mutually contradictory beliefs - that I will Arriving where we started die and that I cannot imagine my own life ending. The first of these demands that I am ready, so I have made a will, given my brother power of attorney, made notes We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude, and with that gratitude for my funeral, begun the process of clearing out old letters and extraneous bits of to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses. paper and things that have significance only for me, and tried to ensure that I have Andre Dubus II, Broken Vessels not left anything important unsaid. Simultaneously I plan holidays, develop work projects, walk and go to yoga, sing with my delightful community choir and spend I am intrigued by the nature of memory. I recall tiny moments in my life that con- time happily with friends and family. I try to ask myself: What do I want to make of tinue to burn on the retina of my inner eye. I discern new patterns in past events. this day, this hour? I reconfigure meanings and relationships in the light of understanding gained from And the events of the last year have affected me enormously. The world feels the passing of time. particularly bleak: the war in Syria seems incapable of solution; the election of These concerns manifest, not only in my teaching, but in my own work where I Trump returns us to the nuclear threat; and women and children are suffering search for a dramatic framework for telling stories from my life, a way of transform- everywhere from gratuitous violence. In my own country some posh boys with too ing them into performance, since theatre seems to be my natural medium. Some- much power and personal ambition have taken us down a very nasty rabbit hole. times being intimate and direct is a strength, although the shaping of my material Alice has gone through the Looking Glass and the absurd, mendacious and xeno- is challenging, raising as it does all the usual questions about structure, tone, what phobic have become the stuff of everyday. I know that I am impotent to change or to tell and what to leave unsaid for artistic or discretionary reasons. The Magdale- influence any of these large catastrophes but have to find small ways to contribute

94 95 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow on a daily basis in order to avoid succumbing to depression. Kindness feels espe- Here I am, at the dawn of my eighth decade, concentrating as best I can on cially necessary now, mentoring or helping young people, supporting friends even acceptance, on living modestly, on the necessity for joy and beauty and gratitude, on parts of the journey that we might not have chosen - anything that is congru- on the imperative to be useful when I can and to be open to new experiences. ent with my personal and political beliefs, anything that makes me feel useful in however humble a way. I am reminded again of the Chinese proverb about the Walking into the Future. importance of lighting a candle. Walking towards Death.

Knowing the place for the first time Walking Westwards.

To live in this world

you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Mary Oliver, In Black Water Woods

I have no sustaining belief in the after-life, believe that I have only the here and now and that my legacy will last for just as long as someone remembers me and speaks my name. The American psychotherapist, Irvin D. Yalom, has written a wonderful book called Staring at the Sun, in which, as a non-believer himself, he writes very encouragingly about legacy as “the ripple effect of our lives”. I hope that my life will leave a ripple of some kind amongst those I have loved. But, of course, I won’t be here to know. Travelling in Cambodia last year I was struck by the gentleness of the people: such tenderness, despite the horror of that country’s violent past, which has left no one over the age of forty untouched; such willingness to smile and laugh. That mood was encapsulated for me in the gesture of Namaste - the hands together, as in prayer, with the bowing of the head over them. It is a mark of respect and gratitude, the acknowledgement of the soul of the other perhaps. I hold this gesture in my mind and let it resonate there. All this takes me back to walking the Camino: I ask myself why I have felt the need to write about that walk at such great length. I realise it is because those six weeks, with the many blisters and aches and pains, the encounters along the way, the conflicting emotions provoked, the fleeting moments of joy, the fundamental need simply to keep putting one foot in front of another - operated so strongly as a metaphor for the Journey of Life that I am compelled to revisit it to shed light on something of what I am experiencing now.

96 97 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Patricia Ariza The Book of Those Things We Don't Know

Libro de los no saberes

De vidrio La ventana no sabía que por el vidrio que aprisionaban los postigos yo iba a verlo todo en esa noche

Of glass The window did not know that the glass that imprisoned the shutters allowed me to see everything on that night

Cerradura La puerta ignoraba que tenía cerradura y que por ella un pequeño objeto de metal iba a introducirse para que su cuerpo saliera

Lock The door did not know it had a lock and that through it a small metal object would be introduced so that a body could escape

Sábana La cama no lo sabía pero la sábana esperaba su ausencia

Bed-sheet The bed did not know but the sheet was waiting for an absence

98 99 Patricia Ariza Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Centro El baño era el lugar por donde el agua se me salía del centro

Centre The toilet was the place where the water left from my centre

Infinito El pasillo no entendía que era un espacio infinito para llegar hasta allá

Infinite The corridor did not understand that it was an infinite space to reach beyond

El tacón alto La casa no tenía por qué conocer las huellas y el puente no entendía en absoluto porque el tacón se había incrustado esa noche en el andén

The high heel The house had no reason to recognise the footsteps and the bridge did not at all understand why the heel was embedded in the platform that night

Evanescencia La nube no conocía la evanescencia pero sentía que se iba volviendo gotas entonces, aquella madrugada, humedeció, levemente el asfalto

Evanescence The cloud did not recognise the evanescence but it felt that it was turning into drops so, on that morning, it lightly moistened the asphalt

Bajé a pie La montaña nunca entendió que costara tanto subirla no le importó siquiera cuanto esfuerzo hicimos después para olvidarla

100 101 Patricia Ariza Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Box office Going down on foot This ticket stub perhaps was used to The mountain never understood see an actress smile in the dark how much it cost to climb it it did not even care how much effort we made afterwards Plumas azules to forget it Había una vez una gallina triste que quiso tener plumas azules y eso le valió ser ave del paraíso Un roto en el pantalón El pantalón no entendía que una mano Blue feathers había roto el bolsillo de tanto esperar There was once a sad hen who wanted to have blue feathers A tear in the trousers which led her to become a bird of paradise The trousers could not understand that a hand had torn their pocket from waiting such a long time Musitando Los dientes se me destemplan Estilo al escuchar lo que piensas decirme. Aunque este zapato rojo sepa que tuvo un pie No me lo digas. no reconoce el estilo de andar de su antigua propietaria Sólo musita la primera palabra, y de ahí en adelante, sonríe. Style Although this red shoe knows it held a foot Muttering it does not recognise how its former owner walked My teeth are getting blunt from hearing what you think of telling me. Do not tell me. Saberes Just ponder the first word, Knowledge and from then on, smile.

Sacar el cuerpo Por más de que me saques el cuerpo Grieta algo se queda en el olvido No te voltees, sigue la sombra habrá partido en dos la calle Taking the body away por un lado, la tarde However much you take my body away y por el otro, yo something remains forgotten Dissection Do not turn around, continue Taquilla the shadow will divide the street in two Este pedazo de boleta quizás sirvió para on one side, the afternoon ver la sonrisa de una actriz en la oscuridad and on the other, me

102 103 Patricia Ariza

Santiago Maestro, no te caigas de bruces todavía espera a que el asfalto por sí solo suba después, sécate la sangre y canta

Santiago Maestro, do not fall flat on your face yet wait for the asphalt to rise of its own accord afterwards, dry your blood and sing

Todo pasa No te turbes, no te asombres, todo pasa deja que amanezca, y corre!

All passes by Don’t worry, don’t be astonished, everything will pass let the day break, and run!

Muerte natural Ninguno muere ahora de viejo y en su cama casi todos nuestros muertos han sido matados, unos a bala y otros pasados a cuchillo

Eran vidas amables, aunque cortas las banderas que portaban también fueron rasgadas unas fueron quemadas y otras hechas jirones. Con ellas se quiso tapar la voz de las mujeres

Nosotras, sin embargo, salimos con toda la casa a cuestas, Llevábamos todo sobre nuestros hombros, inclusive la rabia que se fue volviendo fuerza y canto

De ese viaje, apenas se quedaron rastros en la arena algunos pequeños pies marcados en la huida y huellas de manos trepando en las orillas de los matorrales

Un día no muy lejano nos encontraremos todas en la madrugada mostraremos las fotos y cantaremos la música que les gustaba

Luego, al día siguiente iremos al cementerio y les llevaremos flores

104 Patricia Ariza Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow si no los encontramos, las dejamos en otras fosas a otros muertos Madeline McNamara porque muchos de los nuestros quedaron tirados en las carreteras a veces en la madrugada, viene Antígona y a escondidas, contra todas las leyes, los entierra No siempre lo logra porque los perros y las aves de rapiña los descubren Divine Doubt Ella, corre veloz por los siglos y se esconde en el tiempo Hoy está aquí a salvo con nosotras Todas seguimos aquí, plantadas en la ciudad ajena Y, hace frío

Natural death “Ka mura, Ka muri: this proverb represents the beautiful way in which Mãori tradi- Nowadays no one dies in bed of old age tionally viewed the future. The idea is that we are all walking through life back- almost all our dead were killed, wards. We can’t see the future just as we can’t see where we are going when we are some with bullets, others stabbed walking backwards. Instead, we look to the past to inform the way we move into the future. We learn from those who have gone before us. We regard the past and Theirs were kind lives, even if short present as a single, comprehensible ‘space’ because that is what we have seen and The flags they carried known. We walk backward into the future with our thoughts directed toward the were torn as well coming generations but with our eyes on the past.” (Salient, Victoria University some burned and others ripped into pieces. Student Magazine) They wanted to silence the voice of women with them It has taken me a long time to articulate my own practice. It encompasses thirty We women, however, took to the streets carrying our homes on our backs, plus years of work within women’s theatre networks; a potted education in a variety We carried everything on our shoulders, of performance trainings, mainly through practice and workshop attendance; a even the anger that became our strength and song Master’s degree in directing; and a self-education in the histories of performance. The learning took place in my early days as a student in New Zealand, then Of this journey, only a few footprints remain in the sand nine years of living between London and some small feet marking the flight Boston from 1978 to 1985, and since then and handprints climbing up the dunes in New Zealand. I acquired knowledge alongside the development of an inter-sec- One not too distant day, we will all meet at dawn tionalist, feminist, political consciousness. and show photographs of them and sing the music they liked In addition, my practice has been impacted by the constant need to negotiate fluc- Then the next day tuating cycles of financial and emotional we will go to the cemetery and take them flowers well-being. I am recognising that all these and if we can’t find them, we will leave the flowers at other graves for other dead ways of coming to practice create the because many of our own dead were left lying in the streets. idiosyncratic physical and vocal shapes, Sometimes at dawn, Antigone comes and secretly, against all laws, buries them movement patterns, rhythms, images and She is not always successful, because dogs and birds of prey uncover their bodies content of what I create as a theatre maker. She runs swiftly over the centuries and hides in time Today she is safe here with us I am two or three days old. I have boils We are all still here, left in a foreign city on my head and I am coughing like an old And, it is cold man in the utility area amongst the pots and pans. It is the most hygienic, if not the most salubrious place in Calvary Mater- nity Hospital, Christchurch. I am one of Madeline McNamara

106 107 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

very few children left as others have been transferred to a different hospital. Thirteen the way, fell on the daughter, a requirement to give beyond my means; hard to children have already died. It is 1955 and an epidemic of resistant antibiotic staph- concentrate or believe in time for self. David’s disability brought ‘difference’ to ylococcus infection has broken out in New Zealand. Not as lethal as the H bomb, our lives in other ways since it meant that we had to think about someone other but the H bug kills too. For the next six weeks I am farmed out to live with a young than ourselves. These were important early learnings in developing patience, couple who are not my parents, until my Mother and I can be reunited without re-in- compassion, and a sense of protectiveness to a family member, qualities that many fecting each other. children only learn later in life. These early lessons are connected with my view of the world as a place where you have to take care of others who are more vulnerable This beginning, and subsequent other early experiences, have made me feel like an and helpless, sometimes to the apparent detriment of your own immediate needs. outsider. Looking from the edges, isolated, always seeking connection and communion with others, always aware of others on the edges. I look for structures that will We move from a big city to a provincial Nelson, albeit a place of considerable beauty, be able to house the excluded, the unvoiced and the unheard. The structures and but not rich in a cultural sense. The religious calendar of the Catholic Church forms I have been drawn to from an early age seem to be those of performance, of dictates much of our lives and interrupts the dream life. Though it is my Father who theatre. Nobody in my family has ever pursued a creative path previously, though comes from the Irish Catholic family of eleven, it is my Mother, a convert to Catholi- there is great artistry in their gardens and botanical interests. cism, who makes a decent Catholic of him. Theatre or performance, whatever you want to call it, deeply connects me to The celebratory rituals of birth, death and resurrection. The central tenet of the circumstances of my birth and my upbringing and those circumstances affect sacrifice. The fourteen Stations of the Cross commemorating the Way of Sorrows. my way of thinking about the world and my role in it. A sense of the dramatic is Nine successive days of prayer that make up the Novena. The forty days of Lent. hard wired into me. It’s tied up with some kind of survival mechanism. It is an inti- The four Sundays of Advent. The props: the monstrance, the censer, the flowers, mate part of who I am to become as a person, family member and member of the petals, the floppy piece of pine foliage symbolising the palm of Palm Sunday, the ash wider community. that gets smudged on the forehead on Ash Wednesday that comes from the burnt palms of the previous Palm Sunday. And the glorious costumes. The liturgy in The large oak tree that stands in the middle of the garden outside my bedroom ancient Latin. The texts: gospels, epistles, the parables and the miracles. The worship window is slowly transforming before my eyes into a towering mass of writhing of Mary: “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up (writing) goblins. The soft, swaying movements of the change belie the horror that our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” The stages are the altar, the is taking place before my eyes. Each branch of the tree is blooming with its own confessional booth, the Stations of the Cross, the communion rail. The actors are the unique devil, each head distinct from the others. The tree is infested with them. I am high and lower priests and the many attendants. sitting up in bed watching, numb with fear. I had thought it was a nightmare; now I realise that it is real. I know this because I am watching the shape of myself sitting My brother and I used to make our beds as if we were the priest preparing the bolt upright. I can see that my eyes are open wide. I am watching myself looking out communion rail for the recipients, folding over it the pure white railing sheet, the window. I am seeing myself see the tree filled with the writhing goblins. I feel the genuflecting in the middle before crossing to do the other side. My brother Julian, terrible pain of dread in my heart. This terrifying, ridiculous impossibility is the truth. who got to be an altar boy (girls were not allowed), also talked of the back-stage Then I wake up. I understand that it is going to be very important in life to know the antics of scoffing the communion host and quaffing the wine. What exactly did difference between the genuine and authentic, and the fake, false and dangerous. (A the body and blood of Christ taste like? I think there were lessons too in how to recurring early childhood memory, circa 1959.) live like a person who cares. And I think this is the way we were guided.

My Mother has German measles and my brother, David, is born blind. He is five There isn’t much by way of a cultural life outside the church in the early days. Dad years younger than me and takes all the energy my mother and father have because listens to The Goons and The Clitheroe Kid on the radio and his favourite record now there are four of us. We have to learn to care for him and love him, protect and is by American comic, Shelley Berman. Dad has a reputation as a funny man, an teach him. He is my special charge. He is my first real teacher. We are responsible entertaining companion on fishing trips and down the pub. I can still recite and repeat for stopping him playing with a wooden cleat which he makes a comforting rhythm his many bizarre jokes and ditties. He is an avid consumer of The Reader’s Digest. with while he makes up stories. We forget our task and sneak up on him and listen Mum has trained as a nurse but gave it up when she got married. She says she loves enthralled to his fantastical tales. the Romantic poets but I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing her read them. I do remember some lively renditions of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli Stories. When I am In my childhood, we were required to look beyond our own needs. There were ten she paints two water colours of our garden and I want her to keep painting but constant interruptions to our play, a burden of responsibility which, as is often domestic life with four children, one of whom is disabled, and a precarious financial

108 109 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

situation means she doesn’t continue. of her husband. His joviality on arrival home only makes things worse. There is frequent fighting. Our appreciation of the natural environment was always nurtured with trips to My Mother is also beset by very severe pre-menstrual madness at a time before rivers and lakes and mountains and seas, as we were very privileged to grow up PMT is understood as the very real affliction it is. On many occasions she terror- in an area of New Zealand blessed with extraordinary scenery. And an extended ises us with her tyrannical moods. It is amidst these rages that her most bitter feel- family life of river picnics and sea and walks. Houses and outdoors were the arenas ings about her own enslavement to the world of domestic drudgery emerge. One and walking was a constant, often through bush. day she disappears into the tool shed. Sometime later she returns to the kitchen and ‘enacts ‘ in front of us children a symbolic tableau of her enslavement. She has Our next theatre of operations is Blick House. Rented accommodation still, a very wrapped around her ankles a huge set of chains (the snow chains my father uses on large, old house set up a valley road at the foot of a hill called the Sugar Loaf. It is the car tyres on icy winter mornings). wondrous for us kids as the property comes with an acre of garden, an old, wrecked orchard and half the hill. It isn’t an easy place to keep clean and my Mother is very She drags her feet one in front of the other, the chains rattle and she chants over and particular when it comes to good housekeeping. She has to do all the cooking on a over, in a low-pitched growl, “I’m just a slave, I’m just a slave, I’m just a slave.” smoky old coal range, there are lots of wooden surfaces to keep dusted and polished I am horrified but also enthralled. Mum has lost the plot. She continues with the and large rooms to keep tidy. The whole place requires enormous energy from my macabre charade for some time before the cathartic nature of her ‘performance ‘ Mother to keep it to the standard she sets for herself as well as look after all of us. finally gives her the release she must be seeking. At this point she breaks into wild Sometimes, if the side door to the lower bathroom is accidentally - on purpose - left laughter. This is a cue for my brothers and I, who are watching in silent awe, to open, a flock of seven or eight sheep from the adjacent orchard rampages through it, respond appropriately. Our laughter comes on strong and the spell is broken, the creating complete havoc and hysteria. awful tension of the day is released and life can resume as normal. I don’t go to Brownies, or Girls’ Brigade, Sea Cadets, or elocution, or ballet lessons, or judo though I would like to. I have two forms of early training: one In another solo performance piece in that same house my Mother takes an axe to involves the forced admission of my younger brother and I as non-commissioned the fragile wooden posts that support a corrugated iron awning that juts out over officers/warriors in my elder brother’s army/tribe. Naturally he is chief commander. the kitchen. I believe the marks are still there today. And there is the evening in The demands are considerable and range from general obedience training to weapon Winter when a friend of Dad’s turns up to find the entire contents of Dad’s dresser construction and maintenance, including the application of unguents, discovered by and wardrobe scattered across the camellia bushes like broken body parts. Broken chance in an early 20th century medical disposal site, to our already lethally sharp limbs of ghosts. Mum has thrown them from the top balcony. arrow heads, target practice, leaping from enormous heights into vastly deep rivers, Although I was always aware that my parents loved and even desired each other, tree climbing, vine hopping, various forms of torture, from wrist burns to solitary it was a tempestuous relationship. There was frequently a fight brewing and a cycle confinement, and forced marches. I am a tomboy. I have to wear a dress to church here too of the fight brewing, coming to the boil, total combustion, fire and destruc- but chuck it off for trousers and run to the hills with my brothers to escape all stric- tion, then the exquisite certainty of the calm after the storm until the next time. I/ tures. Though gruelling at times, I am eminently suited to this kind of training. It has we lived with a sense of needing to contribute as best we could to the maintenance its drawbacks but is far superior to the second school. of a fine balance. It was a minefield through which we picked our way very carefully, for fear of getting a limb blown off. Like all children who are witness to a turbulent This school is a more powerful artistic training and compulsory attendance is home life we were careful to support both parties. Sometimes theatre life is like required. It is Mrs. McNamara’s (my Mum) Kitchen Sink School of Domestic and this for me: chaotic, dangerous, dramatic, exhausting, stimulating, dysfunctional, Dramatic Arts (the only acting school I ever attend). Early studies in enforced requiring powerful observational and mediation skills. The necessity and importance self-discipline come at this school. of risking humour at just the right time to bring lightness to the darkness. As the, at that time, only daughter and female child, I am required to learn I sometimes think these experiences have both equipped and attracted me the domestic rule of law. I hate it and fight against it constantly as it interrupts my to make work in areas that are complex and potentially explosive, and to bring time outside with my brothers and my dream time. My Father, a real estate agent humour into them: physically demanding, subtle observances; the explosive area of specialising in the sale of rural properties, is a returned serviceman who has been race relations; the agony and ecstasy. a flight lieutenant and navigator in the RNZAF, performing innumerable daylight bombing missions over Germany during the Second World War. His nightly I start to take pride in our difference. At least we aren’t normal. drinking at the RSA pub, before coming home to dinner, drives my Mother insane. The drama and theatricality of life with Mum continues with the death of my By that time of the evening she is tired, lonely and desperate for the company Father from bowel cancer, at home over a period of six months. My Mother, who has

110 111 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

trained as a nurse, tends to his every need. Aunties and Uncles come from around I am attracted to the university Drama Society and become involved with its lead- the country to say their goodbyes. Dad’s death, communion every night, visitors, ership. I get a chance to perform in plays by Aristophanes, Peter Schaffer, and Jean tragic goodbyes, nuns, priests, doctors, wailing, easy smokes. Giradoux, as well as make forays into experimental performance practices of our own devising. By the end of my studies I have a vague notion of feminism, literature, My Dad dies when we are all pretty young. I am sixteen, Mum is forty-three, my a smattering of classical studies, US studies and linguistics, politics, and lesbianism. siblings and I range in age from eighteen, sixteen, fourteen, eleven, to five. By this By a stroke of good fortune, I get an opportunity to perform at the local profes- time I have a gorgeous little sister. After my Father’s death Mum turns her back sional theatre. It is an opportunity many would relish, as entry into such an institu- on the strictures of the Catholic Church as she journeys swiftly from mourning tion often takes years of apprenticeship and knowing the right people. It is my first widow to threat to the community’s moral well-being. Mum is a beautiful vibrant foray into mainstream theatre. I am playing the ingénue in Marivaux’s The Game forty-three-year-old; the merry widow is a role she does not exactly take up with of Love and Chance. A door has opened. If I play my cards right I could continue abandon, rather it is foisted upon her. For reasons of delicacy I am reluctant to on this path. I am grateful for the opportunity but something about this kind of spell out the details of the next few months but let’s just say the Catholic Church theatre holds no real attraction for me. A false move? has a lot to answer for. My Mother’s charms are irresistible to the Catholic priest But I have fallen in love with a woman, which obviously makes me a lesbian - who has looked after us during my Father’s illness and death and he continues to something I have long suspected. This might entail some rethinking. It is the very early visit my Mother. The period when my Mother should be mourning my Father is stages of the gay liberation movement but only hints of that revolution have reached confused by the attentions of the priest who lets his own needs take precedence. me in Christchurch, New Zealand. It’s going to be a solo flight to freedom until I get Watching this man, whom I know harbours strong feelings for my Mother, give her to London and meet the feminist and gay revolution full frontal. So instead I head off communion, and my Mother’s own confusion about whether this is spiritual or a to Australia to work for the next six months washing dishes in an Israeli restaurant in more carnal form of ecstasy is another lesson in keeping it real. Melbourne’s St Kilda to make the money to follow my love to Boston, where she is to Life is turned upside down after my Father dies. In some ways, it’s a new start study at a prestigious Ivy League School. Another false move? for my Mother, despite the difficulties of solo parenthood and missing her partner. This first attempt doesn’t work out so after three months I leave Boston and But it’s the 1970s and there is a lot happening and, having turned her back on the head for New York City with US $75 in my pocket, no work permit and nowhere Catholic Church and embraced Nelson’s emerging alternative counter culture, a lot to live. I have the address of a friend of a new friend. The next six months is a more possibilities open up. But none of us really knows what is expected of us. My whirl of reckless and risky behaviour, while I try to soak up as much knowledge Mother is no more equipped to deal with the blow fate has dealt her than us and we as possible about everything and make enough money to move on after I have all lose our compass for a while. In charting her journey from grief, then betrayal, outstayed my visa. It’s not been a particularly coherent time but I have had some and her own burgeoning feminism we are all left to work it out on our own. extraordinary experiences and have survived. I know nothing about theatre schools or theatre having seen very little of London is my next port of call. In the UK, while working as a bar tender, either. It is not surprising as New Zealand’s first drama school with a full time waitress, cook, artist’s model, I am living in a squat and exposed to the politics two-year course opens the same year that I start university. Despite my last couple of short term housing and poverty. I meet people in the squat who are involved of years at home being more relaxed than the previous strict Catholic regime, and in a variety of political movements. One day I am working in a pancake house despite having gone to a State Secondary School, I still have little appreciation of and see two women kissing passionately at an out-door table. I am both shocked a wider world of art, performance and culture. and excited at their daring. One is Israeli and the other German, and it turns I want to follow my older brother and go to university. No woman in my family out they live in the radical lesbian feminist squat next door. Just like in a movie, has ever been to university. I don’t really know what it is to be a university student they hand me a copy of the London Women’s Liberation Newsletter where I read or how to study but I have my entrance certificate and a small bursary and I am about a conference in Brighton called Towards a Radical Approach to Revolu- determined I am not going to be a nurse or a teacher. I don’t want safety or to be tionary Feminism. Somehow, I get myself there. It’s a bun fight. Women are so in bondage to the government, I want to be a free thinker and go to university. passionate, I have never seen anything like it. The lesbians are challenging the This is one of the bravest and most stupid moves I have ever made. Either one of hegemony of heterosexual women and wanting to have a clause included in the these excellent skills would have been helpful. But I have an instinct that I have newly formed Manifesto of the Women’s Movement that states that all women to go un-bonded/unbound. That anything other than complete independence and should have the right to choose and celebrate their sexuality whatever it may be. freedom of thought would be a limitation on my development. (If I’d chosen differ- Scottish and Northern English working class women are challenging the hege- ently, I might have been saved from my lifetime fiscal incompetence as well as had mony of the middle-class women, who seem to be in charge of everything. There a sense of status from something other than a perilous artistic practice). are, at this conference anyway, no women of colour, who, if they were there, would I get through without having to repeat anything but am a lousy student. Instead be challenging the obvious hegemony of working class and middle-class white

112 113 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow women. It is both scary and thrilling but I need to know a great deal more and oppression and in the oppression of others. Through Double Edge, I am introduced there are things that I don’t like at all. to group theatre practices and laboratory theatre. To begin to learn more and do something practical, I volunteer at the London I work as an experimental artist for the first time with a company that adopts Women’s Centre and become involved in helping to organise the second ever the physical theatre trainings of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. But we are Reclaim the Night March in London in 1978. It isn’t long before I make my way a feminist theatre and have to spend eight hours hammering out a manifesto. It’s towards the Women’s Arts Alliance and start to work with women who are inter- my first taste of Poor Theatre, and training and taking your work really, really seri- ested in making theatre to explore the range of feminist ideas being proposed. ously. I learn a great deal about other politics. Feminism opens my eyes to working This leads to my becoming part of a lesbian company called Hormone Imbalance class politics, race and identity and USA imperialism. I am drawn to questions and entering the world of the London Fringe theatre circuit. It is a very vibrant around race and the challenges of women such as Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, the time for female theatre companies. Through my colleagues, I begin to learn about writings of radical women of colour in This Bridge Called My Back, and the voices the politics of gay liberation, the current Irish situation, and the different kinds of Jewish women and women from the Middle East. I attend lectures, workshops, of feminisms forming. This is the first time I become involved in a company that demonstrations, art events, fund raising activities, women’s centres, and support takes an ironic stance, an outsider stance, a self-critical stance. It pokes fun at the artists’ work that addresses these questions. over earnestness of some of the early lesbian feminist posturing and holds a mirror I am around privilege but I am the waitress, the street seller, and worker with up to that. I find this very refreshing and a way of approaching difficult subjects homeless women. Nightly I take the Massachusetts Avenue bus to South Boston that I will return to again and again. It is adjunct, oblique, self-mocking but ulti- to Rosie’s Place, a shelter for homeless women where I work as the overnight mately important work for any movement to be able to critique itself in this way. supervisor. Political and artistic gaps are starting to be filled but one is opening-up I am using my nose to sniff out bullshit. I am filling in the gaps of my knowl- that is bigger than all the rest. It has been nine years and I start to dream of green edge, craft, friendships, collaborations, issues. I am reacting, responding and rivers. I read Keri Hulme’s The Bone People and it electrifies me. Time to go home. reflecting. I am having to draw lines then rub them out, paint over, join dots; it’s I have missed a lot: the flowering of feminist and Gay liberation movements a blur at times. I never really feel qualified for the job. I can see that I am going to in New Zealand, the 1981 Springbok Tour and coming into power of the Tino have to make choices with only my sharpening instincts to guide me. Things are Rangatiratanga Maori Sovereignty movement, the Labour government in power not going to go in an orderly direction. I am going to have to trust my instincts after years in the wilderness, David Lange and the enactment of anti-nuclear legis- and reframe the mistakes that I will make not as failures, but as what keeps me lation. When I return to New Zealand in 1986 it is almost unrecognisable. constantly searching and growing and learning. Divine doubt as a driving force. There is something alive and important that I want to be part of but it is history in At home, it becomes clear to me that I am ignorant about my own country’s the making and the destination is not obvious. Days come when I think that I am contemporary political history, so I set about altering that, bringing my experi- just an unguided missile, pointed in my own direction, carrying a payload of wrong ence in feminist activism and theatre to the movement of Pakeha (white New choices that are about to blow up in my face. Zealanders) supporting Maori sovereignty and the demands for the Treaty of At times, I am overwhelmed by the sense of myself as a maverick, an outsider, Waitangi to be honoured, and for Paheka to understand their history as colonisers. one who is untutored, unguided, flying by the seat of my pants. How will I reconcile These issues have become a constant theme in my life though I am less active now. the performer in me, who is instinctive, spontaneous, survivalist, improvisatory and They inform where some of my work sits, some of it still in the making. celebratory, with the steadfast practitioner and life-long student who is constantly After I return to New Zealand I struggle to understand what being a performer striving to deepen her understanding of theatre practice history and craft as well here looks like. I am searching for a place to fit in. Another interruption and a new as contemporary forms. My restless, inconsistent soul is at odds with a striving for start. I perform as Hugh Heffner in an Auckland production of Stephanie John- knowledge, craft and community and I never quite pull this contradiction off. son’s Accidental Phantasies. Although outwardly a feminist project I have concerns I return to the United States to make another effort at the relationship. This about the way of working both artistically and politically. My independent streak time I stay for four years. Back in the USA I continue to seek out opportunities makes me suspicious of hierarchical structures especially when they are instituted through festival formats to ensure that women’s work be seen, created; a platform by women. The problem is being drawn into a world over which I have no control for some of the issues that are coming to the fore about race, myth, body image, and that does not represent how I feel about the practice and purpose of theatre. I sexuality, ritual, spirituality, homelessness. The main thing is that the works are all start again to orient myself towards experimental work, performance in a cultural created by women; they are the writers, directors, actors, producers and designers. or bi-cultural context. It is messy and bitsy and so marginal, but feels like the only This is happening alongside the work of Double Edge, a theatre company that is honest place to be. coming into being. We are all examining what a feminist looks like, establishing Shortly afterwards I moved to Wellington and became immersed in the world key principles, writing manifestos. We discuss women’s collusion in their own of theatre there that includes performance, art, dance, cabaret and festivals, all

114 115 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow emerging from the Taki Tua Depot Theatre. In 1988 I joined Hen’s Teeth, a I continued to attempt to articulate some of the learnings from these and women’s comedy troupe, through which I met Sally Rodwell of Red Mole, later subsequent experiences throughout the next decade and began to explore some co-producing with her the ten-day festivals of performance, music and comedy of the theorists contributing to the growing body of scholarship on Critical named Not Broadcast Quality. I was the Master of Ceremonies for all these shows, Whiteness Studies. The aim of this work is to uncover the invisible structures often introducing the work of up to fifteen different acts per night over the ten that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. The writings of both days. For the Not Broadcast Quality shows Sally and I created two wordless comedy New Zealand and Australian indigenous and white writers critiquing this newly pieces The Nobodies, two hapless female clowns forced into a nomadic life by finan- emerging field were electrifying. It seems to me that these questions of racial and cial mismanagement and poverty, and The Chairs, an operatic homage to anti-circus. /or cultural superiority are at the heart of so much of the deepest contemporary We went on to make a full-length show, Crow Station, which incorporated and conflicts. This is a heart place for me to try to make work. developed both of these acts. It toured to Wales, Coventry, Amsterdam and Berlin. Despite some truly valiant and, at times, fruitful efforts nurtured by the Magda- The themes included political, spiritual and financial homelessness, patriarchy and lena community and dear colleagues Jade Eriksen and Jo Randerson, the work environmental issues, love, friendship, adventure and prophetic utterances. sometimes left me depleted, frightened and alone. I resolved to put in place some I resist being a jobbing actor. I choose to work at other jobs rather than waiting supportive frameworks so that the work could continue. In May 2010 I hosted/ around to be used. I always seek out work with women. As I learn more I begin to curated, with fellow visual artist Jack Trolove, a Critical Gathering called Whiteness/ teach but, as I have never trained as a teacher, nor been taught in a regular way, it is Whitemess, Creative Disorders and Hope. We opened the door to artists working in always a big challenge. Sometimes it’s easier to do a job that requires less of me. But a variety of fields, not just performance, to spend a weekend discussing our various I also don’t want to be drawn into work that I can’t fully embrace. Perhaps it would artistic takes on these themes. At the heart of the weekend was an exhibition by help me practise my craft but it also means weakening my own value system. In New Jack called Ghost Paper for which Jack wrote an important essay in the accompa- Zealand there are not so many options to work with companies or groups as there nying catalogue. The gathering was an opportunity to share knowledge about the are in other parts of the world. I dabble in TV, film, and working on scripted plays, disabling forms of paralysis which enter our processes when trying to work with but I always feel more comfortable in the experimental side of things. Certainly, these themes. It discussed how to remove these so the work can come out, continue, I resist work in commercial theatre and TV commercials. Good roles are few and flourish; how to take oneself to the peripheries. Spivak says “Try it, you might like it. far between and to pursue a career in film would mean entering a whole world that Try to behave as if you are part of the margin, try to unlearn your privilege.” I know I would not be able to stomach. So slowly, those options close off to me. I “To be on the periphery is to take a risk. To take a risk you have to take care,” close those options off. It is always hand to mouth. I try to do all the things actors these words were spoken by Julia Varley at her opening address to the 6th Transit are supposed to do but hate the auditions, the schmooze. I win awards but don’t Festival called Women - Theatre - On the Periphery. The 2010 Critical Gathering, want to play the game. Existence is precarious for any actor but the space I leave apart from sharing the work, was about understanding the ethical frameworks of myself is quite small. Deliberate sabotage or uncanny belief in something greater? the questions so that there was a sense of safety, about understanding the care I am drawn again and again to the experimental, comedy, Red Mole, Sally. instructions for the garments we were and are making. The Transit Festival was a This work with Sally becomes the closest to the type of work I want to do, and place to take care, Whiteness/Whitemess, Creative disorders and Hope was also a it is the work that leads us to The Magdalena Project. In 1994 Crow Station is place to take care. invited to Magdalena ’94 in Cardiff; well, actually we invite ourselves. Our appear- ance at that festival begins a life-long and passionate association with the Project There are certain qualities that have come into my work which I associate with and inspires the establishment of Magdalena Aotearoa International Festival of particular philosophies or words or techniques, perhaps they are Margaret Camer- Women’s Performance in 1999 and the subsequent development of Magdalena on’s “shiny bits of other people’s thoughts”. Margaret also wrote: “So we might Aotearoa within New Zealand. Sally and I are the co-directors of the Festival and leverage from our being with a little chisel, unseemly comparisons, referents, the network. We learn again the importance of exchange, teaching, workshops, agendas, theories, discourses, that abort our senses, and paradigms of analysis that camaraderie and I try to teach myself the new skills needed. undo our doing, determine our memory, and dry us out with words un-seeming Much of the work of setting up Magadalena Aotearoa was done in the context us...”. Impedimenta: from the Latin pes, foot. An impediment makes movement or of creating partnerships with Maori women, understanding and exploring what a progress difficult. Dragging the feet. bi-cultural partnership means. Much work and organisational skill went into creating This work with Margaret’s ‘little chisel’ is important in the construction of my this relationship, which laid the ground work for an essential part of our festival in theatre practice, not only to remove impediments, but to know what I am trying 1999 and ongoing connections within the Magdalena. These were sometimes tumul- to create. The slow levering of all impediments, the chipping away, but also the tuous, complex, maddening relationships and needed lots of negotiation and facilita- shaping work the chisel does. Working around the knots, the uneven seams, the tion for both sides. They were sometimes a source of drama in themselves. discolouration, the compensations for the inadequacies of the strength and quality

116 117 Madeline McNamara Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

doesn’t mean I always know the best way to express, form or shape it. It’s like a stain, a deep indigo that gets hold of a material and never lets go. The sense of responsibility is a driving impulse but I am not always effective. It’s a fragile thing and I can only go on for so long. But it is always there. I don’t really want to be a leader but sometimes I am thrust into or can’t stop putting my hand up. Now not so much. I would rather assist or collaborate. I continue in my theatre work to make a contribution to the debates on white power and privilege, and the necessity for its relinquishment, as well as the issues of the legacy of colonisation and racism in this country. One part of the show I’m creating is called The Attitudes, inspired by Lady Emma Hamilton and her Attitudes in the 18th century. These static, non-speaking performances/tableaux vivant were a form of ‘mime art’, a cross between postures, dance and acting. In Refusing Perfor- mance - The Attitudes, I try to explore in my body and voice different modes of white resistance to challenges about power and privilege. It’s an impossible necessity and I am mired in Divine Doubt, and inadequacy. But uncertainty goes with this territory and opens me to the deep questioning that is necessary. There is an absence of Pakeha/white voices making work in this area with any degree of complexity. Possibly because it is indeed a potentially dreadful field. Inter-cultural or cross-cultural or bi-cultural performance, though still challenging, seems much more acceptable. The idea of focusing on whiteness conjures up some awful possibilities. But this work is an attempt to answer many calls: one from a Madeline McNamara in White Elephant Native American activist to “imagine interpreting your own people’s thinking towards us, instead of interpreting our thinking, our lives, our stories” and from the Maori women’s Caucus at the Treaty 2000 conference: “We would like to hear of the material. Working with the material I have been given, imperfect as it is, is more of who you are. We would like to hear more about your identity, more of your what gives it its authenticity or true nature. Its life. songs, more of what your issues are in working with your own people”. Part of my continuing practice as a theatre artist is understanding and accepting The rhythm of my work is often broken but it is persistent. Stop, start and start how all the aspects of my background and resulting personality contribute to the again and start over. To work with the constant interruptions, half-read books, work I am making today: my slowness, my aloneness, bad memory, sense of myself as half-learned lessons, constant failures of status, to tip it into the work, to allow a maverick, outsider, one who is untutored, unguided, flying by the seat of my pants it to be its very structure/nature. This may not lead to great productiveness but it - all these are precious shaping tools. Depression, interruptions, inability to under- might lead to an interesting rhythm. The part of my work that is improvisatory, stand what a deadline is, the inability to make money from my art - these are what where things are made up on the spot because there won’t be time to rehearse. Life make up my practice. This very female humanity is what I have to offer. And what is happening now. This method has its advantages, I just have to learn to roll with every female artist who perseveres has to offer. it. Accept my eccentricities, and that I have something to give that is different, I am currently not part of a company. I am like a solo musician who plays in that comes from my particular nature and psychology. different bands. Sometimes I get the band together myself and sometimes I just I am not alone in the work. I have two colleagues whose support I treasure play in other people’s bands. Right now I am in a solo phase though I jam with and we’re keeping at it, but the work can frequently derail me. I performed a small others for inspiration. segment of it in a festival in Auckland a little while ago entitled the Festival At present I am working at Voluntary Service Abroad and a hospice. As ever of Uncertainty. It advertised itself as “a platform for the entirely unachievable, much of the work I do is, and continues to be, low income. I justify my choices with non-viable projects and career death experiments”. The producers, Feasting House, the idea that being grounded in the real world of working people is not a bad thing. sought projects that “fostered art as an activity of radical uncertainty”. I romped in. As my childhood evolved, and over the years of my life, the sense of drama I roll on. This is how I walk backwards into my future. being part of the tissue of my existence has grown. It makes me and unmakes me. It’s in the blood and flesh of me. It’s a driver, a pusher, a bully, a lover. I am not always in charge of it. I frequently want to be rid of it. Just because it’s in me

118 119 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Luciana Martuchelli prejudice concerning my worth or my accomplishments. Even though they were professional artists, like many people, my parents had other jobs - this is often the case in Brasília, where being a public employee offers Mare Serenitatis a safety net. Resisting this path, I became an actress, singer, director, set designer, composer, filmmaker, entrepreneur doing anything that would allow me to earn a living from art and not have to look for other jobs to survive. I built a school, a group and have been able to study and work with some of the most important contemporary theatre and film directors. But the price of this nonstop work was losing my voice, and all of the ensuing conflict, stress and struggle to renew and protect it. In the beginning was the word? No... it was a typewriter! Every time I sit down to write a poem or a play, the sound of my mother's In the beginning was the word? No... it was silence typewriter rings in my ears. My mother is an actress and writer. I remember vividly How far will the obsessive and urgent desire to belong make us go? How much how she would write for hours locked in her room. That sound was part of the are we able to give? How much can we sacrifice in ourselves and those around us music I heard every day as a child. I have tackled many languages throughout my for love, to have fellow travellers, to feel at home and occupy a territory, however career as an artist, but I always avoided writing: I never learned to type correctly insecure, with authority? or fast, and to this day my handwriting is incomprehensible even to me. But when In my story, these sacrifices and struggles have resulted in years of silence. I sit down to create a new text, from the very first lines, a feeling of pleasure and Unable to use my voice professionally, it was impossible for me to act, sing, direct a stream of metaphysical, archaic and poetical images always comes to me. These and teach. Even in everyday activities, I had difficulty in talking or simply saying images give me back a part of my identity, silenced by the fear of not being good out loud what I wanted to eat. But while my whole talkative and cheerful identity enough or of having to face the loneliness that this craft requires, and that does not was losing its vigour, I found refuge and encouragement in dramaturgy and working happen so often in film-making and theatre work. with the camera. I endured a long period of medical incompetence, until I found in So, after a time feuding with the lack of wherewithal to write, or caught up in the Tai Chi Chuan and in the training of other actresses who had experienced a similar paralysis of perfectionism that haunts many of us when trying to write a simple article, physical or socio-political silencing, medicine to heal my voice, and integrate and being anxious about having to go to the rehearsal room where many tasks await stillness into my day. Silence turned out to be a great and generous master. me, I am trying to follow gently in the steps of my mother’s legacy. I am replacing the When I returned from this long silent winter, the land was barren: no group, sound of her typewriter with my typing, no school, no connections or performances. Everything had faded without my imagination and breath. presence. The work that awaited me was more than finding my voice again: I I frequently hear from young had to discover the immense feminine capacity for self-renewal. And with the students that they would have liked passing of the years, my voice returned - although different from what it had been. to have artistic parents because this Now, within the fragility of my new bass voice, I carried the archetypal force of would help their careers; they believe a mythical wound. I realised that my muteness was no different from that of the it would make things easier. But the many women who, in the past, received no credit, legitimate emancipation, or Great Mystery gives us all challenges study benefits, not to mention any possibility of actively taking part in the artistic appropriate to our capabilities. scene or even of having their names recorded as part of the history they helped to Of course, belonging to a family build. But it is undoubtedly because of all these women who came before me - like of artists gave me the security of my mother - that I could even be a member of the academy. I was compelled to an artistic heritage, but I was later create without feeling victimised and without favourable conditions. confronted with difficulties exactly Although we don’t remember or have not been told, we have been shaped by because I was the daughter of artists. an ancestral silencing. As women and artists, we can feel it running in our blood I had to face unbelievable obstacles, like a cellular memory. Even though there were interruptions, it became vital not only to assert myself and build for me to keep in touch with the effort, echo and memory that has allowed new a safe territory independent of my generations of women, like my own, conspicuous achievements: attention, respect, parents’ careers, but also to deal with endorsement and especially the chance to enjoy our multicultural origins with constant pressure, with rejection or more confidence. Luciana Martuchelli

120 121 Luciana Martuchelli Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Even with the constant and sophisticated threat of silence on the horizon become a small revolution for our rehabilitated senses if we make them ours and - perhaps because of the exhausting work load, the local aesthetic diktat, or the listen to them, offering them voice, appreciation, time, feet and visibility. Then constant loss of actors and, with them, of the pedagogical legacy and repertoire they give us the strength to occupy our rightful and forgotten place in the sun and we had created together - I emerged in a completely new situation: I bought a other illuminated parts of theatre. space to make a small theatre and school. I started teaching again, and new actors, Faced with so much loss and exhaustion, there is always the option of giving productions and questions came from that initiative. up, making the choice to stop and ending up accepting myriad forms of adaptation; So, trying to avoid history repeating and wanting to protect those who had isolated and afraid of not being self-sufficient. There is the option of distracting loyally remained by my side despite difficulties, I gradually decided to invest in the oneself from the immense task that lies ahead of us, like an overloaded system that language of solo performance. This choice was a strategy to oppose isolation and shuts down in order to keep functioning. But women have done this too much in artistic sterility, and especially to enhance the autonomy of our group structure, the past. Instead we need to react by making a distinct space for our artistic and which was fragile at that time. existential role and not give in to indulgence or any kind of resentful narcissism. In 2010, on the basis of this scenario, I created a festival, Solos Férteis, as an I chose to assimilate more; after all, I had already had enough emptiness. I echo of the prickling on my skin produced by The Magdalena Project and Vértice chose to expand as a complex system capable of supporting and digesting all of this Brazil, of my meeting with Odin Teatret actress Julia Varley, and as the result of heritage and also to offer beauty, lucidity and humanity in return. As I had had to an incalculable hunger for work. The festival still carries in its belly a tribute to give away everything I knew and thought I possessed, the obsession to learn, to my roots and my first teacher, Antunes Filho. I did not envisage a large festival, belong and to exchange, I found a loving companion in artistic exchange as never but a kind of dramaturgical high fashion meeting; so I called it prêt-à-porter, ready- before. Taking good care of the garden has been the secret for butterflies, bees and to-wear. I was trying to reduce the year-long feeling of loneliness and the erasing nightingales; pollination became inevitable. New gardens appeared and more will of my aesthetic values, group and productions. I was committed to gathering, in appear in the future. the heart of Brazil, directors, actresses, thinkers and teachers who invested in the Over these nine years, the landscape and internal environment of mutual theory and staging of solo performances. I searched for women who emphasised cooperation between my associates changed noticeably. My festival, with its work with the voice, physical dramaturgy, theatre writing, group culture and the connection to The Magdalena Project, gained identity, validation and skill. This choices created by this theatre genre in their lives, so I could learn from them and added to the visibility and excellence I had already gained from organising the - perhaps who knows? - find my ‘pack’. master-in-residence “The Secret Art of the Actor” in Brasília, a project created Gradually, we created a foundation that, regardless of favourable ‘climate’ by Odin Teatret’s director, Eugenio Barba, and Julia Varley - one of the many conditions, allowed an artistic diversity of women in theatre to flourish, similar to activities of this new legacy of achievements and faithful travel companions. The the multi-coloured ipês in Brasilia’s dry season. But at the same time, even today, knowledge and contacts that emerged from this commitment and investment were beneath the blossom, lurks an inhospitable terrain that reminds us that there accrued by the new performances I created as a director. And, among other things, is still much to be done for women on the planet - in the name of all the ideas I managed to break the geographical boundaries of the government island in which and people who are silenced and deprived of dignity and of the freedom to exist I live, receiving international invitations to present Spanish and English versions and contribute to life. I did not need a theatre festival, but rather an urgent and of my performances, something which would have been unthinkable previously. I creative territory to remind us that our achievements are not solid. They could felt rewarded! Creating again. easily slip from our hands if we don’t assume the responsibility for carrying this What more could I want? legacy safely away from banality, exploitation and even from our own self-sabotage. Yes, what else? This same question floored me in a workshop led by Jill For me, translating Julia Varley's book, Stones of Water, into Portuguese, Greenhalgh. I felt like a kind of genie of the lamp, whose self-esteem comes from was to return to the expropriated space that had belonged to my mother. But it fulfilling the expectations and dreams of everyone around me. In the depths of my was also the task that my first female teacher in years had given me as a way of soul I did not know what I wanted. I simply did not know how to answer! What finding my voice, following in the steps of her thinking feet. It was also a means did I want? I could not hear my own thoughts. I heard everyone else’s voices before of nurturing connections, in order to gain perspective and references to help me my own and they distracted me. I knew what everyone around me wanted: my fight the numerous demands that make the actress’s work a low priority. Perhaps parents, grandmother, lovers, husband, actors, students, friends, Eugenio, Julia, the because of this, I chose to make the translation with the help of my actress, Juliana Magdalena. But what did I want? Zancanaro, who, at that time, was struggling to protect her capital as a young actress from the demands of being a mother. In the beginning was the word? No ... It was the song! I learned to nurture a cradle of female quanta, fecundity and pregnancy, During a workshop, Julia had asked us to use different voices in response to clarifying habits of perception that turn against us if we deny them; but that can images. One of these was: “The voice of the Little Mermaid standing in front of

122 123 Luciana Martuchelli Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow her prince”. Everyone began singing amazing songs, and I, perhaps because I had representations and interpretations that are not threatening, in which their vocal little voice at that time, kept quiet. Julia came towards me, put her hands on my gifts and music can heal and awaken the individual to higher levels of consciousness shoulders and said: "That’s it. The Little Mermaid has no voice in this moment. and of morality. They are closely related to nature and therefore to life. This hybrid She sacrificed her voice for love, exchanging it for legs." image hides the healing and transgressive secrets of the origins of our species. I started to cry, understanding, for the first time, my personal and most of all my To observe and investigate feminine representations is always like discovering theatre-story; the story I now seek words to tell with less moisture and more colour. a country for me: it gives me a compass for the reconstruction of women’s memory. And so, like the Little Mermaid, I began my journey in search not only of my voice, The future of an artist sometimes involves placing appropriate captions on the but also of a deeper comprehension of my capacity to give, even if obscured by pain, past. Be it Eve, Pandora, Medea, Magdalene or Yara, this fearful and terrible vision enforced silence, solitude and the sacrifices for love, and for theatre. of women’s attributes and power to act originates in a mythography of dominant On my horizon, Julia, her story, performances, books and voice sounded to values, dated achievements that underpin much of the damage imposed on me just like the song of a siren which, contrary to what is normally expected, led women, as well as against nature itself. For me, to revisit and re-label these myths me away from the reefs of my ego, encouraging me to dive deep in an amniotic is a way of fighting my own impotence, denouncing the voices that stay silent. To sea which could encompass and address the mythical and psychological world of stand against injustice and discrimination. But it is also a way of celebrating the sirens and their origins, evoking on my skin that voice in women's history, a place voices that sing about the polluted seas, echo silence, cry out for drinking water on where their pain and the wonders of their silences, lamentations, resonances and the planet; or the voice of my mother who resisted in her time in the form of ink sonorities live. on paper, filling my horizon with a ‘quintessential’ sound beacon. In Latin "Mare Serenitatis" means "Sea of Serenity" and it is the name of Mare Serenitatis marks my future to come: the space of the actress. Not of the one of the largest lunar craters. It was exactly from this kind of grey land without teacher, or director, or filmmaker, or producer. The space of the actress from which moisture, but full of female potential and power, that Julia Varley’s voice rescued the director, the teacher was born, but who didn’t give much in return to the me. When she ‘found’ me, my voice had only recently returned, but to think of actress. The actress, the most fragile and generous of teachers, only knows what singing or acting again was almost unimaginable. I had even stopped playing the she touches with her voice, body and breath: this is her wise joy. She, who instead guitar and composing in order to avoid facing this limitation. With the loss of my of closing her heart to the whole world in order to keep her heart intact, strives to voice, singing was no doubt what I missed most. love the world! But little by little I was being led back home to a sphere where music, words, During rehearsals of Mare Serenitatis in Denmark, I was asked to write this article. silence and Eros were again part of the construction of my identity as a woman For a moment I thought: "Once again the actress will remain in the background." and as an artist. Encouraged and nurtured, it was time to recover my acting I could not have been more wrong. By revisiting this story through writing, I have space, and under Julia’s director's eye, Mare Serenitatis began to emerge. It was a found the delicate layers of the intentions that brought me here: memory and its requiem for deep voices, a gentle encouragement to start composing and singing metaphors, which can evolve to reach a lighter and more steadfast level. again, becoming more awake, engaged and creative in the shifting waters of a solo Enough of the time of struggle and conflict, to be or not to be, definition and performance; a map for a territory of sacrifices made in the name of love, not only adaptation, of feeling both a bastard and an usurper authorised by the academy! to receive love, but to invite its unrestricted flow in us. Writing, with its meditative wisdom, shows us our multiplicity and integrates in text, images and subtext what was broken or separated by semantics, etymology All of us who make theatre are running away from something; and conditioning, but that was never separated in the noble heart of the craft. I even flee from my status of immigrant and foreigner, and you? This is now Luciana’s space that - with good luck and hard work - can be all these Eugenio Barba things; and in which - free of the search for validation - she can even write. In the future it will be the Word again, the legacy left by the heart when I have always been motivated to ‘do justice’ in theatre by using what has been stunned by its own beating. An undeniable way of narrating what matters to us concealed and silenced. I think this is why I am attracted to myths, especially and that often also gives voice to the world. In the beginning everything was static those that have had their pre-verbal wisdom obscured, even to the present day, by and night-fire, a polyphonic garden, a unified, feminine and serene space like a mythography, culture and colonialist values. lunar sea where we can hear the sound of a single hand clapping, the sound of my The legend of the Sirens is no different: the daughters of Melpomene (the mother’s typewriter and, in the pause of each breath, when supposedly there should muse of tragedy) bewitched and shipwrecked sailors with their songs. It is be silence, we can hear the sound of creation: the Big Bang! important to note that it is their animal part that made them dangerous. They are And then a brand new start... associated with an archaic vision of the female, a vision dominated by warlike and nomadic cultures. But the Sirens are also present in many different cultures, with

124 125 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Meg Brookes who make it simple. I have been terribly sensible. Yes, there is a part of me that wishes my immediate future was a little more Get Sh*t Done ambiguous. Being so sensible leaves me feeling a little dry. It is a struggle to compose music about the efficiency in which you pay your council tax bill. I have found no Leonard Cohen songs, yet, articulating the transcendent administrative moment you successfully sync all your phone contacts with your Google Mail account. However, being as sensible as I am and knowing that my natural sensibility I am at a point where my future is so very conjectural, as it is for all youth as leaves me with no instincts on how to direct myself towards the Kerouac-esque, they graduate, whether from a degree like myself, or simply from this chapter, bohemian lifestyle I day-dream about, I will just have to do what all sensible youth this preface, of young life where you know your place - school, university, your does and listen to my mother. childhood home, wherever. I will endeavour to continue to “get sh*t done”. As of July, I entered the void. And my Mother entered it with me. As we spoke a few months back we came to realise that both of us would enter into an unknown I listen to all of the voices of the Magdalena, my grandmothers and my aunts, life in parallel - myself graduating into the real grown-up world and she, graduating firstly telling me “look how much you’ve grown!” but secondly telling me, and this from her job of over a decade. She, as with all things, approaches our void with is a now a part of my fibre, that there is nothing to do - but do. forty years on me, of experience and of wisdom (and of mistakes). But rather than And there is my pacemaker device, fitted deep inside my chest, helping to further my apprehension this brings me some peace. The unknown will always control life’s arrhythmia when my step falters or life skips a beat as I go. I have be thus, you are never old enough to have done it all, and I can be confident in nothing to be concerned about, I am covered. I don’t even need to worry that I am knowing that I am simply catching my Mother up, one step at a time. being too sensible. All I have to do is to insist on moving forwards. So, for now, what I will do is listen to my Mother. I will heed the advice “Two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.” printed across my notebook's front cover (last Christmas’ oh-so-subtle hint of a gift From the moment I was born, into the world and into the Magdalena, I have from the woman herself): “GET SH*T DONE”. had a hundred, two hundred, three hundred women’s voices guiding me from my Each step of the way I hear her first steps to this graduation. voice. I am my Mother’s child, her voice has always been the clearest and loudest, And my, oh my, I got sh*t done. but I understand, now, why my sister and I were immersed so deeply, so young. I am graduating with a 2;1 after a Each Magdalena Project and woman taught us, through simple osmosis, so much of tempestuous degree at a classical music what my mother wanted to us to understand, to be and to achieve, to take with us conservatoire, directly into a private and to carry us through all of life’s inevitable graduations. Magdalena has been my music tutoring job for an established nurture and its values second nature. academy of which I am, also, now the Therefore, for as long as the Magdalena continues that process continues. For new PA. My bills are accounted for as long as the Magdalena continues I have my Mother’s voice to guide me. I have (curse council tax) and my rent covered. three hundred women screaming at the top of their voices for me to “GET SH*T I can afford to eat. I can even afford to DONE”. attend concerts once in a while. I am To try and discern the direction, the trajectory, that I am headed in at this forging my own music studio in the spare point seems futile but I swear to do, and to do, and to do and to never be done, and box room for my daily practice, lucky to try to honour that which was offered to me as a babe - Art. Let me state it again to be living with three current music and clearly: music may be my nature but the artistry at Magdalena has been the college students who do not begrudge nurture and Art is what my Mother has always pushed me to find. I have a future my monopolising that space. I rehearse mapped out in that pursuit. weekly (sometimes twice weekly) with Magdalena is my future, as it has been my past. From that, at least, you don’t two zealously dedicated bands, surviving ever graduate. late night rehearsals after work because I Come on, Mum, let’s get sh*t done. Meg Brookes have found committed and kind people

126 127 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Julia Varley Celebrating the Essential

Prologue I am walking up the hill. It is steep and the Brazilian sun is burning hot. I look at the small palm trees that have recently been planted along the side of the road. In twenty or thirty years, people might climb up the hill in the shade. Or maybe they will use a moving pavement that carries them without them having to make any effort at all. Afterwards they will go to the gym to use up their calories. Or by then, maybe people will no longer need to eat, or exercise, and the time will have come when human beings will share thoughts without words, be driven by micro-chips and satellites, digest books with a pill, and ask the sunrise to make an immediate replay. Surely the world will be different in the future. That is, if we are able to protect it enough so that there will be a future. Change can be exciting, challenging, demanding, but I feel happy to have grown up in the past century and only be allowed to get a glimpse of the transformations that will occur. I pass a row of teenagers sitting on a wall on the side of the road; they are all looking down at their mobile phones. I am curious and wonder if they are writing messages to each other or to others. A little further along a small restaurant shows a sign outside: “No WIFI, talk to each other!” I smile: even I need to learn to prioritise seeing my friends and family in the flesh, rather than writing letters to those who are on the other side of the world. Luckily theatre still demands that people share the same time and space physically. In an age of streaming and on-line performance, I still rely on the ancient technique of the actor’s stage presence, on a language that communicates through the body. Any vision I can have of the future starts from a way of thinking that is rooted in my feet. But even I no longer have the luxury of being able to rehearse for months and give shape to a character over a couple of years as I used to do. Communication has become so fast, and in the general rush I worry about becoming superficial. No one has time now. On Facebook, WhatsApp, Linkedin, Twitter, web pages, blogs: I like, I participate, I go, I don’t go, I say how nice, I agree, I disagree, I say hello, and not much more. Sentences become shorter and shorter as do the words: C U! It seems to be important to be seen and recognised, rather than to say something with a meaning and a story. Not many have time to write, but most of all not many have time to read. The best hope is to express something so universal that it just needs a click to respond. Wondering about what we have lost with the inevitable side effects of progress, I remember how the famous Peking Opera actress, Pei Yanling, had to stand with her leg on a table for an hour to stretch her muscles while her master stood

128 129 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow beside her. My own apprenticeship - learning to think in physical actions to I am sure your Dad lives on in you, in your daughters, in his friends, in whatever acquire a knowledge that is embodied and cannot be explained - lasted for years. he has done. Maybe what he was is not recognised by name, but it lives on, as all But I realise that in the future it will be difficult for young people to have the experience does.” privilege I experienced: the time, dedication, patience and freedom to train, learn Imagining how what I do today in my theatre work will live on tomorrow, or and research endlessly. I imagine that education will have to follow a completely how the idea of the future influences the choices I make in the present, three ques- different rhythm and adapt to a reality that is changing at a speed that provokes tions come to me immediately: how I react to what I experience as a worldwide war both fear and amazement in me. against women; how I deal with the heritage of Odin Teatret, the theatre group In my vision of the future, I would like to be rich in time, to have unhurried to which I belong; and how I can contribute in the best possible way to our new hours to read and think, go for walks and look at the view. Perhaps I am being performance The Tree that will be presented for the first time in September 2016. optimistic. I find I am eternally running after myself, never reaching my own I have many other plans and projects, including different books I would like to shadow. But if I stop for a moment, I remember that this is my own choice. Even publish, performances I have to finish directing, and a work demonstration I have though the material conditions are harder and there is less funding available for had in mind for some years. Will life ever give me enough time for it all? Certainly culture, and we have to stretch our energies to earn a living and keep our theatre not, especially if I also try to look after my garden and iron my sheets as I have group going, we are still living the life we have chosen. always done. This article gives me the opportunity to concentrate on the three Travelling along the winding mountainous roads in Laos some months ago, main questions regarding my vision of the future. I looked at the peasants who were waiting for the rain to prepare their terraced rice fields. Some had a small motor plough, but mostly they rely on buffaloes. In The hummingbird a village I visited a school where the teacher carried her baby on her back as she I was travelling in Burma. A guide had recommended that I visit a temple and imparted her lessons. Some families have twelve children, she told me, and they on my way back I was walking along a river in the shade of some trees. From the cannot finance everyone’s studies. I looked into the classrooms, and compared the dusty path I was following, I saw a small child playing on the riverbank. He was wooden tables on a cement floor with the modern computers of Danish schools. alone. He must have been two or three years old. He seemed satisfied and happy, Tourism is the main source of income in this country, which has the largest immersed in an activity with some small sticks that were perhaps a small boat with number of dropped bombs per inhabitant. The cluster bombs secretly dropped passengers, or a fishing rod and a catch of carp, or a saucepan and a bowl of food by the Americans during the Vietnam war still make victims of children playing, to sell at the market. The river water was deep and flowed clear. The child was so peasants working, and those trading metal for a living. The few rich people belong absorbed in his game that he did not realise I was looking at him. He was autono- to families who used to trade in opium. I see very few lorries along the main road mous and confident. I thought: this is no longer possible in Europe. of the country, but the markets sell the same plastic shoes and nylon clothes as Not long before, I had read about a mother who was arrested in New York the rest of the world. Life is hard and the aspirations simple: every family wants its for having left her child alone in a park to play. In the West, not to supervise has children to learn English, get a job in tourism or with the government. become a crime. How habits have changed since my childhood, when my brothers Confronted with the harshness and simplicity of reality for the friendly Lao and I often remained alone at home in the evening. In Danish schools, children people who smiled curiously at me, I wondered about the meaning of life. They now become accustomed year after year to being more and more protected from concentrate on earning enough money to send their children to better schools, commitment, fatigue, sweat and risk. The concerned teachers increasingly limit in the hope that they will have an easier existence than their own. What more? their curiosity, which finds expression only in electronic games. Children must I thought of my three-year-old niece, who could turn on a video without anyone pause from all physical exertion to drink water, have a snack and rest. Forty having taught her, and my own strong feeling that experience is mostly passed on minutes of attention are the most you can ask from them. through the air without knowing where it comes from. Will what I have done live During my walk in Burma, I saw no adult in the vicinity of the little boy. Had he on in others? Will something remain of my actions? Is this the meaning I pursue? It fallen into the water, he would probably have swum contentedly, as my brother did is certainly a hope that drives me on to build my future. when he learned to swim before he could walk. What struck me was the beauty of The father of a friend of mine died recently. After my friend had sold his the child. He was beautiful because he was satisfied, independent, intent. The river remaining furniture and belongings, she asked herself if that is all a whole life was his playground, not a threat. The adults who were walking on the path were is worth; does it all add up to just a few pounds? Trying to comfort her from a not potential enemies, but passers-by, villagers or foreigners. For him, the world was distance, I wrote a few futile words to soothe her pain: “The meaning of life is only a universe to explore and the future a mine of opportunity. I thought: suffocating to keep itself alive; we theatre people keep alive through our work, our perfor- protection is also a form of violence and the cause of this violence is love. mances, the relationships we establish with spectators and colleagues, and with How many women suffer from violence that springs from the love of their part- those who learn from our practice; our life lives on in the air that surrounds us; and ners? Too many. How many women are reduced to objects that elicit no empathy?

130 131 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

From the news I read, their number is increasing continuously. Perhaps this has that day. The text does not reveal exactly what happened. The accounts of so many always been so and it is only the speed of today’s global information that slaps this raped or abused women are an everyday matter; not much imagination is needed in tragic reality into our faces every day. I often wonder where this violence comes order to understand what is left unsaid. from; violence similar to that caused by the extreme conviction of ideologies or Feminicide is a relatively recent term; it denotes the murder of women just for religions, by injustice and extreme poverty, by nationalism. When I read of fathers being women. This type of murder is certainly not unfamiliar, but the feeling of and mothers who kill their daughters, of brothers who kill their sisters, of husbands a pervasive attack on women in so many parts of the world is new to me. Earlier who kill their wives, I clash with behaviours that are as incomprehensible to me as women were anonymous in history because they had no voice or face, because they those that seem to direct the course of history. were unrecognised, because they were confined to the world of children, home, A few years ago I saw an Egyptian film in which a son, who had grown up in a convent, kitchen and ornamentation. Today I feel that women are also anonymous loving relationship with his widowed mother, eventually killed her. The boy had because they have become figures, numbers, statistics. With Anónimas, I would become an Islamist during his studies and could not bear the idea of his mother like to help give a name and a face to simple, unrecognised women, such as our going by herself to visit one of his professors. In the small dark cinema in Paris, I mothers and grandmothers also are. We walk on the shoulders of our ancestors, cried for a long time at the end of the film. I had suddenly been overwhelmed by especially those suffragettes and feminists who fought for the rights that ought to be the evidence that more than half of the women in the planet experience similar guaranteed today. In the performance’s final image the youngest sister, a doll, exits tragedies and that I was totally powerless to confront this reality. In addition, today standing on the shoulders of her older sister, while the third sister finishes playing I feel the sadness of knowing that in some countries the rights that have been her guitar concert in front of a tiny audience of photographs of the young women achieved are being eroded. silenced by history. Other theatre women I work with are often overcome by the same kind of At a certain point in Anónimas, actress Amaranta Osorio, says: “Women have distress. To them I say: the only way to fight is to do our job well. Which is to say to tipped the established balance; some men respond with violence; and we, how do dedicate ourselves with commitment and attention to detail to what we know how to we respond?” Female revenge is a theme that has been present in many of the recent do: theatre. Our expertise and our tacit knowledge - the body and senses that think meetings of The Magdalena Project, the international network of women in theatre as a whole entity with the mind - have an obligation to intervene and demonstrate a in which I have actively participated since 1986; it was also a theme addressed by different way of perceiving reality. As women working in theatre we have learned to Jill Greenhalgh, the founder of the network, in her performance project Vigia - The act simultaneously in different directions and it is our responsibility to use this skill Acts. For example, during the Transit 7 Festival, held at Odin Teatret in Denmark to voice our dissent and rebellion. We need to create space for poetry, independence, in 2012, a video was shown about Femen, the protest movement started in Ukraine empathy, subjectivity, solidarity and beauty. The effect of our small actions gives us by some young women who then moved to Paris, known particularly for their bare- hope in being able to influence social reality and in opening horizons for a vulnerable breasted public demonstrations. (This happened in the same period as the arrest of humanity. The relationship with the spectators fills what we do with meaning. It is a the Pussy Riot for blasphemy for playing, wearing hoods, in a Moscow cathedral). hope without illusions, but it gives us the strength to go on while around us the world In the video you witness anger made manifest with violence and courage, but also seems to become more and more insane. in ways that shocked me because of their aggression and vehemence. When these As a director, one of the small actions that result from such worries engaged women pull down the large crucifix in the centre of Kiev with a chain saw, or are me in the creation of Anónimas (Anonymous Women), with Mexican/Colombian preparing to confront the police physically, or challenge hundreds of protesters actress Amaranta Osorio, and Spanish guitarist Teresa García. One of the starting against abortion, or undress in front of known politicians, they show a deep, irrev- points for the creation of this performance was the numerous feminicides on the erent conviction which is disconcerting, at least for me. border between Mexico and the United States. The silenced voices of the young The Transit 7 Festival, with its theme of “Risk, Crisis and Invention”, was women who had disappeared in the desert was the theme for the first improvisa- dedicated to Erica Ferrazza, an actress with the Italian group Metaarte, who was tion. Now that the performance is finished, the sound of Amaranta’s soiled white murdered by her husband. I wanted to underline the fact that our artistic and dress dragging on the chequered floor, as she slowly walks to the accompaniment of theatre environments are not immune to this kind of problem. From the opening of the whispering guitar, makes me think of a message carried by the wind. It is a light the Festival we were confronted with the theme of violence, not just that suffered breeze that moves between the dunes and the stones and that carries the voices of by women, but also violence used by women in response to abuse. Taking a risk - women who would like to speak to reveal horrors and the names of perpetrators. abandoning a convenient position of balance - to go into crisis - not knowing how to But silence reigns instead. Amaranta walks and places small female figures on move on and being in a position of stalemate - requires invention - to devise a perspec- the floor; some of them are Virgin Marys of different colours. In short sentences, tive. How to go on without abandoning anger and without getting trapped in a Amaranta reveals the destinies of a few women through their stories; including that way of thinking and values that are not ours? The discussions were animated and of a rich girl, who grew up in a family that spoiled her, where she felt safe, until younger women especially were impatient with the more peaceful, philosophical

132 133 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

others seek shelter in ideology and religion as, unfortunately, do too many of the women who are at their service. The crisis of traditional values, the priority given to commercial business, the failure of political organisations to provide credible visions, corruption, and the confusion that reigns everywhere in the media ruled democratic processes, all these push towards exaggerated and extreme certainties. Everyone needs to believe in something; I try to believe every day in the prospects opened by my theatre work. As women, we have rightly tipped the balance, breaking the existing domina- tion of the patriarchy, but it is not obvious how to establish a new harmony in which everyone can find an autonomous role and therefore their own beauty. Perhaps theatre - where opposition and conflict are a source of creativity and essential to the drama; where the body, images and senses are necessary to the complexity of perception and interpretation - is a terrain where we can invent and experiment with other points of view. It is said that wars serve governments by reinforcing a sense of national identity and resolving internal divisions. In today’s general crisis it seems to me that a war has been declared on women, turning them into the enemy. In the performance with Amaranta and Teresa we also remember all the anonymous threats, letters, complaints, phone calls, bullets and graves, as well as the actual women. In Teresa García and Amaranta Osorio in Anónimas this context, women are not just anonymous figures or ancestors, but, as the foe, they once again become witches, temptresses, prostitutes, those passionate, sensual and and tolerant solutions of the first generations of feminism and of those of us who irrational beings capable of communicating with the forces of nature who do not already had considerable theatre experience. How should we, how can we respond? respect established power and order and who dishonour the tribe: individuals to be This question, which I ask the spectators of Anónimas, after telling the tale of eliminated and burnt at the stake as in the Middle Ages. Or they become objects to Bluebeard and of the women whom he keeps locked up after killing them, still be used as cannon fodder in the wars of others. remains unanswered for me. In rehearsing Anónimas, I knew that I could not present violence and horror Feminist struggles, from the first suffragette demonstrations to the more recent directly. Showing brutality realistically does not work, because theatre does not marches in support of divorce and free abortion, the movements against child have the same impact as the cruelty of history. I wanted the performance to move marriage, the acquisition of the vote, the attainment of equal opportunities and and touch some individuals among the spectators through the poetry of images, wages, the autonomy that women pursue day after day, have social consequences the beauty of the two women on stage and the softness of the classical guitar. One that go beyond the claims and slogans. In general, as women become emancipated, solution was to present a different profile of anonymity through the biographies men are losing their traditional role of padre/padrone (father/master/owner), he of the actresses’ mothers and grandmothers, women recognised as important only who protects and provides for the family, builds a shelter and brings money home. within the context of their families and personal relationships. Every one of their The sense of identity - for both women and men - is in constant evolution. In true stories is incredible: women who survive war, migrate, abandon unwanted theatre also the number of female directors is increasing, as women accept the children and arranged marriages, work, sew clothes, sing and tell fairy-tales, cook responsibility of speaking in the first person. In this era of change, women have delicious meals, and feel like a mighty army when they gather their family around the strength of conviction of those who look towards innovation, of those who them. Another solution was to build on the veiled strength of the women on stage. are discovering their own strength and language, of those who are articulating the Behind their smiles, sweetness and innocence, behind the whispers in which they possibility of a different value system, of those who think optimistically of positive communicate, the spectators should perceive their danger, decision and courage. developments, of those who defend life. I have also noticed this phenomenon as As director I allow the actresses’ despair and impatience at the subject matter the years pass in theatre in general, and in my group - Odin Teatret - and The to explode in only one scene, that we call the scene of madness. I give vent to the Magdalena Project in particular: women cultivate their motivation and work- anguish and powerlessness that I experienced in the cinema in Paris with sense- load with more commitment, conviction and continuity. In contrast many men less, disorderly and unseemly actions. They are the reaction to the announcement are left with a feeling of deprivation and decline. In this crisis of social identity in the performance of the murder of the activist and poet Susana Chávez. I was some men are struggling to find alternatives; others are overwhelmed by frustra- in Cuba, at the Magdalena sin Fronteras Festival, organised by Roxana Pineda tion and resort to violence; some assert their strength in the proliferation of war; in 2011, when I first heard this news. The women’s festival became enveloped in

134 135 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow sadness and anger that we had to transform immediately into the need to make our Even in Denmark the culture of sacrifice generates violence. Behaviour based voices heard through our performances. Susana Chávez lived in northern Mexico on rivalry and power, on physical force and abuse, creates the scenario in which on the border with the United States and had invented the slogan “Not another crimes are committed. The female tendency to prioritise family and love relation- dead woman” to rebel against the fate of the many young women being killed in ships over work, their willingness to follow a man and the impositions of his career her region. Before murdering her, they cut off her hand. as if they don’t have a separate identity, the loneliness of those who do not find a Particular experiences have guided me when taking up themes that evoke pain true companion, are seen as a weakness. The step from being weak to becoming and violence in theatre, while pursuing stage truth of simple presence, avoiding a victim is short. But in this scenario, how can women defend their altruism, exaggerated acting and wanting to present beauty and wonder even amid horror. without consequently being considered losers and therefore lacking self-esteem and Beauty can be a weapon, as is what is delicate, small and insignificant. It is a polit- authority? How can we fight against the behaviour which also makes women estab- ical choice: we can only rely on the personal, on what each of us knows from direct lish their place in schools by becoming bullies, or stealing from a man they have experience, in order to reject the power imposed from above in a vertical hierarchy, drugged and then burn him in a car while he screams, or becoming suicide bombers and conquer authority for ourselves through action and the sharing of a horizontal who join Islamic State, killing innocents in the name of a law that forbids them to structure. We will never have the expediency of those in power. We choose to study, travel alone, earn money or drive? build our path from the margins. There, on the periphery, we find our centre At a certain point in Anónimas, Amaranta replaces the small female figures and we are on the side of those who suffer injustice. In this risky position, out of with stones. At the beginning she does this one by one; then the gravel starts to balance, I must always remember what I have inherited. slip from her hand to cover the floor: individual women with their destinies have At the Festival Magdalena sin Fronteras in 2014, Roxana Pineda asked those of become numbers and statistics, lifeless stones, weights to carry, sealed mouths. The us who were going to lead a workshop to take as its theme the story of Obba. In the stones are swept away, to the accompaniment of a protest song that commemorates religious Yoruba tradition of African origin, Obba is the wife of Xango, the god of the names of famous female poets, scientists, musicians, saints and warriors from law and thunder. Obba sacrifices herself for her husband to the point of cutting off the past along with the names of the actresses, their mothers and grandmothers. her ears for him to eat when the food has run out. When Xango discovers Obba’s The small Virgin figures reappear in the performance during a dance. Amaranta mutilation, he flees and abandons her. Without ears, she is no longer as beautiful places them on a chessboard of white and red squares as pawns ready to play, then as she was before. The story was elaborated in different ways in the workshops, in the position of a manoeuvring army, and at the end she gathers them into a in search of women’s centrality. Despite the sacrifice? Or because of the sacrifice? compact group. Unity is strength: leave the role of victim to Christ and let’s choose Does the choice to devote oneself to the loved person - or family - and to renounce other images to identify with. The small Virgins in Anónimas are not there as a one’s own good for that of others have of necessity to be dictated by a senseless religious reference, but suggest the beauty, resistance, generosity and spirituality of deprivation? Or can it be the result of an autonomous choice based on different women. priorities and values from the norm? When does generosity become sacrifice with During a meeting at the Magdalena a Solas Festival, organised by Amaranta all the connotations of religious suffering? And when is it instead a human quality Osorio in Madrid in 2013, I talked about the little boy I had seen in Burma. I that can be proposed as an alternative to the materialism in which we have grown wanted to give an example of beauty, but most of all reawaken our responsibility as up in the West? Generosity is the quality I appreciate most in actors, when they women of theatre to recreate and protect the freedom to take risks, where every- have learned to structure their energies and forget themselves, engaging instead in thing changes, moves, transforms, without losing what we have fought for - men what the performance tells the spectator. and women - from the right to education and work to social security. I was thinking The problem arises when the woman who achieves her own ideals through about how future generations grow up in the West and how their lack of perspec- sacrifice is ready to accept one blow after another, in the hope that eventually she tive and ideals frightens me. So, during the meeting, I shared other stories as we sat will manage to redeem, save and change the man beside her. I have met a few inde- in a circle. pendent, strong, responsible, intellectually capable and elegant women with estab- A theatre group had prepared a performance for children in England. They were lished careers, who have accepted their partner’s violence for years. Each time they supposed to enter a labyrinth along a path where the scenes took place. Because of hide the bruises on their bodies and their psychological wounds in the belief that it the child protection rules that exist against paedophilia, the actors were not allowed will not happen again, that they will be able to bring about a change through love. to be alone with the children in the labyrinth they had created, thus depriving the Some only become aware of their situation at the moment of risking their lives, children of the experience of conquering the fear of the unknown and having an others do not save themselves in time. In every city in Denmark there are shel- adventure. The children of western civilisations grow up thinking that all adults are ters for women who suffer violence. They are called Krisecenter (Crisis Centre). potential criminals and that any display of physical affection is suspicious. And on They have secret addresses to prevent husbands, fathers, brothers from finding the top of this, despite all the rules, paedophilia is not prevented. I remember that my women who take refuge there with their children. parents also instructed me not to talk to strangers, but nevertheless I did not grow

136 137 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow up without faith in the human beings around me. No law prevented me from expe- Yesterday they hanged a woman who had killed a man who had tried to rape riencing mystery and danger as something fascinating. her. Today a father stoned his daughter to death. Tomorrow war will continue. How can we create a world in which there is hope for the future, a sense of Yesterday, today and tomorrow a spectator will recognise her or his story in the opportunity and discovery, even though it is not easy to achieve; a world full of chal- performance Anónimas and thank the actresses for having told it. The performance lenges from which we can learn and develop as I saw in the absorption of the child is nothing more than one of those drops of water of the indefatigable hummingbird, on the river bank? The beauty of autonomy, of one’s own meaning, is a journey that one of the small actions of our making theatre in order to keep alive the hope of I still recognise as possible. The insecurity, frustration, insoluble conflicts and useless extinguishing the fire. sacrifice of a world based on commercial values assault us from the early years of childhood. The old values of the patriarchal family have rightly been rejected, but The swing what values are we building in their place, now that the collective hippy communi- Eugenio Barba has always been concerned about death and what he calls the last act ties have failed, as well as the associated politics and struggle for a more just society. of Odin Teatret, the theatre group that he founded in Norway in 1964, that moved What direction should we follow in search of an alternative? to Denmark in 1966, and which I joined in 1976. Those of us who have been part During the same meeting at the Magdalena a Solas Festival in Madrid, Itziar of the group for fifty, forty or thirty years have signed a document in which we have Pascual, a Spanish scholar, responded to my concerns with this story that she had agreed that Odin Teatret’s name will be used only for as long as one of us continues heard during a trip to Africa: her or his theatre activities, in agreement with the others. Eventually Odin Teatret will disappear with us. Odin Teatret is not an institution or a building, it is the people A fire broke out in the jungle. All the animals gathered together but did not know who have worked together as a group throughout the years. what to do. The flames were destroying the forest. A hummingbird flew to the river One day Eugenio explained our decision in an interview to the local paper of to collect a drop of water in its beak and returned to pour it on the fire. The animals Holstebro, the town that has given us a home for fifty years. He gave the interview laughed at the hummingbird’s useless effort: “Why do you fly all the way to the river; during the Festuge in 2011. Festuge in Danish means Festive Week. It is an event you will never manage to put out the fire.” The hummingbird kept on flying back and we have promoted and organised every two or three years since 1989 in Holstebro forth from the river to the fire, from the fire to the river, to collect drops of water in its and the surrounding region. It lasts continuously for nine days and nights and is beak. The animals laughed again. The hummingbird said: “I do what I can and have a gigantic social-cultural upheaval and ceremony involving all the institutions, to do: I try to put out the fire.” organisations and associations of the town, schools, ethnic and religious minorities, the army, the police, the fire brigade, the shops, sport clubs: everyone! I remember that the story ended there. Secretly I had asked myself if it wasn’t The director of the newspaper and several readers reacted to the interview: possible for all the animals to collect water so that they could extinguish the fire, why haven’t Eugenio Barba and the actors of Odin Teatret nurtured a younger but this tempting illusion disappeared instantly as I felt as useless as the humming- generation to take over? Why haven’t they recognised that Holstebro needs Odin bird in the face of history’s cruelty and of the increasingly insane world. Then, Teatret? Events like the Festuge must continue; they are an essential part of the re-reading my notes, I found that the story continues, giving a leading role to the town’s life, of its cultural identity and specific social character. little ones like the boy on the bank of the river: These reactions were a turning point in our thinking about the future. I have never liked Eugenio’s constant awareness of the end - of his own death or that of one Seeing the hummingbird, the baby elephant, which until then had remained shel- of the actors - and how that would change everything. I am convinced the future will tered between its mother’s legs, dipped its trunk into the river and, after drawing always intervene in an unexpected way. However much we prepare, we will never be as much water as possible, splashed it on a bush that was about to be devoured by ready. We should learn from the classics and not forget King Lear. Rather than plan- fire. A young pelican, having left its parents in the middle of the river, filled his big ning a finale, I prefer to concentrate my energy on today’s activities and try to invent beak with water and flew off to drop a kind of waterfall on a tree threatened by the new projects and initiatives which can create the framework for the unforeseeable flames. Enthused by these examples, all the small animals strove together to put to happen. I prefer to dream actively of an everlasting tomorrow that demands the out the fire that had now reached the banks of the river. Forgetting old grudges and maximum of me in the present. I acknowledge my naivety, but I still prefer it to the age-old divisions, the lion cub and the baby antelope, monkey and leopard, eagle and temptation of a cynical realism that might ensnare me. white-necked hare fought side by side to stop the spread of the fire. At that sight the Odin Teatret has always felt gratitude towards the town of Holstebro and its adults ceased mocking them and, full of shame, began to help their little ones. With inhabitants; those who created a cultural model in the 1960s. The impact of this the arrival of fresh forces, by the time night shadows descended on the savannah, the cultural policy, that has been upheld for fifty years by Holstebro’s politicians, was fire had been tamed. Dirty and tired, but safe, all the animals gathered to celebrate expressed in the newspaper readers’ protest during the Festuge in 2011, demanding together their victory over the fire. that Odin Teatret should secure a continuation of its work even when the group

138 139 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow no longer exists. The letter told us that we need to show our gratitude to the town I pass on skills conscious that the essence of my experience cannot be taught. by preparing the future. We should find the means to nurture a younger gener- Each person has to learn from her own mistakes, misunderstandings and longings, ation who would agree to live and work artistically in a part of Denmark that adapting what she thinks she is learning to her own needs, translating the working is constantly losing residents and services. We cannot just abandon Holstebro language into words of her own. So many books and theses have been published, because we no longer have the possibility to do everything ourselves. quoting terms and concepts like the ‘pre-expressive level’ that Eugenio and Odin We had never thought of our responsibility from this perspective. It was no actors have written about, thinking that we use these words when we work in longer a question of giving continuity to our group, our institution, our name, but our group, instead of understanding that these concepts are the result of trying to that our policy, our way of thinking, of intervening, of creating relationships and explain the inexplicable. In our practice only a few words are necessary: impulse, exchange, should continue in other forms, with different people, other aesthetics rhythm and power. All the rest comes from resolving concrete tasks and from an and under other names. This helped me understand that I did not need to obstruct embodied knowledge. Eugenio’s considerations for Odin Teatret’s final scene, but rather propose ways At the beginning - in the 1960s and 70s - Odin Teatret organised seminars in which we could encourage the contribution of the younger people around with other theatre masters so we ourselves could learn, but also earn some money our group, in the hope that, in a faraway future, they might continue to work in from taking care of the practical arrangements for participants who paid. Then - in Holstebro, following their own artistic needs and premises. I felt a new motiva- the 70s, 80s and 90s - with ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology) tion to stimulate autonomous ideas and initiatives. I was aware that there was no and the Third Theatre Group Meetings came the period of collective research guarantee of success because the motivation for accepting such an assignment and and the individuation of common principles, beyond cultural backgrounds and transforming it is in the hands of the receivers. But preparing a younger generation artistic genre, comparing our own experience with other classic and contemporary to continue a theatrical presence in their own way in our town was an active task stage traditions. I loved these meetings. I was spellbound by the Asian masters, by that filled me with the desire to do something, even to spend time nurturing other their performances, costumes, music, rhythm, commitment and biographies. I was artists’ projects that might end up in smoke. captivated by how I could communicate with them on stage even when we did not The young performers, directors, groups would not be Odin Teatret’s heirs. have a common spoken language. I was also fascinated by the familiarity I felt with They would unfold their activities freely, and the more different they could be people making group theatre all over the world and especially in Latin America, by from us, the better. In their hearts, they might feel a strong tie to us, but it should their inventiveness of their survival strategies, and the imagination and joy of their not be too obvious in their work. Their assignment was to keep alive the network performances, by their political and social engagement which reminded me of my of collaborative bonds and cultural initiatives with the many milieus and subcul- own when I was a teenager. They brought back to life my ideals in a different form. tures in our community; but also to defend the space for international encounter, I felt at home in those meetings that took place in many different countries. exchange and reciprocal interest which Holstebro politicians had been able to The Magdalena Project originates from this environment. At first I partici- guarantee since 1966. This could all happen within the umbrella structure of pated in the Magdalena to find my autonomy from Odin Teatret and discover the the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, which we had developed over decades of work. centrality of being a woman in relationship to my craft. Then, after organising Nevertheless, we needed to discover how we could fruitfully establish a collabora- some meetings and eventually the recurrent Transit Festival in Holstebro, I have tion with Odin Teatret, its people, venues and resources. gradually introduced this network of women into Odin Teatret’s own identity, We have received a great deal during Odin Teatret’s long life and we have making it part of my contribution for change and development in the group. I have always felt that we should give back. From my first day with the group I have been thus done the groundwork for potential outcomes that can influence our future. aware of this principle. Even though I was convinced I didn’t know anything, it Many of the contacts that promote our tours abroad nowadays are connected to was my obligation to share my experience, by performing and teaching, organ- the Magdalena network. Many of the associates who have joined us in different ising and writing, promoting and reassuring. Apart from my everyday work as an projects are women I got to know at Magdalena festivals: Ana Woolf has become actress - training, rehearsing, performing and touring - the festival Transit, the Eugenio’s assistant director; Carolina Pizarro has become an Odin actor; Parvathy journal The Open Page, participating in The Magdalena Project network, directing Baul has joined us for the most recent production, The Tree; Selene D’Agostino performances with other actors, giving workshops, organising tours, motivating is taking care of my archive as part of her administrative tasks at Odin Teatret; and communicating with those who work in the administration, keeping an ever Keiin Yoshimura was one of the masters at the last ISTA session; Brigitte Cirla increasing correspondence alive and feeding a complex web of contacts all over the and Deborah Hunt are very close collaborators; and many others - too many world, all this work has been my response to this need to give back by passing on. to name - are continuously active under our umbrella organisation Nordisk It has been my way of creating an autonomous role within my group, of finding my Teaterlaboratorium. place as a woman in its history and participating in determining its vision. And I But time and circumstance bring change. Many theatre groups dissolved. The have grown from doing so. Asian masters died and funding was no longer available for Third Theatre meetings

140 141 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow and research in the ISTA sessions. Our need to pass on and share experience at Thus a chorus of international actors was included in the intercultural perfor- Odin Teatret focused instead on the rigour required to achieve results. Performance mances Ur-Hamlet (2006 and 2009) and The Marriage of Medea (2008). They could became central to our pedagogical activity. It was no longer only a question of experience being directed by Eugenio and work on stage with Odin Teatret actors finding the freedom and the time to train and rehearse, but of stressing the purpose and performers from Bali, Japan, India and Brazil. It was a unique occasion for all of apprenticeship and preparation, emphasising the aims and reason for the work. of us. It also meant that we were able to travel to Bali for rehearsals and develop This helped give continuity and meaning in times of crisis, addressing the questions our collaboration with the Afro-Brazilian dancer, Augusto Omolú. It was a dream of where and for whom we make theatre, beyond the how. come true and the people involved in the two performances have remained closely I believe that we only really learn from the work on a performance. Even connected to Odin Teatret ever since. For all of us, both young and older, it was when I did not see myself as a director, but just as someone who helped actors to a school rooted in experience that changed lives as well as giving technical tools find their autonomy, discover different ways of producing material and encour- for the profession. In the Theatrum Mundi performance, The Marriage of Medea, aged them to understand what they wanted to say, I worked as if the result would Medea was played by the Balinese performer, Ni Made Partini, and Jason by Tage be shown publicly. Only the meeting with the spectator demands the detailed Larsen. The performance was organised like a wedding procession and feast, during precision and exactitude in decision making that does not forgive indulgent which Medea advanced followed by a family of thirty-three Balinese dancers and solutions and approximate attitudes. Everything we do must reach its maximum, musicians and a coloured fishing boat, and Jason was accompanied by his family of even if that takes more time and we have to start over and over again. Working friends, a group of young performers from all over the world whom Augusto Omolú on performances with other actors has resulted in me learning how to direct from led in their dances. We started calling the young international performers “The them. They have forced me to transform my own craft as an actress, and the power Jasonites”. hidden in my feet, into a way of observing and reacting with images, montage and In 2012, the Danish Ministry of Culture halved Odin Teatret’s grant. The stories to extract associations and meanings from what they are doing. I have since cuts took away the freedom we had achieved to build a permanent ensemble, an directed many women and a few men around the world. Will Harald Redmer, Ana environment rooted in art, pedagogy, research and international as well as local Woolf, Hisako Miura, Gabriella Sacco, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Manolo Muoio, Carolina projects. We could not justify our choice to fund a school for the most ancient form Pizarro, Teresa Ruggeri, Marilyn Nunes, The Jasonites, Amaranta Osorio, Teresa of theatre in Bali, to help the tour of a Cuban theatre group, or to support a newly García, Luciana Martuchelli, prolong my existence in the future? born network of women. But for us these kinds of activities were the realisation of But the work demonstrations, performances, workshops, seminars, meetings, a cultural policy which gave meaning to our daily work. To defend our beliefs and festivals are never enough. If I want to pass on knowledge that will live on anony- way of working, we needed to present our activities in the context of schemes and mously in the future and leave a seed that will find its own fertile ground in which references others could recognise and understand, we had to make what we were to grow, I still need to do more. Within the Magdalena Project network we have doing beyond the ‘normal’ theatre activity of creating performances and touring also often spoken of the necessity to let go. It is difficult to achieve a balance them more visible. We had to safeguard our particular identity as a theatre group between allowing others to take over and at the same time guaranteeing quality. whose overloaded past is the premise for change. Much of my energy today is dedicated to walking this line between the need to The need to attract a younger generation to Holstebro, who might perhaps protect my professional and personal identity, and the equally strong urge to pass continue our policy once we have gone, has resulted in a modification of our on everything I know, so that it will live on transformed by fertile misunderstand- theatre’s organisation. We started to call a range of our usual activities - workshops ings, banal betrayals, original inspirations or ingenious imitations. and meetings but also hosting performances and giving groups a space to rehearse During the years of change, Eugenio became disheartened at the prospect of - ‘residences’. The condition is that resident artists should regularly intervene in organising a new ISTA session without the collaborators he had learned to trust Holstebro, by for example visiting a school or an old people’s home, collaborating and who had died. He could not imagine preparing a new Theatrum Mundi perfor- with the Ballet School or the Public Library, performing in the pedestrian street mance, even when, during a meal, our friend Trevor Davies asked him to do so for or presenting parts of their performances at the refugee centre. In this way we are a festival at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore. I have always had difficulty in letting an giving continuity to Odin Teatret’s presence in Holstebro under different names, opportunity pass without taking advantage of it. I remember that on that occasion - and opening up opportunities for resident artists to understand the multicultural while clearing up the plates in the kitchen - I tried to plant some ideas in Eugenio’s facets and scope of theatre practice. mind in order to persuade him to respond positively: it could be an opportunity to Odin Teatret is the name of a particular relationship between the director support the Balinese Gambuh project, we could involve the recently met Noh actor Eugenio Barba and a specific group of actors who work permanently together. But at Akira Matsui, but, most of all, we could develop our pedagogical approach beyond the same time every one of us has promoted and developed many activities outside the basic actor’s training. Many people had asked to follow Eugenio while he was this collective framework. Under what name should these activities exist? This is rehearsing a performance and now we could organise a structure for this to happen. an old discussion. I remember how, in 1983, I had to defend having presented The

142 143 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Night of the Vagabonds, a performance directed by Else Marie Laukvik, in which I them, and one of the consequences was that I directed their performance Tomorrow, performed with Silvia Ricciardelli and Ulrik Skeel, in an Odin Teatret programme. as well as assisting with Shakespills. Four of the Jasonites continued to meet working Eugenio had been on sabbatical at the time. He had left giving the younger gener- with the theme “Love Stories” to prepare their contribution for the Holstebro ation the task of revolutionising the group, but when he returned he re-established Festuge in 2011. Isadora Pei, Marcelo Miguel, Alberto Martinez Guinaldo and the authority of the oldest. I had to call a meeting of the whole group to back Giuseppe L. Bonifati made a treasure from what they had experienced during the me against Eugenio’s protests at the use of Odin Teatret’s name in a way that he Festuge in 2008 with The Marriage of Medea. They remained in Holstebro for longer disagreed with. This discrepancy made the rules much clearer for the future. periods to work with schools and collaborate with Deborah Hunt, preparing theat- Until recently, if I directed a group of actors, the performance was presented rical sketches which could be presented in all kinds of situations. under their name, underlining independence from Odin Teatret as much as The Jasonites thus created their autonomous local network of contacts and possible. But this practice also effaced my contribution to the work in the official were able to indicate to us some schools and people who could join and support reports. Most of my additional engagements would disappear if I only looked at the us when we decided to invite children and youth theatre/dance ensembles from statistics, instead of taking into consideration the long-lasting effect on the people Bali, Kenya, Italy and Brazil to celebrate Odin Teatret’s 50th anniversary in 2014. I work with. What should the many collective and individual initiatives and activi- In the years between the Festuge of 2011 and 2014, Odin Teatret was also part of ties that make up the complex identity of our group be called? They escaped defini- an international project that received European funding for a caravan stage that tion, not being Odin Teatret in a strict sense. would travel throughout Europe for two years to present performances on the At the same time independent actors, who have developed in close connection theme of crisis and renaissance. Since Odin Teatret was busy with its own local and to Odin Teatret, whom we finance directly or through the use of our space, and international commitments, I was asked to direct a performance that The Jasonites who want to acknowledge the support they receive, did not have a framework in could present as part of this project, combining open air performance with barters which to do so. How could we demonstrate to the Danish Ministry of Culture the and workshops. It was an opportunity for The Jasonites to perform and train as immense range of our activity, and therefore render more visible the practice of leaders of social interaction. This performance, Banana Revival, became a Nordisk individuals teaching and directing workshops, groups, festivals and performances Teaterlaboratorium production, laying down the path for our future practice of without them being attributed to Odin Teatret? We needed to find a name. using this network. Years ago, in the 80s, when Iben Nagel Rasmussen, the Danish actress who In the same period, at Odin Teatret, we started a school called WIN (Workout joined Odin Teatret in 1966, wanted to leave the group to work permanently with for Intercultural Navigators), for those interested in using their skills as an actor her pupils, Eugenio transformed our structure by inverting the title and subtitle, so not only in performance, but as a technique to weave relationships and create that Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium became the umbrella under which one could find connections in the different tissues of a community. We defined the ‘intercultural’ Odin Teatret, ISTA - International School of Theatre Anthropology, Farfa (Iben’s questions - which are normally thought of in terms of ethnic, racial or national group), Basho (directed by Toni Cots), The Canada Project (directed by Richard specificities - by recognising the different sub-cultures with their specific bonds, Fowler), Odin Teatret Film, and Odin Teatret Publishing House. This new arrange- affinities, norms and habits: those who live in the country or in the town, who ment allowed Eugenio to maintain a connection with Toni, who no longer wanted work in a factory or in a shop, who go to a technical or a literary school, who are to perform with Odin Teatret, to include ISTA in our list of activities even when young or old, who have travelled abroad or have not… The workshop leaders were Odin Teatret’s actors did not participate, but, above all, it was a way to avoid Iben Odin actors, but also The Jasonites and other close collaborators like Deborah losing the place she had helped to build. The fruit of her work would be available Hunt or Pierangelo Pompa, to whom we could entrust a pedagogical responsibility. to her even though she wanted to follow her own path. With the exception of the most recent performance, The Tree, during the Giving autonomy to each member, whilst still maintaining a meaningful rehearsal process Eugenio was usually accompanied by various assistants. It was collaboration, is one of the reasons for Odin Teatret’s longevity. Even though we his way of trying to pass on his experience as a director. One of them, Italian prioritise our group performances above any other activity, we have always been Pierangelo Pompa, decided to settle down in Holstebro. At first he assisted Eugenio encouraged to develop our own interests and nourish the diversity and strength of in many activities, working with Odin Teatret Archives and taking care of many our individual personalities. I prize this good fortune, especially when I witness the everyday tasks at the theatre, where help is always needed, especially when the sadness with which Roxana Pineda of Estudio Teatral in Cuba, and Anna Zubrzycka group is on tour. Pierangelo also led workshops, culminating in a performance of Song of the Goat in Poland, finally decided to leave the groups they co-founded since he wanted to build an autonomous group. This has resulted in the creation after divorcing from the partners with whom they had shared the first years. of Altamira Studio Teater, resident at Odin Teatret since the beginning of 2014, After The Marriage of Medea, some of The Jasonites participated in the second and receiving financial and logistical help. The group is developing a presence in edition of Ur-Hamlet and then decided to meet again independently and continue Holstebro and other towns in the region with the intention of becoming indepen- their collaboration. My personal ties with The Jasonites developed each time I met dent and having its own circuit of venues within a couple of years.

144 145 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

All these activities needed to be publicised. With Selene D’Agostino, from though we insist time and time again that Odin Teatret will die with us, the ques- our administration, and Pierangelo, I started to plan a website dedicated exclu- tion always crops up: who has been chosen by Eugenio Barba and the Odin actors sively to Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium. It informed about NTL productions (perfor- to continue their work? Every appraisal and criticism, every action and reaction, mances directed by Odin actors and performances to which Odin Teatret has given every assignment and recommendation, every distribution of responsibility and substantial financial support); NTL residences (groups and artists working at the projects, is interpreted as a sign of a premeditated strategy instead of a response theatre in Holstebro for longer or shorter periods); NTL workshops (workshops to evolving situations. When I point out the misinterpretations that Eugenio’s held at Odin Teatret by artists in residence); associated NTL activities (barters, behaviour produces at times, or when, as the theatre’s managing director, I try to interventions, parades). To make the outside world understand the difference implement the consequence of his wishes and needs, this can produce reactions, between NTL and Odin Teatret, we had to publish a definition on our website. resentments and even blame. I am not interested in status and over the years I have A long time was spent trying to define a situation that is continuously learned to cover myself with a layer of oil that allows accusations of manipulating evolving. It was - and is - not easy. Every case seemed to present an exception, to give privileges or reprimands slide away. I am often reminded of the difficult and everyone had a different understanding of the words that we used to describe position of many other women who openly or in the background have had to take artistic and pedagogical relationships that change so much they appear contra- over the leadership of their theatre companies and groups. dictory. When Selene returned to Italy and Pierangelo focused his attention on My priority has been to create the conditions for Eugenio to work with us in his own group, Sabrina Martello and Rina Skeel, in addition to their other tasks the rehearsal space and be present at the performances as much as possible, allevi- at Odin Teatret, took on responsibilities relating to the NTL residencies and ating his administrative burden, and encouraging him to accept projects that might announcements. I continue to follow all the activities, trying to coordinate the develop in unforeseen directions. While I take responsibility for this range of occu- developments and facilitate the communication between the young resident artists, pations, I also defend my position as an actress, because I know my roots are there. Odin actors, the administration, and Eugenio. Focusing my attention on being an actress maintains my balance and freedom in My involvement in managerial tasks at Odin Teatret has developed over the a group where most people have not chosen to work with me, but with Eugenio. years. In the early 1980s I organised the filming of Come! And the Day Will Be Ours We usually find a basic unity of intentions once conflicts that are not fundamental and assisted Eugenio during a theatre group meeting in Bahia Blanca in Argentina. are resolved. We are aware that we need to protect our artistic work, which is the When Eugenio did not accompany many of the tours of The Gospel According to essential that keeps us together. This awareness of the need to safeguard what is Oxyrhincus, I started writing a daily logbook to keep him informed of the everyday important, and not allow disagreements to take over, deepened with the loss of two problems. During Eugenio’s sabbatical year I was part of the group directing all colleagues: Torgeir Wethal, one of the founders of Odin Teatret, who died in 2010, the activities of the theatre and my role was to keep the communication flowing and Augusto Omolú, the Afro Brazilian dancer who was murdered in 2013. between the ‘young’ and ‘innovative’ Toni Cots and the ‘old’ and ‘conservative’ Of course many questions still remain: what will happen to the buildings with Torgeir Wethal, with the help of the ‘democratic’ Ulrik Skeel. When Leif Bech, their working spaces, changing rooms, offices, workshops, store-rooms, kitchens, who was our tour manager for many years, left in 1988 just before a tour to Italy beds, tables, chairs, cupboards, computers, printers, projectors, lights, and sound with our new performance Talabot, I became involved in all the negotiations with equipment? What will happen to the performances and their props and costumes? our hosts. Since then, we have tried out various structures, one of which we called What will happen to the archives and the books, films, photographs, documents, filter, which consisted of Torgeir, Ulrik, Søren Kjems (our administrator) and me, letters, programmes, newspaper cuttings? With every day that goes by, more histor- to help release Eugenio from administrative tasks, until it was decided in 2014 that ical items are collected at Odin Teatret with the purpose of passing on our experi- I would be his stedfortræder (a deputy, taking his place when he is not there) or ence, and more spaces have been built to host activities and materials. The task of managing director, to reassure the Ministry of Culture and Holstebro Municipality, making order for the future in all of this is overwhelming, especially for a theatre who were giving us grants and were worried about Eugenio retiring. In practice that continues to function with a growing number of activities and where there is these titles do not change anything for me. I am always very aware that Eugenio is no time to stop and think and prepare. the person ultimately taking decisions; I do not want to take his place. I have no At the beginning it was easy: every letter had a blue copy that was archived by desire to take part in the disputes that occur to get his attention. I just continue, date and a white copy that was archived in the folder for the appropriate activity. If in addition to being an actress and a director, to deal with a wide range of autono- we wanted to use a photograph in a book, the photographer had to produce a copy mous initiatives by individual Odin actors, new projects that continuously change on paper. The 36 or 18 mm films filled the editing room, but were easy to see and within the NTL, and all the planning of the Odin ensemble’s tours and other to find. But then came computers, digital photographs, video tapes and digital film collective activities. The expansion of the NTL has coincided with my assumption copies, emails instead of telephone calls or letters or faxes, hard disks, pen drives, of all these responsibilities. data bases… Everyone at the theatre created their own system and habits, and just But misunderstandings are also caused by other people’s expectations. Even thinking of how to share and transform our address book, removing all those who

146 147 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow had died in the meantime, provoked an incredible crisis. Slowly, with the help of the responsibility for organising Odin Teatret Archives (OTA) to Mirella Schino, the youngest amongst us and some specialists, we started thinking of organising our supported by Francesca Romana Rietti and Valentina Tibaldi, and independent archives. After our 40th anniversary when we invited many guests to Holstebro, from CTLS and Århus University. At first the idea was to give the archives to the and the 45th when we sold the rights of The Poor Theatre for one euro to the Polish Gramsci Foundation in Italy, but, luckily, while focusing on the Danish roots of Grotowski Institute, and with the prospect of the 50th anniversary which loomed Odin Teatret, The Royal Library of Copenhagen declared itself happy to receive like a deadline with no tomorrow, the need to decide what to do with all our papers our archive. Eugenio insisted on the work being completed by June 2014, for Odin became urgent. Teatret’s 50th anniversary. Eugenio’s brother Ernesto had collected a conspicuous library throughout The consequent pressure of this decision was explosive. All the letters, docu- his life, which he kept at his mother’s house in Rome. After his brother’s and ments, photographs and films that would be passed on to The Royal Library had to his mother’s death, Eugenio had to decide what would happen to all the books. be digitalised, organised and catalogued. Heaps of papers kept on appearing from He soon realised that few people have room to keep such precious items, and every corner of the theatre and were brought in from private homes. I decided that public institutions are reluctant to take on private donations without finan- that I still needed to access my own archives, mostly those connected with The cial back up for their maintenance. Eugenio started thinking about what would Magdalena Project, The Open Page journal, Transit Festival, my work as a director happen to his own library after his death, and who should receive all his histori- and my articles, so only those folders of mine that concerned Odin tours, ISTA and cally precious documents, like, for example, his private correspondence with Jerzy correspondence were included in the first despatch to The Royal Library in 2014. Grotowski. I am still using my papers and diaries and I decided to include them in the docu- In 2004, a decade-long collaboration between Odin Teatret and Aarhus ments that will be sent in 2025, in the second transfer. University culminated in the establishment of the CTLS - Centre for Theatre Discussing the destination of the archives of both Odin Teatret and The Laboratory Studies, for which we built a second floor on our theatre that was Magdalena Project with Diana Taylor, a Mexican scholar working at New York financed by Eugenio mortgaging his home. All the archive specialists we consulted University, we wondered how we could assure the presence of women in the docu- advised us not to give the archive to a university because the institution would not ments on which future historical reconstruction is based. The Magdalena Project have the means or experience to take care of it and make it available for future has always focused on documentation, but the specificity of archiving performance generations of scholars. The world was entering an economic crisis and Aarhus material and the experience embodied in performers is a challenge. For the time University’s promised funds vanished. The obligation to pay the salary of the being, I have asked Selene D’Agostino to look after my archives, partly to relieve people working at CTLS was assumed by Odin Teatret. the work of OTA’s staff and partly as a response to the cool reaction to my feminist For me it was also important for the archives to remain at the theatre in the preoccupations. I accept that it is to be expected that Eugenio’s writings would be future. Having visited Bertolt Brecht’s homes in Berlin and in Svendborg, as well prioritised and worked on in a different way from my own, but I still feel it is my as Meyerhold’s apartment in Moscow, I strongly believed that the spaces, with their responsibility to open a space that other women can use in the future. walls and windows, gardens and corridors, retain some energy and flavour of what Superficial history concentrates on the top of the iceberg. Too often those has happened there in the past. I also insisted that students would have a greater who don’t know Odin Teatret’s complex network of initiatives and the less visible motivation for coming to Holstebro if they could consult our documents. I was undertakings of each of its members prefer to focus on Eugenio and the main thinking of how to maintain the theatre as an attractive destination when there performances. I have often found myself explaining that Odin Teatret is the result were no longer performances to be seen or actors to learn from. It was a very lonely of the interaction between him and the actors, that our work includes cultural battle. Around me, Eugenio and other people could not imagine that Holstebro processes as well as artistic products, that each individual in the group has her would continue to finance a sort of museum or library in our buildings, once Odin or his own history and point of view, and that the actors’ writings should also Teatret has ceased to exist. be known and publicised in order to have a full understanding of the differences I found myself crying in impotence at an international meeting on the theme within and the meaning of our group. of “Living Archives”, realising I did not have the time to dedicate myself to this After deciding how to preserve our documents, a completely different solution problematic project and that the only way to influence the decisions would be was found to ‘archive’ the props and costumes from the old performances, no longer to take full responsibility for this gigantic task. At one point I even thought of in the repertoire but stored in the various attics in the theatre: Eugenio decided starting a fund with my own money that could pay someone to take care of the to burn them all during the performance to celebrate our 50th anniversary and in archives in the future and for the rent of the rooms that would be necessary to front of the friends invited to Holstebro to celebrate with us. Else Marie Laukvik, host them. I followed the process of decisions concerning the archives as much as one of the founders of Odin Teatret, objected to the burning. Since she burnt possible, contributing and helping however I could, but I also had to stay in the herself badly while rehearsing Memoria, she is afraid of fire. We all imagined the background, recognising that my main tasks were elsewhere. Eugenio finally gave whole neighbourhood around the theatre enveloped in flames as we considered the

148 149 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow size of the bonfire that all the costumes and props from performances since 1964 would need. Eugenio gave in to Else Marie’s protests and instead a deep grave was dug in the theatre’s garden so that everything could be buried. The idea of destroying the props and costumes I had built, painted, sewn and embroidered with so much care over the years was shocking to me. I kept on thinking of the future museum of my dreams while Eugenio explained that no one would be interested in old rags and an extravagant collection of objects that only had a meaning for those who vividly remembered the images from the performances. A compromise was found when we decided that those who wanted to keep something could, as long as they took it home, and that we could give away as presents the pieces that our friends particularly wanted to have as keepsakes. The performance for the 50th anniversary became a trilogy with the title Measuring Time - If the Grain of Wheat Does Not Die (the future); Clear Enigma (the past); Alexander’s Secret (the present). The anniversary celebration was planned for the last week-end of the Holstebro Festuge in June 2014 for which we had already decided to invite artistic ensembles of children and adolescents from Bali (Sanggar Seni Tri Suari), Kenya (The Koinonia Children Team), Italy (Junior Band di Spina), and Brazil (Ilé Omolú), together with many other groups which included Alexander's Secret, Julia Varley speaking through a megaphone Teatro Potlach and Dynamis Teatro from Italy and the Ashtanaga Kalam Pulluvan Pattu and Parvathy Baul from India. To celebrate our old age, we wanted the company of young people who had years and years in front of them. To give life to the old characters and the costumes for one last time, we had Then we sent an invitation to our entire contact list to join us on the day. I to reconstruct what we remembered of the performances and play the scenes with was terrified by the practical implications, imagining a rally as big as the one the those actors who had originally taken part in them. Luckily many video recordings scouts had just organised in Holstebro or a kind of Woodstock festival. Eugenio of the performances and rehearsals were available. It was amazing to see how the was convinced that only one hundred people would want to come all the way visibly different, aged bodies remembered all the details of the scores, how the to Denmark at their own expense. Answers started pouring in from all over the voices evoked the inflections and intonation of the words, how the dialogues of world and I finally convinced Eugenio to count them. We already had more than actions had the same precision of impulse. eight-hundred guests. Where would they sleep and eat? How could they physi- As we performed all these scenes, the Indian Pulluvan ceremony finished their cally all see the performance we were preparing for them? At that point we started coloured sand drawing of intertwining snakes which had taken many hours to answering that there was no longer room to come. We accepted five hundred prepare. Then a fire dance followed with chants and repetitive string and percus- people, those who had been the first to answer. It was a painful process to write to sion music, ending with two girls in trance destroying the drawing with their so many close friends and tell them that they could not be with us to celebrate. long black hair. After the last image from Ashes of Brecht, while Iben stood on the But how could we refuse all the people in Holstebro who wanted to take part barrel on the rooftop and the red flag had turned into a thin piece of burnt cloth, in ‘their’ theatre’s 50th anniversary? We decided to divide the performance into the young people of the Italian Band of Spina started playing rock and roll. That three sections: the first at the park and open to everyone; the second at Odin was the signal for the children from all the other groups to rush to gather up the Teatret for a more restricted group of spectators; and the third as a celebratory meal costumes and props that had been left as totems after the scenes and place them on only for the guests. But even if the numbers for the second and third part were a long conveyer belt that dropped everything into the big grave that had just been restricted to six-hundred, we had to consider the re-organisation of the space so uncovered. The children were running and laughing, really enjoying themselves. that everyone could see. It was necessary to raise the visibility of the scenes and so, They smiled at each other, helped each other, talked to each other even though in our back garden and car park, we built a boat-stage, a mountain-stage, a house- they had no common language. What I had imagined as a terrifying moment as the stage, a tower-stage, and a big island-stage over a pond that we called Epidaurus. costumes were about to be buried, became joyful. It was difficult not to be capti- Odin’s film makers, Claudio Coloberti and Chiara Crupi, were responsible for live- vated by the children’s exuberant lightness and carelessness. streaming the second performance, Clear Enigma, which could be shown in real On the other side of the world, looking at the streaming of the performance, time on the big screen at the Holstebro Municipal Theatre and followed online by our friend Maria Porter was worried that Mr Peanut, my character with the skeleton all those who could not be with us in person. head, was being buried as well. But only the costumes and props from performances

150 151 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow and characters no longer in the repertoire ended up in the hole that was then Countless small dry branches of different sizes, pieces of grass, flowers, dead covered with earth brought by a bulldozer. Many spectators could not really believe leaves, seeds, and perhaps some capybara or tapir hairs, along with saliva and wind that we would leave them there forever. They had to accept this fact when they saw helped to create this dangling shelter - like a work of high architectural engi- a swing being built rapidly on top of the grave in which 50 years of performances neering - under which the parrots flew. How does one build a nest, something so were buried. Children were already swinging over them. Few will know what is simple and yet so complex at the same time? I unwittingly think of the creation buried underneath, when the grass grows in the springs to come. of a performance. After decades of work as an actress, I feel that the construction Now, in May 2016, we have two permanent resident groups at Nordisk technique is similar. It consists of allowing oneself to be guided by intuition and Teaterlaboratorium: Altamira Studio Teater and Divano Occidentale Orientale. experience, by a knowledge deposited in the cells, as if it were something else that Giuseppe L. Bonifati and his partner Linda Sugataghy have founded the Art Party decides, and not we who are involved in the process. and started a campaign to become Mayor and First Lady of Holstebro, realising Sticks, leaves, hair, saliva and wind: many different and often hidden materials the longest performance in the world, lasting for eighteen months, from January are involved in forming a performance and shaping a character - my own actor’s 2016 until the Festuge in June 2017. Many other groups and individuals come for nest and shelter. Some materials show themselves only in a gesture of an improvisa- shorter residencies and all the Odin actors continue to direct performances that tion, in the position of the foot while walking, in a way of looking. Others solidify become NTL co-productions. Odin Teatret has a younger generation of actors into scenes, texts, songs. But most of the materials defy the spectators’ awareness, who live permanently in Holstebro, giving workshops and participating in the they remain undetectable because they are not visible on the surface. In addition performances. We are all busily preparing the Festuge for 2017 under the title “The to the research connected to the theme of the performance, the context in which Wild West - Roots and Shoots - Re-think” for which we plan to fill Holstebro with the characters move, the creation of the stage and lighting design, the logic of the horses, sheep and centaurs. Eugenio will celebrate his 80th birthday in October music, the montage of the text, my inner universe and my imagination are also part 2016 offering coffee and cake to everyone at the refugee centre in Holstebro. In of a performance’s baggage of information. Hundreds of experiences, memories, the meantime we try to keep up with the intense programme of activities which wishes and meetings populate my actress’s subconscious and give depth to my pres- includes tours, festivals and workshops. Our future is as busy as ever. ence on stage. I once saw an exhibition of the paintings Pablo Picasso made after he was Many episodes relate to my personal genesis of The Tree. They are the refer- eighty years old. The paintings were full of enjoyment and pleasure in life. It was so ences that stimulate the life of my character, a Yazidi monk who plants a tree in evident that he no longer needed to demonstrate originality, technique and respon- the desert to bring back the birds. My future in the performance, which will be sibility; he just painted what he felt like, with no regard for any of the rules. When presented to spectators for some years to come, is based on a mixture of ingredients I am asked about the future of Odin Teatret, and my personal future as a member of from my past and present. Unlike the process for other performances, this time, the group, I remember this exhibition. I think of the years we have spent learning after forty years as an actress, the inspiration comes from a simple room filled with and then teaching, the period of our youth and our maturation, and the long prepa- furniture and from travel recollections, from the sounds and images of natural ration to pass on our experience. But now we feel a juvenile freedom, with nothing phenomena and animal life. They are experiences that communicate with the to prove while we just keep alive the sense of being alive. As I write this, I suddenly theme of the performance from afar, that do not need to be explained. They are the realise that we are the children playing on the swing we planted over our history. source of images that nourish my actions as an actress. They take me back home: to And one of the first powerful movements right up into the air has been to start the working room where I put together materials and prepare for the future perfor- rehearsing our next production, The Tree, without any regard for the difficulties we mance - a nest hanging in the void. may have in the future to sell and perform it. Wild animals in the Brazilian Mato Grosso Pantanal are not afraid of human beings. For generations they have passed on the information to each other that The nest men are harmless. Hunting has been prohibited in this region for many years. This A year before starting rehearsals for the new performance, in the Brazilian Mato does not mean that I was not afraid of the scorpions and spiders that often ended Grosso, I saw a nest hanging from the branch of a tree. It was shaped like an elon- up close to my feet. When I found myself sitting at night on the roof of the jeep, gated balloon. A flock of small green parrots was making a devilish noise under armed with a torch to catch wild animals in the beam of light, every time I heard the nest. They were flying around chasing each other. They seemed to be playing. a jacaré (alligator) bark, I jumped in the opposite direction, as if a few centimetres Perhaps they were intent on judging the shape of the nest or exchanging informa- could save me. It was a mysterious sound, hoarse and loud. That same night I saw tion about the tastiest insects in the area. The sound of their cheeping was similar a white tapir, and the moon resting on the branch of a dead tree beside the black to their name in French, also used in Brazil: perroquet. If I repeat this word quickly, shadows of two birds with long curved beaks. making the consonants vibrate in between high-pitched vowels, I feel the same At dawn I looked at the blue macaws perched on the trees near the house. I excitement, urgency and fun. listened to the parrot couples kissing each other on the neck behind their heads.

152 153 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

The sounds they emitted were full of love and attention. Every now and then they flew off to change position on the branches. They went back to kissing by crossing their beaks while they were attentive to the approach of other animals. They had their own alphabet. I understood that my bird language could be enriched by consonants and lower tones. A new vocal perspective opened-up for me to compete with the concerts of the frogs and crickets singing at the sides of a long bridge, over a stretch of water covered in pink flowers. The capybaras are among the animals I prefer. I love to watch them running and bouncing around. They always have a playful, optimistic air, as if they are smiling amicably. Along a path I saw a group of capybara families with their cubs. They were resting in the shade of a tree, not far from the jacaré that were taking advantage of the sun in the middle of the road. I learned to distinguish the eyes of the jacaré submerged in the pond nearby from twigs or wisps of grass. I focused my attention to catch sight of some examples of the incredible variety of birds around me. They say that there are seven hundred different species in the Pantanal. I was happy to see the tuiús again, with their white bodies, vermilion red necks and black heads. I studied them as they walked alone in the undergrowth and as a pair standing high in the trees on their giant nest. Their rhythm was so different from that of the Cardinal birds that circled the puddles of water in the morning. From a canoe, I saw the hawks that have learned to dive to catch the fish thrown by the camera-ready guide. I discovered a nest with two chicks - not really all that small - with feathers the same colour as the branches, stretching their bodies, necks and beaks whilst completely still, so as not to attract attention, waiting for the mother - or perhaps the father - to come and feed them. They were a good image of a motionless dynamic impulse. I was fascinated by all the different varieties of birds and nests. I thought of a book of bird architecture and I began to take photographs myself. In the salt desert in the north of Chile, pink flamingos stood out like a splash of colour on a painter’s still white canvas. Their legs were slender and long - they could break like twigs in the wind. When one leg rested, the other supported the large body of feathers. The neck rose to look far away, the breeze passed between the feathers, the birds remained still and impassive. They were spots of motionless life in the middle of nowhere. In a part of Patagonia in Argentina, the coast was dotted with holes and there was a strong smell of fish. At each hole, a penguin stood guard. It protected the eggs or the hatchlings at the entrance to the nest. Other penguins walked in line and then dived into the waves. It was like a motorway with hundreds of these birds that walked clumsily and then swam with confidence and speed in search of food. They stopped for a moment to check the way, and turned their heads and beaks in unison towards the wind. From close-up, with feathers like fish-scales, they seemed less elegant. I could have watched them for hours, studying their funny steps, their hops, the way they slip into the water, how they lower their heads to avoid the biggest waves, how they take off and fly, how they feed their chicks and monitor anyone approaching. Some take a running start, the beak pushed forward, the wings Julia Varley in The Tree pulled back and the small legs trotting in search of the necessary speed. Others sway

154 155 Julia Varley Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow gently as they approach the point where the waves break on the beach. Nothing Odin Teatret no longer exists and I can’t imagine myself at Odin Teatret if Eugenio distracted them from their activities, not even the impressively dark red sunset that is no longer the director. announced a rapid nightfall. An armadillo crossed the endless stretch of penguin This year Eugenio turns eighty. I am aware eternity is not in front of us. My nests. Its haste seemed to whisper to me that it was time to go home. absolute priority is that we should spend as much time as possible together. This In the middle of Chamula’s market in Mexico, I saw a crucified dead bird. is an impediment to giving time to my friends and family and, also, in realising The head hung to the side and its wide-spread wings were nailed to wood just like my own personal projects. Some friends understand, some protest, my mother a Christ. I have no idea why the bird was displayed like this. The image stayed would like me to receive more personal recognition, a lot of people worry about me with me as I stopped at a stall of containers made of dried, empty pumpkins. The working too hard. I am aware that the job I have chosen to do and the responsi- noise of the feast in the square, and the murmur from the church I had just visited, bilities I have accepted do not give me privileges, quite the contrary. When I feel echoed in my ears. I chose two small gourds and bought ten kilos of corn. I had tired, I remind myself of the luck and joy of being alive, of not being alone, and of been thinking for some time that I should feed birds with grains of corn. Perhaps to being free to take decisions. Some might think I am sacrificing myself, like Obba avoid them being crucified. who cut off her ears for love. But I recognise the meaning of my sacrifice in the In Wuzhen, in China - frightened by the traffic, celebrity adoration, pursuit following words taken from Eugenio’s article in the programme for Odin Teatret’s of profit, neon lights that colour the skyscrapers along the shore - in the world of new performance The Tree: theatre I was impressed by the tiny steps of a traditional female character in an evocative night performance directed by Stan Lai. The steps followed each other In the fiction of theatre, sanctity doesn’t consist in accomplishing extraordinary deeds, rapidly, one just in front of the other, almost as if they would slide backwards but in the stubbornness of making ordinary things extraordinary. In theatre, sanctity instead of moving forwards, as if escaping into a past that will never return. A is a rare plant whose roots are artifice (ars facere) and sacrifice (sacrum facere). few days later, during a work demonstration in a theatre made from an ancient Artifice is linked to the skill of creating a fiction which is more intense than life itself tea-house, I made an improvisation. I dived into the sea, I went back and forth through the actor’s physical and mental know-how. Sacrifice does not necessarily like the waves, I became the back of a whale, I emitted a spray of water and air involve hardship and suffering abnegation. It is the accomplishment of an action cele- that returned on itself like two birds pecking at each other, I bit as fast as a moray brating the essential - the value which gives a sense to ourselves and to what we do eel, I rocked like a seahorse, I flew like a flock of swallows, I floated floppily like through our craft. an octopus. Outside red flags waved with no hint of socialism. I recalled the tragic book about adopted Chinese girls, I bought jade objects, ate with chopsticks, Some days I am happy just to go for a walk together at sunset along a beach, other listened to the intonation of a language I didn’t understand and looked with amaze- days in discovering a new place for the first time. Some days it is the prospect of an ment at the theatres that had been built in just one year to host a new theatre impending project that fills me with enthusiasm, other days that a job has finally festival. I knew that there were incredible landscapes in China, I had been told been completed. As I am about to conclude the article that forced me to think of about mountains, forests and animals, but I could only see them in paintings, in the three main questions I confront while considering the future, I confess that sets and in my imagination. It was in Wuzhen that, one evening, Eugenio gathered what was tomorrow when I started writing is already yesterday, that what I imag- the Odin actors in his room to tell us about the new performance which he called ined would happen has already taken a different direction, and that my tasks and Flying. The actors, like birds, were ready to take off and fly far away. I was already dreams develop in tune with the changes around me. Writing fixes time as if it thinking of the materials with which to build my nest for the future performance stood still, and the words put together without respecting the succession of facts that would finally be called The Tree. and the reality of events reveal possible truths. The reader’s interpretation will eventually determine the consequences of what I am trying to say. Epilogue I am at home today. It is the Easter holidays, and we have just come back from I am often asked where I want to live when I retire, or when I am ‘old’, as if I Paris where Odin Teatret performed at Théâtre du Soleil, celebrating a total of wasn’t mature enough already. My friend, Geddy Aniksdal, always tells me we can 104 years of theatre made by our two groups. Outside it is still winter: we are in only start complaining about our age when we are well over seventy. Sometimes my Denmark after all. My mother is sitting in an armchair darning old clothes and colleagues from The Magdalena Project and I talk of a home where we could spend once again tells me how happy she was when I left Italy in 1976; otherwise I might the last years of our life together. I wonder what the role of The Magdalena Project have been one of those who ended up in prison or even got killed for political will be in the future now that I have even invited two men to perform at the next activism. Two days ago there was another terrorist attack in Brussels. Tomorrow I Transit Festival to express their preoccupation with the loss of male self-assur- go to the theatre for rehearsals. Life goes on as usual, despite the inexorable course ance, while women are gaining confidence. I try to avoid thinking about what will of history and every human being’s relentless need to hope for a better future. happen to me tomorrow. I only know that I can’t imagine staying in Holstebro if

156 157 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Lis Hughes Jones Lis - Sian - Ann: Moments of Retrieving, Remembering, Recreating1

The past exists in the present, in the moment of remembering. I no longer think of myself as a performer or a theatre practitioner. I am a psychotherapist. My interest in therapy began before I left my life in theatre but it took many years for the opportunity to train to arrive. I carry my experience as a performer with me in my current life, and draw on my understanding of embodi- ment in my work with clients. When invited to sing I find it rather difficult these days. My breath gets caught within me when I am about to give voice. I feel that my breath is resonating with my ambivalence. I wonder about this. Perhaps it is because I no longer feel I have a context in which to sing, where previously I had a theatre group, a performance, an identity as a singer. I know that a part of me still longs for that sense of a context and the ways it supported me to express myself through singing. Or might it be that I am more aware of my process than I was back then. If I think about that period of my life when I sang publicly, I remember the waves of anxiety that used to almost paralyse me at times, and the sore throats that often accompanied them. So, I begin with that context that no longer exists for me. I co-founded Brith Gof, the Welsh theatre company, with Mike Pearson in 1981. Mike and I had met four years earlier and our initial work together was as members of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre and rooted in the Third Theatre movement. I was inspired to become a performer by watching women in that movement giving extraordinary physical and vocal performances - Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Roberta Carreri, and Siân Thomas to name three among many. Later, I met women through the Magdalena who became friends and also challenged me to look at my self and my work afresh. Brith Gof's focus during the early years was on creating work which responded to locality and community and was largely performed in Welsh. This involved both small scale work, toured to Welsh villages and towns in Ceredigion and further afield, and site-specific group performances created with drama students studying at Aberystwyth University. The local and specific nature of our work sparked the interest of a wider audience, and works such as Ymfudwyr (Emigrants) and 8961

1. This article follows a process of recovery up to and including the premiere of Y Danbaid Fendigaid Ann on 9 October 2015. It does not comment on the experiences of further public performance.

158 159 Lis Hughes Jones Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Caneuon Galar a Gobaith (8961 Songs of Grief and Hope) came to resonate with Garedig chwaer, mae meddwl am roi heibio yn felus neulltuol weithiau. (Dear sister, an international audience. I worked with the company until 1992, by which time the thought of putting away [this tabernacle] is particularly sweet sometimes).3 we often collaborated with other theatre groups and musicians, and our performances became increasingly multilingual. Brith Gof had become known for its Those words are especially poignant when we consider how her life ended. Ann large scale site specific works, notably Gododdin and Pax, staged in various loca- entered into a suitable marriage a year after her father’s death and within ten tions such as a disused factory, a sand quarry, an ice rink, a railway station and in months gave birth to a baby girl. The baby died within a fortnight, followed by several European countries. My creative role in those projects was in the field of Ann shortly afterwards. She was 29. poetics, libretto and voice. I was 29 when I first performed Ann Griffiths. I never wished to be seen as Now I want to go back to 1982, when I was beginning to develop a strand of embodying Ann although audiences did sometimes respond to me in that direct solo work alongside our group creations. I was drawn to the architecture of rural way. In weaving her letters and hymns into a dramatic form my intention was to chapels in Ceredigion and wondered how I might perform in those sparse rooms, place some kind of boundary between myself and the spiritual intensity of Ann’s those places of worship and of community gatherings. Such a performance would experience. I constructed a frame around her work by means of a persona - a need to be in keeping with the nature of the space, and responsive to its congre- young woman encountering Ann’s words at the beginning of the 20th century, gation. The hymns and letters of Ann Griffiths (1776-1805) provided me with a at the time of a major religious revival in Wales. My inspiration for this was rich starting point for a performance which aimed to be a meeting between the my grandmother Frances Ann, who as a young woman had been caught up in tradition of chapel-going and hymn singing and my exploration of theatre form the excitement and fervour of the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival in Blaenannerch, and vocal technique. Ceredigion. Ann Griffiths, who lived her short life on a farm in 18th century During the winters of 1983 and 1984 I gave fifty performances of Ann Griffiths Montgomeryshire in mid Wales, has been compared to Christian mystics such in chapels and vestries throughout Wales. Many of the locations where I was as St Theresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. Her spiritual understanding and invited to perform were in remote rural communities and the audiences were poetic vision extended far beyond the confines of her physical world. Ann was devout non-conformist Christians, Welsh-speaking, often elderly and largely deeply touched by the Methodist Revival and participated in prayer meetings female. The performance was typically followed by a chapel tea - sandwiches, with a keen intellect which more than matched that of her male companions. cake and conversation - so that I came to view this meeting with the audience as She had a gift for words, which she used to reflect on her religious faith with an intrinsic part of the performance. I later went on to perform Ann Griffiths to passion and insight. All her compositions were in Welsh, handed down in oral Argentine-Welsh audiences in Argentina in 1986, where I encountered the same and written form, and she is revered and much loved amongst Welsh speakers, traditions of faith and hospitality amongst Welsh and Spanish speakers in the not only chapel-goers, for the beauty and profundity of her expression. In the chapels of the Chubut valley. words of A. M. Alchin: Sian Meinir was thirteen when she saw my performance of Ann Griffiths on an evening in 1983, in the vestry of Salem Chapel in the small town of Dolgellau in It was a life in which the things of earth were constantly mingled with the things of North Wales. She tells me that it had a lasting impact on her and even influenced heaven... It was in itself a point of intersection of the timeless with time.2 her decision to become a singer. After studying music at university Sian embarked on a professional singing career as a mezzo soprano and joined the chorus of the Death was close to Ann’s experience, as would have been common at the end Royal Opera House. She is currently a member of the chorus of Welsh National of the 18th century, and particularly living on a farm where the cycle of birth Opera, where she also undertakes solo roles. Early in 2015 she approached me and death was part of everyday life. At the age of eighteen she became mistress with the idea of re-embodying my performance. That was over thirty years ago, I of the household following her mother’s death. Even so, Ann’s view of death thought as I read her email. Could I remember the piece and, even if I could, how was unusual for a young woman who had been known at one time for her live- might I transfer my recollection to another performer? What would it mean for liness and enjoyment of singing and dancing. Her focus became increasingly on Sian to take my embodied memory and make it her own? the spiritual. Her maid described finding Ann lost in contemplation when she Sian and I met over a pot of tea at Chapter, our local arts centre in Cardiff. should have been churning butter or spinning wool. Ann confided in a letter to Her love for the work of Ann Griffiths shone through and I was touched by her her friend Elizabeth that she longed for the time when she would be free of this memory of having seen me perform. I felt honoured, excited, a little unsure, to be life: 3. We were privileged to be allowed to see Ann Griffiths’ letter to Elizabeth Evans (c.1797- 1804), which is kept in the National Library of Wales and is the only text which has survived in 2. A. M. Alchin, Ann Griffiths, Writers of Wales series (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), her own hand. The manuscript NLW MS 694D is available to view online at the Ann Griffiths pp. 64-5. Digital Archive, http://digitalsearch.cf.ac.uk.

160 161 Lis Hughes Jones Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow approached in this way. We began to discuss how we might work together to create of paper evidences my process of creating a sequence out of the hymns and letters. a new version of the piece. I also talked the idea through with Mike Pearson, with Some publicity cards and a programme from the first ever performance: Capel whom I have collaborated in the context of the Brith Gof Archive since 2007 - Bethel, Glyncorrwg, 24.10.83. to establish how we both felt about the archive being used in this way. Mike was Research material, booklets on canu plygain and caneuon llofft stabl (traditional enthusiastic and offered his support for our process and for Sian’s application for a song forms) and on the history of paisley shawls. project grant from the Arts Council of Wales. A black and white photograph of Ann’s head in profile, carved by a stone- My thoughts went to the ‘stuff’, the material elements of the performance. mason a century after her death. People have commented on the likeness between What still existed and where was it? Of the scenographic and costume elements, me and this imagined version of Ann’s face. the only item still in my possession was a slim blue book, which I found hidden on my bookshelves. Nothing else remained. All documentary material from the orig- These are my papers but I no longer own them. However, the memories attached inal working period - my workbook, the script, a photographic record and a sound to the papers are still mine, and my interpretation of the papers will be influenced cassette - I had deposited in 2012 in the Brith Gof Archive, which is housed in and coloured by my memory store. This would be a very different process, I realise, the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. That was the year I was preparing were it Sian looking through the box, the archival evidence, without me there to sell my house and felt that it was finally time to relinquish responsibility for the to mediate. As we cannot take copies away with us on the day, we decide to take Brith Gof material, which had travelled with me to London and New Zealand and some notes to tide us over while we wait for the scanned copies to be prepared. We back to Wales. I experienced a real feeling of relief when I handed the plastic crate sit side by side scribbling frantically with our pencils. I catch myself copying my of scripts and workbooks over to the Library, not imagining that within three years own handwriting, also in pencil. An odd moment of past meeting present. My eye I would be needing to get some of it back out. seems to recognise the form of the letters, and my hand responds to reproduce the same italic curves. RETRIEVING AND REMEMBERING The process began therefore with a literal retrieval of my working material from Driving past the chapel I meet myself coming back the Brith Gof Archive. Following a visit to the National Library the archived Sian drives us home to Cardiff from our day in the Library. At Llanrhystud she material was scanned and Sian and I now have electronic versions stored on our turns off from the main coastal road, being familiar with the back roads through laptops. While that sounds quite straightforward, the process that emerged was the heart of Ceredigion, the county of her mother’s birth. These B roads are known complex, involving both explicit and implicit memory, so that even the apparently to me too, though it is some years since I last took the cross-country route. After a simple act of retrieval of material triggered unexpected memories for me. It is that climb to high ground suddenly we pass a chapel. The turn in the road, the side wall process of retrieving and remembering that I will attempt to trace and describe of the chapel set on an incline, the line of hedges and low windswept hawthorn, next. these features in the landscape flood my mind. I have been here before - Capel Rhiwbwys. In the library I copy my own writing I am security checked before entering the South Reading Room with its high ... I am remembering the cold. The Land Rover stalling on a frosty morning. Mike ceilings and rows of long tables. I can bring in only my phone, a notebook and a in the passenger seat (he had not yet learned to drive) instructing me how to change pencil. I sit with Sian at a table and wait, noticing the sign which says Pensiliau yn gears. My fear as I grapple with that beast of a vehicle... Unig / Pencils Only. Ifor ap Dafydd (a member of the digital department and our guide for the day) returns with a grey acid-free cardboard box (standard issue for My mind stabilises as we drive downwards into the next valley. Gradually I archive storage) and places it in front of me. connect what I have just seen with some black and white photographs I glanced at that afternoon in the reading room: the winter fields, the whitewashed walls, the In the box are: side door to the festri llofft stabl (vestry above the stables), architecturally typical A black soft cover notebook, containing lists of hymn tunes, Ann’s writings, quotes of the county and one of my inspirations for creating the performance. I have a from the Song of Solomon. Most importantly it contains the complete script hand- strange sensation, not quite déjà vu, of having met myself coming back. written in black ink and on each opposite page are brief notes in pencil describing the physical score. When I see this I feel relief - we have a starting point! Daniel Stern reflects on how the past encroaches on our experience of the present: Sheets of thin copying paper, cut up and stuck together with yellowing sellotape and held together by a rusting paper clip. These are covered in hand- The past is phenomenologically silent rather than non-existent. But it can be made written pencil notes, quotes, drafts of text. The cutting and reassembling of pieces to speak and reveal itself under the right conditions. It then becomes an “alive past”.

162 163 Lis Hughes Jones Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

When the silent past is acting there is often a background sense of familiarity. Of Returning to that moment sitting at my piano - what does ‘different’ mean? How being there before, or of being where you are meant to be.4 come I don’t sing publicly and do I miss that? How does my psychotherapist self relate to my younger singing self? I don’t miss the sore throats and the anxiety. Several fragments of memory came into play in that moment of coming round the I miss the special connection that I felt with the audience when I sang. It is a bend at Rhiwbwys: Land Rover, Mike, winter roads, windblown hawthorn, white dimension of performance that cannot be captured in an archive - the moment dress, flaking walls, tyres churning up the mud. Some weeks later I went through a song becomes one with the singer and both the singer and the listener are the archived photographs of Ann Griffiths again in detail. I was drawn to a series of changed. Those moments of connection reside deep within me. interior shots taken by Mike in that vestry at Capel Rhiwbwys, photographs not of an actual performance, nor of a rehearsal either, but rather a detailed record of the REMEMBERING AND RECREATING physical vocabulary of the piece. I reflect next on the process of remembering and recreating as it happened in my collaboration with Sian, as my remembered, embodied past emerged into our ... that upper room was so cold. There was a dusting of snow on the fields outside. shared present. The chair was hard under my sitting bones and cut into the small of my back. While not comfortable it was very stable and would not topple. I stood up and placed my I listen to Sian right hand on the back of the chair. Resting my left hand lightly on my right I leaned Over the summer we prepare for the rehearsal period and undertake some pre-pub- forward, side-on across the back of the chair. I knew it would take my weight. I was licity at the annual cultural gathering of the Eisteddfod, which as it happens is creating a diagonal line in my mind. White costume against dark wood. The feeling I being held in a field a short distance from where Ann lived. Sian and I hold a remember in my body was/is of yearning... conversation about our project in front of a small audience. I am looking across at Sian as she sings one of Ann’s hymns. Back in Cardiff the scanned notebook and the photographs arrived by email. No mediation, no acid free box to contain the experience. Just me and my work, in a Wele’n sefyll rhwng y myrtwydd (Behold standing among the myrtles digital reconciliation. Wrthrych teilwng o fy mryd An object worthy of my whole mind) 6

At the piano time folds back on itself Her voice is deep and rich, her energy is focused. She has chosen a different tune Reading my script again after so many years I feel unsure of its worth. I am on the from the one I used for that particular hymn, Bryn Calfaria instead of Llanilar. It edge of shame in this encounter with my younger self. After all, I went on to write will be an important element, repeated three times during the piece. I realise that and to perform for another ten years after creating Ann Griffiths. This is a very early in her decision to make the hymn her own she is beginning to inhabit the mate- work and I worry that it may be too naïve to survive the process of close scrutiny rial. I am tearful. I feel my age. I glimpse what this letting go might feel like as we and reappraisal. I sit at my piano with my music books and lists, trying to recall the enter rehearsals. hymn tunes and the folk melodies I chose back then. I discover that some tunes are Sian decides to call her peformance Y Danbaid Fendigaid Ann (The Fiery embedded in me: Nebo, Llanilar, Durrow, Christmas, Llydaw. As I begin to play I find Blessed Ann - a phrase coined by a later poet). I notice that I am not entirely that I still know them, I can hum them, I sing the words quietly, they still fit as they comfortable with her decision and begin to realise that something is blocking did back then. I am different now, I don’t sing publicly, I am a psychotherapist, yet me from entering into the recreating process. I feel a bit at sea, anxious, needing my younger singing self is still lodged somewhere within me. support from those who understand the context of the original piece. I talk to Mike, Gilly Adams and Margaret Ames about what this whole process might Daniel Stern again: involve for me, which helps. I need to sit down and read my script, without judgement. When I do that, The past must be able to influence the experience of the present. Said differently, the I feel calmer - I realise that it isn’t so bad actually. Should I change the struc- past must somehow get folded into the present experience... The present moment is ture in any way? No, we might as well start with what we have - it offers some the meeting ground between the past and the present. 5 solid ground. I want to allow Sian her own relationship with Ann, which seems more direct emotionally, and more aligned in terms of belief than mine. She is passionate about Ann. Passion is a wonderful starting point for the performer. I 4. Daniel N. Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (New York: W.W. begin to see that letting go and allowing a new version to emerge is not the same Norton and Company, 2004), pp. 205-6. 5. Daniel N. Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), p. 197. 6. O. M. Edwards, Gwaith Ann Griffiths, Cyfres y Fil (Conwy: R.E Jones a’i Frodyr, 1905), p. 37.

164 165 Lis Hughes Jones Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow thing as losing the spirit of the original work. I need to hold the boundaries but with a light touch. We work with the idea of her skirt becoming heavier as it gets drenched by the sea. September arrives and we begin rehearsals in the chapel that Sian attends I am fascinated to observe Sian draw on her opera stage technique as she kneels on in Penarth, near Cardiff. It has been recently rebuilt and is well heated and a the floor and lays her head on the chair seat, then lifts her head, shuffles forwards comfortable space to work in. We have agreed to stick to the original script but on her knees, her skirt spread out around her, engages her spine then leans her to incorporate some new melodies that Sian has researched and selected. We will upper body upwards and outwards with outstretched arms. follow my pencilled directions as written on the original script as a starting point Sian watched some video footage of me performing, not in Ann Griffiths, for the physical score. as none exists, but in the ensemble work Ymfudwyr, which she found helpful in Remembering becomes complex again here, and I find that I am mixing reminding her of what the Brith Gof ‘style’ of performance was back in the mid present and past tense as I write. Working in the space with Sian I find that all 1980s. The idea of mapping or choreographing movements moment by moment, sort of detail begins to surface for me about what I did, how I moved, how I used frame by frame, was a core principle for me and Ann Griffiths is an early example of my voice, where my focus was and the exact quality and intensity of a gesture. this way of building a solo piece. Stillness, doing less, allowing for breathing space, Sometimes it proves easier for me to show Sian with my body than to explain with all are potentially a challenge for a solo performer who understandably feels that words. she needs to keep ‘doing’ in order for the audience to remain interested. Precision The original performance was an hour in length. Designed with very limited for me is the key to regulating the dynamic of a piece when alone before an audi- space in mind, I restricted my movements to an area of around 2.5 metres square. ence. If required I could perform in an even smaller space by reducing my physical move- Sian brought a highly developed singing technique to our collaboration and ments and focusing more on gesture. Scenic elements included a solid oak chair she made her own decisions about how to sing many of the hymns. We focused and a small side table, on which were placed a bowl of red roses, a white lace stole, together on the spoken delivery of text, as well as on some sections of sung text a Bible, an ebony hairbrush and hand-mirror. I entered the space dressed in a white where I had used either improvisation or a more extended vocal technique. I linen Edwardian dress, a silver belt and brown lace-up boots, and carried a slim wanted Sian to explore a little at the edges of her own technique and to see what blue book of Ann’s writings, published in 1905. emerged. When I suggested she use a more open voice without vibrato for a folk Sian retained most of these elements for her version. She found a sturdy melody, she told me that in the classical singing world this is known as ‘white wooden chair in an antiques market and borrowed a pretty side table from her voice’. When I demonstrated my interpretation of the flamenco technique of chapel. Her father gave her his own Bible. She sourced a glass bowl for the red singing saeta she was intrigued and went off to watch the many wonderful clips roses, a length of white lace and an ornate silver hand-mirror. Dressed in a cream of saeta on You Tube (which were not available in 1982). Sian incorporated her linen costume and black lace-up boots she entered the space carrying her own own interpretation of the technique in a sequence we named privately as ‘the copy of the blue book, and added a new element - a silver lantern. balcony’. I had originally directed myself from the inside but now I was able to revisit The performance involves a more or less continuous rendition of Ann the work from the outside. I was able to explore with Sian a very detailed physical Griffiths’ words. The letters are particularly difficult to memorise, because they score and together we brought greater nuance to the piece than was maybe present contain a lot of Biblical references and theological exposition, and involve many in the original work. I suggested ways of moving, of building pictures in space that repetitions with slight variations. The hymns too present challenges, being densely were new to her. In turn she brought her experience of the language of opera, packed with images and ideas, often paradoxical in nature. We had planned to which was unfamiliar to me. invite a few people to an open dress rehearsal a week before the first performance. A few days prior to the scheduled date Sian hit ‘the wall’ with regard to memo- A sea of wonders rising the text. We decided to cancel the dress rehearsal in order to reduce the I am struck by Sian’s facility for moving at floor level while manipulating a very pressure. I was confident that Sian would get there, she just needed more time. She heavy voluminous skirt and singing at the same time. I wonder whether this emerged a few days later with a faultless grasp of the words. is something that women are required to do a lot of in opera. The hymn she is Over the course of the final days of rehearsal Sian began to make links for singing places her in an imagined sea: herself between spoken and sung text and the physical score. Seeing and hearing her beginning to inhabit the script and find meaning for herself gave me great Ynghanol môr o ryfeddodau (Amidst a sea of wonders pleasure. I began to appreciate in a new way my original decisions on how to bring Heb weled terfyn byth na glan With no sight of end nor shore) 7 dramatic structure to Ann’s words and I felt satisfied, even a little bit proud, of what I had created and what Sian was now re-creating.

7. O. M. Edwards, Gwaith Ann Griffiths, Cyfres y Fil (Conwy: R.E Jones a’i Frodyr, 1905), p. 30.

166 167 Lis Hughes Jones Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Sian’s first performance The space is very grand, like a cathedral for books. The National Library has invited Sian to give her first performance of Y Danbaid Fendigaid Ann in the North Reading Room. The light dims as evening falls and I glimpse a quiet sea through high windows. I feel nervous sitting at the back of the audience. Not nervous for Sian but for myself and all that this process has uncovered for me. Watching Sian perform I feel my younger self being exposed, examined, appraised in this temple of literature and learning. Best to set these thoughts aside and focus on what is, what Sian is creating now before us all. Ifor is sitting across the aisle from me and we smile as the performance comes to an extraordinary end. Sian leads me by the hand to share in the audience’s appreciation. My younger self is standing there with us and so too, I like to imagine, is Ann.

5 6

2 7 8

5. Lis Hughes Jones (Brith Gof Archive) 6. Sian Meinir 7. Sian Meinir 8. Sian Meinir 9. Lis Hughes Jones (Brith Gof Archive)

1. Lis Hughes Jones (Brith Gof Archive) 2. Sian Meinir 3. Capel Rhiwbwys (Brith Gof Archive) 4. Lis Hughes Jones (Brith Gof Archive)

9 4

168 169 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Raquel Carrió of work stored in our memory. The builders were still using the scaffolding and other equipment when the improvisations and montage of the performance started. Teresa What does building a performance mean? How do we create a structure that contains images, impulses and the most secret confessions? The anxiety, the monotony, the terror of death. But also, the lust for life, the drunkenness of knowledge, the rebellion and transgression of the Nun from Avila. Why Teresa? Maybe because in the days while the actress Flora took care of her ailing mother, comfort arrived through some letters, written in Paris by an author and a director who was remembering his country. And Teresa also arrived, a text written by Edouard Manet based on the letters of the Nun from Avila. During those same days, a group of actors and I walked the streets of Avila. It is a long time since I have written poetry, at least in the conventional sense of Months later, while the actress Flora watched, the scaffolding was being put up the word. All my poetry has been turned into theatre, into the words that I have to repair the roof of the Buendía theatre-church, and I was thinking "what mate- distributed amongst the actors in the space of the Teatro Buendía. Maybe it's better rials make the walls that hold the dreams, the stories, the visions, the sweat and like this, because poetry has always been for me an exercise in solitude: words the fever of so many years of work and creation". I shared with the paper and no one else. The voices of the actors give me back That is how the biographies of the actress and the character started to connect images, sounds and connections that the written page cannot. and - from the action of the builders in the space - the figures that accompany the Instead of a poem, I prefer to send some thoughts about our new performance, visions of Teresa emerged: the Brother in America, a Confessor, a Dove-keeper, which is based on the letters of Teresa of Avila linked together by the writer a possessed Nun, St. John of the Cross, Father Jerónimo Gracián, among other Eduardo Manet. This is the future I am concentrating on at the moment. In this evocations and memories. performance Flora Lauten, director of Teatro Buendía, has to find as an actress "What matters is the founding of something. A monastery or a theatre, what a secret connection with a woman who was born five hundred years ago and difference does it make?" says the actress, quoting Teresa's letters, and therein who dedicated her life lies the essence of a creative process that chooses to work with an austerity of to founding convents resources, the wealth of imagination and of invented characters. Of this Ecstasy and monasteries with a - more as delirium or intoxication with life and creation rather than in a mystical strict vow of simplicity, sense - this study of loneliness and passion is born, mysteriously celebrating five poverty and humility. centuries of the work of Teresa de Avila at the same time as the persistence of a Far from the sancti- theatre that has survived for more than thirty years, almost an eternity. fied image, the body of Ecstasy is a performance about faith or passion that for me ends up being the the actress refuses to same thing. submit. Sometimes it seems a bit like our life: there is a strong connection between repairing again and again the old walls of our theatre, an old church almost always in ruins, and living the ‘ecstasy’, delirium or drunkenness provoked in us by the ephemeral splendour of perfor- Flora Lauten mances and the hours

170 171 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Dawn Albinger the end the task of writing acted as a catalyst for reflection on my loss of hope and an examination of what I did during my time of ‘tumbling around’. Since then the earth has revolved once round the sun while a revolution has occurred within me. Reflection on Hope This chapter is an attempt to chart the turning, falling and landing, to articulate the questioning that gives rise to more questions, to mark the tender return to practice, and convey the realisation that it is not the loss of hope that matters, but rather what one does when hope has departed.

Losing Hope My loss of hope is a sinking stone stomach, a liverish irritability, a tidal wave of … if ever I had the dreadful luck again to find myself falling screaming down eviscerating fear, a hollowing out of the entrails, a drying out of the jouissance, a into the cruel guts of separation, and emptying all my being of hope, down to subsiding of form, a state of decay. It feels like death before death. It leaves me the last milligram of hope, until I am able to melt into the pure blackness of the staring with unseeing eyes - such as one may find in the face of a 19th century abyss and be no more than night and a death rattle, I would really rather not be pre-mortem portrait, and behind whose glassy gaze a precipitous vision of hell tumbling around without my pencil and paper. holds the despairing and expiring subject in thrall. Visions of hell cause despair, Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea the triumph of fear over hope, be it a private hell or the damnation of humankind. My loss of hope was precipitated by the former and culminated in the latter. If we Write it down. listen to the doomsayers the end is nigh. We are all going to hell in a hand-basket Margaret Cameron and that is hell here on earth by fire or ice, not hell achieved in some supernatural afterlife. My loss of hope is despair for the future of my species. I have not tumbled Recently Julie Robson and I had a Ladyfinger meeting to debrief our Melbourne into this hole before, always believing some one of us would come up with a solu- and Brisbane launches of Margaret Cameron’s book I Shudder to Think: Performance tion, that collectively we would find a way to survive and sustain the planet, our as Philosophy. We identified tasks to ‘close-off’ the launch events and then home. Before this particular fall I had never before stopped to ask, what if the doom- dreamed and planned into the future for our company: future books for the sayers are right? What is to be done? What must I do? Women in Performance series; performance works in the pipeline; projects we No doubt others before me, recently and down through the ages, have had apoca- want to produce or at least support with our carefully rationed energies. It was lyptic visions of end-times and succumbed to despair. I imagine some tumble into such a significant meeting, not only because it was face-to-face (for the past year we abysses suddenly and startlingly and others tip, begin to slide, and gather momentum have worked almost entirely by phone, email and Skype) but because it was the as they descend. In my instance I had been skidding down a steep and scrappy slope, first time in a year I was able to face the future shoulder to shoulder with her in still mostly on my feet, unaware of the drop ahead until I eventually pitched over the gentle solidarity. Twelve months edge into a free fall that felt like stillness. Which is to say there were preconditions that ago I experienced an outwardly precipitated the fall, despite the blind optimism I usually possess. silent, inwardly screaming free- These preconditions were largely of a private nature, the challenges of fall in which, like Cixous in The life each one of us faces at one time or another, causing worry or sorrow, and Book of Promethea, I felt myself undermining resilience. The loss of loved ones, their debilitating illnesses and “down to the last milligram of un-healing wounds, the sudden and unexpected surgeries, their vulnerable hope”. I stopped making theatre. bodies opened and closed, connected and disconnected, the shock diagnoses, the I downed tools, stopped applying decline of the body, the resilience of the spirit, the letting go and saying goodbye. for grants, and gently refused Alongside these private tragedies I was watching on the global stage the rise and offers of help. I became rooted in rise of Daesh in the Middle East, of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and observing a slow a paralysing moment of despair unimpeded creep towards an Orwellian dystopia here in Australia and elsewhere in and quite literally lost my way. the West. And in the background, like the hum of cicadas on a summer evening, The invitation to contribute the voices of the international scientific community, murmuring climate change, to this book came just as I was rising sea levels, species extinction, tipping points, too late, too late, too late. falling, and while initially I was In September 2014 I was closely following events unfolding in northern Syria unable to put pencil to paper, in as the adherents of Daesh’s barbaric and misogynistic ideology rapidly gained large Dawn Albinger

172 173 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow swathes of territory and besieged the Syrian city of Kobane. In my grief I conflated just listened to my husband expounding the concept of ecology or catastrophe as the Daesh’s medieval barbarism with my friend Margaret Cameron’s un-healing wound eschatology for a pantheist religion. It occurred to me, in a deeply visceral way, that and aggressive disease. Everyone expected Kobane to fall. I expected Margaret to my usual defence mechanism of thinking oh it will be alright it’s not as bad as all that, live. We were all mistaken in our expectations. was inadequate. I had never allowed myself to think the unthinkable: catastrophe is imminent; it might actually be too late to save the planet, let alone strive for a utopian social It was also in September 2014 that I saw the photograph: alternative to the system that is killing us. For the first time I allowed myself to really imagine catastrophe, to imagine the consequences of carrying on as we are. I fell into Behind the reclining naked woman there are bodies crowding together. A jumble of a miserable despair. In this, my most upside down and inside out moment I told Julie arms, thrusting. In the foreground a man is kneeling. He partially obscures her torso. Robson, my friend, colleague and partner in Ladyfinger, “I think I am done making He is facing towards her shoulders, her neck, her head. He is holding a bowl. The theatre”. I did not intend to be dramatic. It was falling-speak from a place of over- bowl is spattered. There is no neck, no face, no head. whelm that displaced me outside myself. Julie was correct to doubt me and to call me Well. out. Yet there was a certain truth in that statement. Amplified by my loss of hope, I If her head is still attached it has fallen too far back to see. The kneeling man catches was and am facing the fact that my current reality no longer supports the way I have a stream of blood in the spattered bowl. worked for the past decade and more. Something needs to fundamentally change in my thinking about theatre, in the way I make theatre, in the way I support myself to See this. create theatre, if I am to make theatre at all. This should never be seen. Being with loss of hope and making lists The anonymous woman in this sacrificial image was executed in September 2014. Margaret died a month later on October 20. Three months later Kobane was 100 beautiful things (1-10): liberated against impossible odds. For a time I rose early every day to dance wildly My mother’s rocking chair. A Boston rocker, black paint chipped and faded, a bird around my house. One two three, one two three - I paced out a kind of mad Celtic painted on the headrest. Here I was held as an infant, at my mother’s breast. waltz with my feet while my upper body created countless gestures of prayer. I drew The singing of insects at dusk. on eastern and monotheistic traditions, assuming moving postures of supplication, The lustrous Milky Way on a moonless night. celebration, rage and introspection. I was experiencing an incredible burst of Sun-showers. When the sun is shining and the rain is falling and the rain looks like energy, physical and creative. In retrospect I see I was wild with grief and resisting drops of light. death, resisting Daesh, praying for peace, insisting on life. I was also generating The fragility of mating butterflies. content for performance. I was skidding down that steep and scrappy slope but I Black cockatoos crying up the gully. was still on my feet. Flying kites. A yellow rose in a red vase on a blue table. And then, The acrid tang of my grandfather’s cigars. My mother’s hands. My mother’s hands on the steering wheel as we cross the The Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the Lindt Café siege in Sydney, the murder of Nullabor Plain, a two-day drive through a flat yet subtly changing landscape under- Curtis Cheng by fifteen-year-old Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad. taken in sensitive silence.

And then, Lists are useful. As a busy woman I make lists daily and experience satisfaction when I draw a line through a task completed. Lists focus the mind and determine I stumbled at the end of March 2015. Earlier that month my father had unex- where energy is best spent. My list of 100 Beautiful Things, first enumerated in pected open-heart surgery. Three weeks later, my mother was diagnosed with an 2006 during a challenging personal time, was a task to focus my mind on simple aggressive lung cancer. Rising and falling, I found my feet but lost the dance. I things that gave me pleasure: to remind myself that beauty exists all around me submitted a grant application on the first of May, not realising it would be my last in the physical world, in the memory of people and experiences, in my thinking, for the year (I had two unfinished applications in the offing). sensing body. In 2006 this list helped me to breathe. In 2013 I used it as the spoken text in The Prayer, a work in progress presented at Julia Varley’s Transit And then I fell. A hard swift dive. There was no particular private tragedy or world festival. To utter the items on the list today, to give them regard and say them event that precipitated the final fall. It was a Sunday morning, I think, and I had aloud is a secular, rational and poetic practice of prayer.

174 175 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

More recently I have added to this list Values I Hold Dear, e.g. 15. Liberty. Remembering how bruised my feet had been the last time, today I walk for ten 35. An ethics of care. 45. Freedom of expression. 65. Freedom of association. 100. minutes and then pause for ten minutes. In the pause I practice bisoku, turning Mercy. These are also beautiful in my estimation. Beautiful Things and Values I infinitely slowly on the spot, taking all ten minutes to complete one turn. As I come Hold Dear help reinstate that inconstant joy that is hope. These values and rights to the completion of 360 degrees I follow an impulse to raise my arms and when they have not always been embraced by or extended to all men and certainly not all pass my face I become aware that my gaze now travels slowly upwards with them. women in the course of history. It was seeing the image of the executed anony- Two leaves fall in the frame between my fore-arms. mous woman, possibly a Kurdish fighter, that made me realise how privileged I Repeat. Walk for ten minutes, practice bisoku for ten minutes. Halfway through am to take these values and rights for granted. This in turn prompted me to begin this second turn I realise I am thinking about my mother and remembering what I reading an eclectic mix of revolutionary thinkers who have resisted the over- said aloud last night: that I don’t think she will live another year. As I remember this, whelming odds that tomorrow will be like today and have asked what can be done a red leaf falls from the canopy above, a swift elegant dive into the water. A moment and what must I do? later a larger, yellow leaf falls a slow twisting fall into the creek. We are all just so I also remind myself that I have been here before - not in the literal but in the many leaves. Hanging on until we let go. Some a swift dive and others a slow dance. figurative sense. No Door on Her Mouth - a Lyrical Amputation (2010) examined Each is eloquent. and validated falling apart as a state that opens onto the possibility of discovering Dawn Albinger, Christmas Creek, 16th October 2015 one’s own resilience, paving the way for reintegration (in integrity). So perhaps similarly, loss of hope, or falling into the abyss of inconstant sorrow, can be a Over a few hours of walking, turning, standing still, returning and writing, a small necessary precondition to opening new pathways of operation, action, and being. shift occurs. Over the ensuing weeks I find this small shift has opened a space for Falling and landing hard have shaken me up, shaken my vision. I am looking at another way of perceiving and finally of being. My attention is no longer frozenly the same world but seeing it differently. Beauty and Values I Hold Dear look back fixated on a debilitating concept of an apocalyptic ‘tomorrow’, but begins to move, at me, expectantly. The unspoken questions I hear clear as a bell are: What must be with increasing fluidity between multiple notions of ‘tomorrow’, ‘yesterday’ and done? What can I do? ‘today’. I find that my list of seven ad hoc falling practices have served me well. So well that when my cat suddenly dies, dropping dead in the prime of his life, it is List of things I can do: not the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I do not fall into an unreachable torpor. Break all the crockery (matches the sound of my breaking heart). I choose instead to respond positively. I adopt two more cats, I decide to celebrate Sleep, nap, doze, sleepwalk, go on autopilot, sleep some more. my mother everyday she is still alive, and I choose to resist despair for the planet Drink alcohol (aids in sleeping). and for humanity itself. In part it is my natural optimism reasserting itself, but I am Run. Run every day after work. Run from. Run towards. Run, run, run. no longer prepared to assume that everything will be okay, that some one of us will Clean the house and read poetry. come up with a solution for life to continue on earth. I continue to ask, what can be Join a political reading group. done, what must I do, and what are the implications for my theatre practice? Pray. Joining a reading group leads me to reflect on Magdalena Australia This has been my falling practice, being with loss of hope. Ad hoc. Nourishing. Yes, even the drinking, even the knee-punishing runs have served their purpose. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. All of these can be understood as responses to anticipatory grief, despairing for the personal tomorrow in which I will have to plan a funeral, and the universal In October 2015 I partly answered the questions of what can be done and what must tomorrow in which we may face annihilation. I do by joining a reading group: Rojava Solidarity Brisbane. Despite some early And then one day I go away for the weekend, out of the city. I go for a walk childhood experiments in political agency this was new territory for me. I am not along a creek and am compelled to set myself a simple task, drawn from my prac- a natural student of political science and have for most of my adult life focused tice, and afterwards to write it down: on the intricacies of intimacy and the epic nature of the private sphere. I have not spent a lot of energy thinking about how we organise ourselves socially and I walk for ten minutes in spring sunshine, my feet tender and bare as I pick my way politically in the public sphere. Nevertheless in private I had now begun reading downstream. Moving gingerly, since being startled by a snake reminds me to advance some of humanity’s revolutionary history as I continued to follow the events in with awareness. The creek is lower than when we last visited. Then, it was swollen Syria. The image of the executed woman haunted me. I felt honour-bound to keep with summer rain, running deeper and faster. Then, I felt less sure of my step, her image present, to bear witness to her sacrifice and to resist her executioners by moved even more slowly and cautiously. Ached in my heart. bestowing meaning on her brutal death. I believed her to be a Kurdish fighter from

176 177 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow one of the three autonomous cantons of northern Syria: Afrin, Jazira and Kobane. Or is the arbiter some other authority? Collectively they are referred to as Rojava and their ‘protection units’ - the YPG In the midst of asking these questions and more; of considering the question and the YPJ - are consistently referred to in mainstream media as the most effec- of what do these Kurdish women want; understanding that they want to organise tive ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against Daesh. I joined the reading group the world differently, from the grass roots, emphasising women’s rights; I suddenly because I wanted to understand what the executed woman fought and died for, found myself thinking about The Magdalena Project. Seeking a dream of tomorrow what the women in the YPJ are fighting and dying for. Rojava Solidarity Brisbane that might sustain me returned me to one particular structure that has sustained deliberately focuses on understanding the political ideology of the Kurds, the gene- me in the past and could do so again. I reflected on our organisation in the years alogy of those ideas, and potential local applications of those ideas. 2000-2003 for the first Magdalena Australia festival, about the events that have In 2014 when the city of Kobane was under siege the image of the Kalashnikov occurred sporadically since and what frameworks supported them to come into bearing female fighter against Daesh caught the imagination of the West and drew being. I thought about the structurelessness of Magdalena Australia today, and attention to the Kurds in general and to Rojava in particular. Western orientalist about the overarching aim of the Project, to build the artistic and economic fantasies regarding these armed women provoked strong critical commentary from structures (and more recently, the networks) that enable women to work. The feminists, but it seemed scant attention was paid to the ideas behind the formation precursor to creating useful creative and economic frameworks is embedded in and success of the YPJ. As I was following tweets and independent online reporting the second part of the fourth aim: to question existing structures. What is it that I noted that time and again when Kurdish women were interviewed they reiterated holds me? What holds us? What will hold those who come after us? In the past that it was not just self-defence that gave them success but that they were fighting I expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo and bounced from one injustice to to free all humanity. It’s an extraordinary claim that has caused me to think deeply another, adding my voice to other voices of outrage, but without anything funda- about the notion of freedom, whether I consider myself to be ‘free’, and what being mentally changing. It is not enough to question the existing structures. We need a ‘free’ woman means. The Syrian Kurds in general, and the members of the YPJ in to create alternative scaffolding and counter-institutions. What is the alternative particular, have been very careful in articulating that they owe their success to the model of organisation that will enable women to work? What is the structure we fact that they are not only fighting against medieval barbarism, misogyny, feminicide, can work towards implementing that would render the aims and objectives of The slavery, etcetera, but they are fighting for an ideology that rejects the State itself as Magdalena Project obsolete? Is The Magdalena Project an effective counter-insti- inherently patriarchal and embraces a grass roots democracy based on local assem- tution? Could it be? Should it be? blies that places women’s rights at its centre. It’s an idea of social organisation that In fifteen years Magdalena Australia has organised about six or seven events. aims to empower communities to make decisions and to act on them, and to confed- Each one has had some form of organising principle. Some, like the festival, erate with other communities. have had formally structured committees, and others have been more loosely and In the midst of a horrific war the Syrian Kurds have a ‘dream’ of tomorrow that they organically composed. Overall there is no formal structure, no central committee, are attempting to build today. While learning about the Kurds I have also been thinking but individuals have come to the fore as natural leaders and have been followed about the quote above, often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: the future belongs to those because they had ideas and energy. There is an organicism about this that is who believe in the beauty of their dreams. I was seeking a dream that might pull me into a appealing: the field is open for individuals of vision to create something magical ‘tomorrow’ less personally and universally bleak. The Kurds have a vision of tomorrow with the support of their community. However there is also opaqueness. It is not that sustains them; I wondered if it could sustain me in some way, too. clear to all how Magdalena Australia operates. This opaqueness comes down to the Of course tomorrow does not actually exist except conceptually. There is only fact there is no structure that holds us. In 2016, despite having our own platform ‘now’ and ‘now’ and more ‘now’. Nevertheless in the ‘now’ I began thinking into within the international Magdalena website, Magdalena Australia exists as a loose the idea of ‘tomorrow’ as a practice that might help me imagine, prepare for, and network of individual women theatre-makers who connect predominantly through work towards a tomorrow that is better than today. Initially at sea in the political the Magdalena Australia Facebook group. This online group acts primarily as a site language and ideologies of the reading group, I clung to the idea that everyone for women to promote their shows or link articles about women in theatre or the had gathered for the same purpose - to find a concept of tomorrow that inspires arts more broadly. Nowhere in Australia, to my knowledge, are women theatre- hope for a better future, for ourselves and our communities and for the sake of the makers meeting face-to-face through their work under the Magdalena banner in a whole planet. At this time I was also contemplating the affirmation that tomorrow regular or repertory manner. The exception is the Magdalena Talks Back reading belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. I found that whenever group founded by Drs Julie Robson and Lekkie Hopkins at the Edith Cowan I thought about Eleanor’s affirmation, my inner cynic asserted herself and the song University in Perth. This group has met weekly since 2008, seeded numerous Tomorrow Belongs to Me from the film Cabaret would float through my mind. This research and performance projects, and attracted enough philanthropic support prompted the question: who, then, is the arbiter of beautiful dreams? Is it the indi- to create the Magdalena Talks Back prize for feminist research. The success of this vidual who dreams them or the society in which the individual moves and dreams? group is predicated on its simple, clear structure and its practice of meeting weekly.

178 179 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Face to face meetings are important. Clear and simple structures are useful. emotion. The sheer number of tiles each representing heartfelt thanks provoked in I have often heard Jill Greenhalgh refer to what she calls the mushroom effect: me a sense of transcendence that had its locus not in any individual story but in a the mushrooming of The Magdalena Project globally that occurred after the loss of collective narrative of thanks. That afternoon the seed was planted for a yet unre- the centralised administration in Wales. The rhizomic structure that exists today alised performance work that I initially called The Prayer, and more recently have has occurred organically and may be best for ensuring that the aims and objectives referred to as Memento or Remember, from memento mori, the practice of keeping of the Project are pursued and achieved in our shared tomorrow. However this death present, the better to appreciate life. mushrooming is not reflected in the Australian context. My provocation is that But what is prayer for a secular rational woman? I cannot describe it without Magdalena Australia does not actually exist today except as an idea. It could be an employing metaphor: prayer is something I do with language; a relationship I ideal, though, a beautiful dream to pull women in our profession together towards a create with words between myself and the universe; a bridge I build between the better tomorrow than we live and work in today. parliament of voices in my head and what is outside the ‘I’. At the very least, In Australia the tyranny of distance challenges our capacity to organise prayer for me is a conversation I have with myself. I used to argue that dancing nationally in a meaningful way. Inspired by the theories of libertarian munici- could also be a form of prayer, that my yoga practice was a kind of moving prayer, palism and social ecology and by the local women-centred assemblies of Rojava, that prayer did not have to involve language; that a cry from the heart could be a I propose Magdalena Australia would benefit from developing and articulating prayer. On deeper reflection I have come to the conclusion that although these a simple structure that could be adopted by small groups in their local commu- are acts of devotion, prayerful gestures, and rituals with prayerful intention, actual nities. Ideally, women around Australia would create their own local Magdalena prayer requires the articulation of something in language - a thought or a worded groups that might then link up in a con-federal system of organisation, amplifying sound. A song. our capacity to raise awareness of women’s contribution to theatre, to create Traditionally across many faith cultures there are four main types of prayer: events and to advocate for the women in our profession. In this way a mean- supplication, meditation, adoration and celebration. My list of 100 Beautiful ingful Magdalena Australia may emerge from the many parts, taking its direction Things falls across the categories of meditation and adoration (or awe). from the grass roots. Hannah Arendt called the community the “lost treasure” of Enumerating my list I give regard to the all-of-it of which I am a part and with the revolution, and it is a revolution that I am proposing. We need to let go the which I am obliged, by dint of the gift of consciousness, to have a relationship. Magdalena Australia that has been and start again, start small and organise locally. This could help us grow something that endures beyond the career-span of any one One Hundred Beautiful Things (11-20) individual woman or group of women. And this is what I want for tomorrow - for an invigorated Magdalena Australia to come into being from the grass roots, and Sucking the sweet flesh of a ripe mango cheek. to outlive us all. A tender touch from a lover. So slow and gentle the hairs on the nape of my neck If starting again, starting small and organising locally are my responses to the have time to register his closeness and I sense the heat of his hand before his skin questions: what can be done? and what must I do? What then are the implications meets mine. for my theatre practice? Do I start over, start small and act locally? Or do I embrace Being in a rain-soaked garden in my bare feet. some other activity from my falling practice like breaking crockery, reading poetry, The joy of a child’s delight and wonderment causing an echo of delight and wonder in or praying? me. Liberty. The Prayer My great-grandmother’s yellow patchwork quilt. Faded, frayed, and tenderly rolled and stored until I can find someone I trust to repair it. I like it because it is both the person doing it and the thing being done. The Chapel of The Fallen Christ above the city of Bogotá in Colombia. Margaret Cameron, responding to The Prayer as a title for a work, early 2013 The colour red inside a dragon-fruit. A deep, deep red. That piece of theatre I saw that was beautiful and tender and terrible and changed In 2002 I had the opportunity to visit the Chapel of the Fallen Christ above everything. the city of Bogotá in Colombia. One interior wall of the chapel was completely An afternoon spent in the Korean bathhouse with girlfriends. covered in tiles that were engraved in Spanish. My eye alighted on a tile that contained a single word I could understand because it is the same in English: grat- Before prayer began emerging in my practice as something asking to be noticed, itud. My companion at that moment, Grethe Knudsen from Grenland Friteater, I was engaged in a personal exploration of prayer. Uncomfortable praying aloud I explained that all the tiles were expressions of gratitude for prayers perceived to wrote my prayers down. I began each one as a letter, addressing a dear non-interven- have been answered. In the clear light and thin mountain air I shuddered with tionist everything, and starting with a simple hello. At first my prayers took the form

180 181 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow of complaints and rants. I railed against things I felt were simply wrong and needed hand and read it back to me, over the phone. As I listened tears welled. We had to be exposed and challenged. I lamented my own inability to effect any useful developed a practice, when we were working together on No Door on Her Mouth: change by myself or in myself. I asked for help with absolutely no expectation of I would send her text and she would read back to me only the parts she felt she a response. Help me. Help us. Help. Over time help was forthcoming, not from a could say. In this way text was pared, content laid bare. In this instance she read force outside, but from the regular practice itself. In turning up, again and again my list all through. It was a beginning. Later she gifted me the suit. A man’s 1940s to one issue in particular, my perception shifted. I gradually moved from railing suit with the left arm removed. against, to surrendering to the situation, to perceiving an internal contradiction, to When I performed The Prayer as a work in progress at Transit Festival in 2013, dissolving conflict and redefining internal and external boundaries. The content is I had a number of conversations with colleagues afterwards about the nascent not important. The process is. work. It struck me that after that particular presentation no-one remembered the part towards the beginning where the woman in the one-armed suit rails Returning to Practice against everything. I knew this moment needed to be there, that railing against everything/reality/god as a form of prayer was somehow important. Yet it was an It seems to me that an artist very often moves towards their greatest difficulty. It is the idea that I did not fully comprehend myself. Which bit was that? people asked, and very thing in the way, the uncomfortable grit of one’s nature and biography that rubs. even after describing it - you know, the bit where I had my back to the audience and Margaret Cameron, 2016 was jumping up and down, shaking my fists at the sky, muttering in gibberish - they still could not remember. The invisibility, the inaudible nature of this moment, so When Margaret was dying and I was skidding down the scrappy slope, still mostly quickly forgotten by my audience, perplexed and intrigued me. Where is my rage? on my feet, I felt a scream welling up inside me, a bile-yellow howl I was unable What is my rage? How do I rage? How do I make my rage visible, audible? Nearly to give voice to but which nevertheless found an outlet when I placed a Perspex three years later, returning to my practice after my year of falling, I understand that baking dish on a hot electrical element and it exploded, showering the kitchen my rage is a rage against the dying of the light - the dying of loved ones, of idealism, with glittering shards. The shock of it brought me out of that day’s somnambulism, of optimism and hope. It is rage against the executioners of the anonymous female the practice I had adopted of sleeping with my eyes open, and back into the present fighter, a rage against their practice of displaying her naked body to make other moment. With shaking hands I picked and plucked pieces of Perspex from the women afraid and to shame the men still bound by a culture that locates their counter-top, stove-top, from inside other crockery, from the floorboards where the honour in the bodies of women. It is a rage against the nation-state as inherently largest pieces singed the wood and the sharpest ones embedded themselves, from patriarchal and therefore oppressive to everyone. It is a rage against an economic my hair and from my clothes. Sitting heavily on the floor with my back against system that is destroying the natural world and a rage against the slow creep of the cupboard for support I thought of the first letter I had written to Margaret ten fascism in the West where the far Right is gaining traction because the Left no years earlier: a description of being on my hands and knees cleaning up broken glass longer knows where it stands or what it stands for. from a window shattered during a wild storm while my first husband confessed to In the end, I know that I have to return to my theatre practice because that is blowing twelve weeks’ rent up his arm. The letter also described dropping a glass what I am constituted to be and to do, and because it is the turning up again and vase and having a piece of glass pierce a vein in my foot. My life is full of shattered again and again that makes the difference. Over time the knee punishing runs glass I wrote, and Margaret agreed to help me make a one-woman show about have given way to a daily astanga yoga practice - a practice that has both aided my loving a heroin addict. Heroin(e) premiered at the Transit Festival in 2007. sleeping and woken me up. The practice of turning up almost daily to write this Margaret encouraged me to use the unusable and find the practical levers to essay has shown me that it is possible to turn up again to my practice; that I can create space in order to find another perspective on the uncomfortable grit of my write, reflect, and create in small places and with small windows of time. Working own nature. She was there when I began to conceive The Prayer, thousands of miles together with Julie Robson to bring Margaret Cameron’s book to the world has away, but her voice so close in my ear, over the phone and in my imagination. I likewise been a practice of turning up, again and again, finding time because there described to her my desire to discover whether it was possible (for me) to create is always more now, finding space by breaking things down into parts of parts of something from a place of happiness and contentment. I told her about my medi- parts. With the clear vision of hindsight, I see that The Prayer was a stepping-stone tations on the possibility of finding solace in prayer when one does not believe towards creating something else, something I am calling a performance prayer in an interventionist god. I told her of my physical explorations of prayer and my without really knowing what I mean by this. This yet-to-be-articulated prayer may inability to find, hear, create, or write words of text. I spoke of a desire to express rage and rant, may express awe and gratitude, may be a supplication for universal gratitude and she suddenly said, “One hundred beautiful things. Do you remember? peace and plenty. It may involve breaking crockery as an act of devotion. It may Wait a minute, I think I have it handy in a basket.” I had sent Margaret my list of be celebratory in the form of poetry and song. It may share a family tradition of 100 Beautiful Things in 2006 when I first created it. Six years later she had it to memento mori, of taking post-mortem photographs of loved ones in their caskets.

182 183 Dawn Albinger Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

It may be a memorial for the executed woman, also photographed post-mortem. It to the Odin Teatret Livestream account. This morning I watched a recording of may ask you to meditate on where you stand and what you stand for, and it most Dorthe Kaergard talk of how her design for the festival poster came into being. As certainly may ask you to dance, because a revolution without dancing is not a revolu- she recounted waking from a bad dream with the sound of crushing metal ringing tion worth having. And nothing short of a revolution in human thinking, organising in her ears and saying aloud, “The four horsemen of the apocalypse, only they and relating (to each other and the natural world) will save us. are horsewomen, and instead of swords, a rainbow”, I was struck to my hollow In order to find out what it is - this imagined performance prayer - I have bell-like core. Then, as she described each horsewoman and the symbolic objects turned up to Suzon Fuks’ studio for the past two Saturday mornings. I have shared she carried, transforming the apocalyptic to a utopian vision, I found my eyes with her this essay, my list of 100 Beautiful things, and a picture drawn by a welling up and spilling over with tears. Even now, writing about it two hours later, 10-year-old refugee girl from Kobane. I have brought with me the big glass vase I I gently slip off my glasses and lay them to my right. I lean forward over my laptop used in my presentation of The Prayer and experimented with filling and emptying and catch the tears with the first three fingers of each hand as my body is quietly it of water. In response to her question: What is important? I have responded, “To wracked with sobs. In the beauty of Dorthe’s image, in her careful research and sit with death awhile”. Sitting with death I think about the urge I experienced to detailed painting, I have caught a glimmer of hope. This morning I also listened photograph Margaret Cameron in her casket, of my family tradition of open casket to Ana Woolf describe the arsenal of weapons she uses to oppose violence and funerals and photographing our loved ones ‘in state’, of the difference between absence: beautiful memory, presence, teaching, intellect, and metaphor. Ana memorial post-mortem photography and the trophy style of post-mortem photog- said she understands that sometimes in the face of violence there is no time for raphy posted to social media in an attempt by one group to terrify another. Sitting metaphor - that some other response is required - but she uses metaphor where with death I ask what is the relationship between death and democracy and I go and when she can. Dorthe’s four horsewomen and Ana’s beautiful arsenal make back to the ancient Greeks and the Funeral Oration of Pericles. Today I contem- me think again of the women of Rojava and their fight to free all of humankind. plate the idea that western resistance to ageing and death escalates in proportion to Perhaps the best way to honour the memory of the executed woman is to follow our inundation with mediated death images both in the news and in our entertain- Julia Varley’s oft-repeated imperative to make our work well because the freedom to ment. And I wonder if our collective inability to sit with loss, decay and imperma- do so brings a great responsibility. nence may be negatively affecting our capacity for radical positive social change. If I return to the recent Ladyfinger meeting I described at the beginning of Two years ago, in a workshop led by Margi Brown Ash, I enjoyed a simple this chapter I find direction and purpose. If I have only just begun to answer stick exercise. A group of six women formed a circle, a stick between the open the question how do I continue to make work, there is nevertheless work for our palm of each woman and her neighbour. We were encouraged to move freely, to company that is insisting on coming into being: Memento, Quiet Songs, Falling dance, but not to lose the connection or drop a stick. At one point I could feel my Like a Bird, and the Women in Performance series of books. Ladyfinger is also neighbours moving apart, and just before the moment where one or both sticks fell planning workshops for young practitioners and for those who have never made to the ground, I stepped in towards the centre, towards the others. The pressure, performance before. We plan to tour existing works, and seek future international the connection immediately returned. Why do I think of this now? Margi’s stick collaborations. As Suzon Fuks said to me recently, one cannot wait around for hope exercise was such a simple thing but I think of it because my natural inclination to come again. It’s what you do in the meantime that counts. She is absolutely correct. is to remain at the fringe or on the edge of a group. In the past I have been able to I have discovered that a secular practice of prayer - that conversation I have with self-motivate and work alone for hours. Now I need help. I need other people to myself to clarify what is really important in the broad scheme of things, that helps witness, to receive, to reflect. So I am starting again and starting small: in Suzon’s me identify what I must commit energy to and put my shoulder behind - can be small studio, in small windows of time, with only one object. I am asking Suzon helpful in times of despair. So can turning up to one’s own tasks, or practices, over to be witness and collaborator. I also have the back room of my bookstore. Here is and over again. Falling into a profound despair provided me an opportunity to a space, slightly larger than my lounge-room, which offers the possibility of plea- question everything I thought I knew and to re-chart my course in life. In doing surable play. Here we can continue to unfold something while being witnessed so I have not actually changed course, but returned with a newly calibrated sense by hundreds upon hundreds of whispering books. To take the perceptual prac- of purpose. Something has subtly changed in me, deeply and profoundly, leaving tice I learned from Margaret, What if where I am is what I need, I notice that I am me feeling grounded, and with a sense of clarity and purpose that was previously hollowed out by the fall, scoured and washed out by the river of grief. Some days it obscured. I can wait for hope to return, or for a time when things feel more feels as though I am no longer a woman at all but a bell, sounding and resounding… hopeful. In the meantime I commit to turning up, again and again, to the tasks that require thoughtful attention, to the practices that nourish and sustain me, and Waiting for hope to return to the people without whom it would all cease to have meaning. As I come to the close of this chapter, the Transit 8 Festival is coming to a close in Denmark. I have been tuning into small segments that have been uploaded

184 185 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Pilar Restrepo Mejía Siendo sueño vivo y muero Living and Dying as a Dream

Día y noche suspendida de apariencias vivo. Aspiro despierta los aromas de infancia pasmados para siempre en mis narinas ¿Es acaso esta brisa de lluvia de estío la que me despoja del presente para asentarme en nuestra casa del parque de Laureles?

Regreso allí al lugar amado sin acertijo alguno extraviada de recuerdos multiformes y velados pisando las desvanecidas huellas de mi susurrante e inhóspita memoria, felices y espantosas pinturas de niña enardecida atrapan este pecho herido de nostalgias.

Subo en círculo por esas dobles escaleras de madera y desciendo corriendo por las de cemento, mi hermanito me persigue agotado, llorando y nunca me alcanzará, porque yo vuelo. Day and night I live attached to apparitions. Awake I breathe in the scents of childhood caught forever in my nostrils. Sí, me gusta atrapar grillos verdes en el pasto Is it by chance this shower of summer rain y guardarlos entre el cuenco de mis manos robs me of the present to come to rest para sentir el cosquilleo de sus paticas con pelos in our home in the park of laurels? buscando escapar de su súbito encierro. I return to the beloved place without hesitation, Abro las ventanas siempre abiertas por el viento lost in many-layered and veiled memories, por donde entran como relámpagos furiosos stepping over the scattered traces las sombras de los ángeles viejos of my murmuring and unwelcoming memory, que descienden del cielo como espantos sobre mi lecho. happy and frightening pictures of that indignant little girl entrap my breast with hurtful nostalgia.

186 187 Pilar Restrepo Mejía Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Oigo la caída imperceptible de la paciente garúa I ascend the circular wooden stairs goteando en los cristales de mis oídos desvelados por el miedo and run down stairs of cement, tiemblo, soy la párvula huérfana de presencias nocturnas my exhausted young brother pursues me crying, que me sacuden el alma sonámbula y posesa. he will never catch me because I'm flying.

Llega la prodigiosa aurora y me salvo de la fosa misteriosa. I like to catch green crickets in the grass Con ella viene también el alboroto de los pájaros, and hold them in the cup of my hands los estruendos de las ollas de la cocina materna feeling their small hairy legs tickle recobro el ánima y despierto ahíta as they try to escape from their sudden captivity. del sabor de colada con arepa y chocolate.

I open the windows that the wind always opens Ella, mi madre hizo brotar de su almáciga and the shadows of ancient angels la insaciable hambre que llevo perenne por dentro. enter like furious lightening Es el amor que nada ni nadie puede suplantar descending onto my bed like threats from the sky. ahora cuando ella se ha ido para siempre. Y yo sigo nómada, y vacía el camino hacia la muerte. Dropping onto the crystals of my ears, I hear the imperceptible fall of the relentless drizzle, revealed by fear, I tremble, the innocent orphan of nocturnal spirits that shake my soul, possessed and sleepwalking.

The mighty dawn arrives; I retrieve myself from the mysterious grave. With the dawn comes the onslaught of birds and the din of pans from the maternal kitchen, I recover my soul and wake up to savour the taste of juice, with maize bread and chocolate.

My mother's nurture fuelled the insatiable hunger that I carry forever inside me. It is the love that nothing and nobody can supplant now that she has gone forever. I continue nomadic and empty on the path towards death.

188 189 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Zoe Gudovic country, a country of exchange between neighbours, rich in natural resources. We were always happy to go to the Croatian seaside. Daddy would pack us into the car and that first view of the expanse of the beautiful blue sea through the car window One Part of Me would fill us with joy. Then the break up began: the destruction and fragmentation of Yugoslavia; neighbours drawn into conflict, led by politicians who destroyed the last traces of humanity and dignity in mutual relationships. From being a citizen of Yugoslavia, a country of open borders that symbolised decent life, my perception of territory was reduced to Serbia: a country as small as the toilet of my childhood, that cannot develop because the capitalist system has taken control of these new small countries, with a much stronger grip than in the former Yugoslavia. Wars initiated by Serbia, sanctions, isolation, poverty and militarisation have had When I was growing up I was always conscious of how important space was to lasting effects on everyone, including me. me. Today, at the age of forty, I realise that that need mapped my growing up, my The narrowing of my space in comparison with the one in which I grew up, responsibility and my solidarity. provoked disobedience and resistance in me. I came to recognise my love of femi- I come from a family of six. I often call this big family my herd; they lived nism when I realised that one is not born but rather becomes a woman, as Simone only thirty-six kilometres from where I live today. All the emotions, freedoms and de Beauvoir put it. And that the personal is political, as Rosa Luxemburg demon- restraints were easy to spot, since continuous interaction with the other household strated. My love for feminism opened up the possibility for me to grow and develop members made me aware of every change of mood and situation. As a rebellious as an autonomous, totally anarchic woman. My defiance of authority began in that and restless child, I longed for the peace of solitude. I used to find it in that sacred small flat when I refused to make coffee for my father, when I said “No!” place, the toilet. It was the only space where I could hear myself, my thoughts Now I realise that those small, brave steps, that I didn’t really consider much and feelings. I have three at the time, were what shaped my attitude, made me aware of the importance sisters and there are large of having control over my body, of being aware of my needs and having ways age gaps between us. Three to articulate them. What made this easier was my love of the arts, a love that generations lived in that preceded even my passion for feminism. I enjoy all art forms, but in some of them tiny space: my mother and I am clumsy or lack understanding. Nevertheless, I respect them. But the art that father, two older sisters claimed my heart has been the art of theatre, first anthropological and later polit- and two younger sisters ical theatre. who had arrived ten years That’s why I chose to dedicate myself to feminist theatre. later. Our different life Throughout all the changes in my perceptions about space, whether from a styles, needs, and experi- private, territorial or ideological point of view, I have always been and still am ences made living together most interested in my inner space, and that’s why, when I first left home, I did not in that small space a true know whether I would ever find such a house, flat, or space again. And I always emotional rollercoaster. remember the words of Patricia McKane who said that home is something each of Following in the foot- us carries inside: “Everything we absorbed, everything that shaped us lies within. steps of my older sister who When we leave, we take it with us.” moved away, I started my That is exactly how I carry my inner space with me. own adventure. Searching for my autonomy, I went A woman from the margin through different phases When Gilly Adams contacted me and asked whether I would write a text for the that led me to think over new Open Page book, I felt as if I had been struck by lightning, but then I realised and over again about the it was important to say yes, since that is how history gets written: by putting your process of owning space knowledge and experiences into words and sharing them. It took me quite a time as a sort of territory. The to sit down and start what is a hard and laborious task for me, that is writing. A lot country I come from was has happened in the last year in my feminist and political engagement, so it was Zoe Gudović named Yugoslavia: a wide difficult to find time to reflect on who and where I was or what the future would

190 191 Zoe Gudovic Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow bring - one of the themes of this book. And then Julia Varley’s letter arrived: “We Women before me won many victories, such as the right for invisible, need you to write!” oppressed, anonymous women to vote. The responsibility for carrying on with this I was paralysed by the very thought of writing something. kind of good work made me look for strategies to connect and share. One of my Ever since my childhood, I have doubted my writing skills. Many women share inspirations is the Magdalena network, which offers both expansion and actual the same fear, and that is why we fight for education, freedom of expression, devel- and virtual space, gives me new knowledge and the ability to grow and develop. I opment and emancipation. wanted to share this inspiration, as well as the contacts I have made, with women What made me decide to write this text at the last moment is exactly this from my country and that is why I have invited many artists to work with us. never-ending struggle with fear, and the understanding that history is important Being introduced to the Colombian artist Patricia Ariza at the Transit Festival (and mainly written and fabricated by men in the past, blurring reality with the was, for me, the meeting of bodies who live and work in oppressive societies. My absurd) and, most of all, the understanding that nothing will change unless we, body felt the strength, significance and desire to cooperate with this woman. In who live in this absurd reality, speak up and write our history ourselves. 2012 I invited her to work with the feminist artistic group ACT Women and with Throughout two decades of researching contemporary theatre and myself, the a group of girls who were taking part in the programme, Roma Girls’ Solidarity, a concepts most important and closest to my heart have been the concepts of body, programme made possible by the Reconstruction Women’s Fund.1 I realised then space, commitment and freedom! that what I was interested in was making such links, enabling the margin to win I first started thinking about these concepts when I fell in love with feminism, over the centre, the real-time centre, the centre of my body. Some of the girls and they will always remain my field of interest, action, thinking and change. shared their stories of violence, early marriages, dropping out of school and being Since art is the sphere nearest to me, it was natural to channel my activist work sold, but through Patricia Ariza’s artistic guidance, they regained their dignity through artistic practice and communication. I believe that for many women art and showed their emotions, sharing their suffering but also their strength. This is the best way to get in touch with themselves, to raise their awareness and feel Colombian director, girls from the south of Serbia and I shared this breath of fresh the possibility of change, of different ways of being. But it turns out that such art is air and freedom for a week. additionally marginalised, because of the ignorance of feminist practices. Patricia said: “Every woman is a model of a kind and deserves her place in By founding Feminist Theatre and later on also by working with the feminist the world. No country can develop either economically or spiritually if it allows art group ACT Women, I realised that feminism was a good starting point for violence against women.” dialogue. Working in the field and performing in over forty places in Serbia, public In 2014 I invited Ana Woolf from Argentina, who brought her colleague places such as streets, squares, villages, Roma settlements, I was witnessing reac- from Brazil, Vera Ribeiro. They came to work with us: women, girls, little girls tions to the topics we were problematising (violence against women, rape, abuse from the margins, Roma women, lesbians, married, unmarried, happy, unhappy, and feminicide); the images and scenes that attracted the attention of passing employed, unemployed. Ana’s energy can shake and bring down any dark cloud, women, who recognised their own stories in the themes we dealt with. We were reveal the sunshine and share it with us, and in only seven days of work she able to offer them on the spot assistance, to connect them with local women’s succeeded in breathing freedom into our minds and bodies. Vera and Ana shared groups and perhaps save at least one life! their artistic practices with all of us. Together we made a performance called Feminism is still a controversial topic, and this region is no exception from the Presence in Life and premiered it in the Puppet Theatre in Nish, a town in the reactionary global trends, so feminism is considered a bad word. In such a situa- south of Serbia.2 For some girls it was the first time they had stepped into a tion, it is enough to insist that the feminist scene does exist, and that performance theatre, participated in a play, taken the stage. For their families who came to topics are intimately related to gender issues and feminism. see the performance it was also the first time they had been in a theatre and that Feminist artistic practice is part of the general feminist struggle at all levels - made them feel like equal citizens. Art is able to give people dignity and freedom political, economic, social and cultural. It developed at the end of the 1960s, as a despite all their differences. critical or activist practice, re-examining gender relations within art and society. Ana said: “Every day we will find a new door to struggle to open and pass Engaged feminist artists, collectives and groups today problematise war, post-war through. New places to enter, to dance in, to stay in, to step into.” and transition, especially the position of women in such contexts. As a result of Last year was a tough one for me. A year ago a tumour was removed from the lack of knowledge and ignorance of feminist practices, feminist art faces prob- my body. My body was cut open and I could not move for a month. Feeling lems such as poor institutional support, marginalisation, no recognition or actual scorn of feminist topics and agendas by the general public. In the performing arts scene there is neither a clearly articulated feminist critique nor a critical-theoret- 1. Roma Girls’ Solidarity, a programme realised by the Reconstruction Women’s Fund, see more: http://www.rwfund.org/eng/critical-themes/rwfund-video/pasarela/ ical analysis from the feminist point of view, and the critical scene in general is 2. Presence in Life, see more http://www.rwfund.org/rwfund-video/prisustvo-u-zivotu/ rather weak.

192 193 ZoricaZoe Gudovic Zoe Gudovic Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow helpless makes me feel vulnerable, since I have learned that I need to be I am also concerned about the refugee crisis: people crossing borders, walking strong, to be able to do anything, that I must not get tired and stop because I for thousands of kilometres on foot, and searching for one thing: peace. War is the would lose respect, I would even despise myself. Then I realised that the capi- greatest evil: it destroys everything - families, houses, homes, minds and bodies. talist system means that we have to be able and ready to work all the time, we People who have to cross borders in this way have nothing left to lose; they carry have to be healthy labourers, and show no weakness for fear of becoming invis- their heritage in their arms, heads, legs, spines. The only thing they seek is dignity ible, being erased from the system. - something we are all searching for, the aim of everyone who fights for freedom. Apart from this political insight, I also had an emotional insight into what I am truly thankful to every woman who has infused my life with happiness, a body experiences in its life. Female bodies have always served others, mostly helped me grow, learn, connect, have small Magdalena Festivals in my heart and men. Through the pain of my illness I felt the pain of half of the planet, of female link the margins with the centre in different parts of the world. bodies, bodies as territory, bodies as prey, bodies used by the system of consumerist The future that would make me happy is one based on sharing knowledge, and satisfaction. A space contaminated by hatred, war, militarism and all the systems of I hope my love for feminist art has influenced some women, I hope they recognised exploitation and fear subordinates the female body. the knowledge I shared as an act of solidarity and responsibility, and that they In May 2015 Women in Black 3 invited me to help them with the creative will continue to share with the generations yet to come, as I have learned from so work on Women’s Court 4, a Feminist Approach to Justice, a project where women many women. finally spoke up about the war twenty years after it happened. I had a chance to I also hope that sometime in the future love will unite more people than hate! talk, laugh, work with and touch women who had survived the worst torments of war, violence and abuse by Serbs. As a person from Serbia, who did not know what was happening when it happened, I found myself confronting the truth, the truth of the body! Women who had lost everything, their families, loved ones, homes, bodies… these women spoke to me. While I was listening, it was important for me to understand where strength lies, how we survive such horrors, how to fight for the truth, since that’s how history should be written - by relating our experiences and writing them down, never forgetting them, but learning from them, processing them with responsibility and forgiveness. I will stay focused on feminism since it gives me space to speak up and be heard, while the physical body will remain my greatest love. Feminism reminds us that struggle is important and that change is possible. That’s why we have to sustain the passion and activity. My ideal for the future is a world where women can live without fear for their safety and the safety of their loved ones. Where living would mean being free, not only when it comes to having a roof over our heads, education, health services and social justice, but also freedom of thought, movement and speech. Fear of the system that has taught us to be subordinate is rooted in our tradition and every step away is a threat against the patriarchal system. Women need to step away from the patriarchy. Women need to learn to trust themselves. Women need to learn to trust other women. We must not follow the principles of force, control, power and capital. We need to keep learning to communicate, to act in solidarity, to be creative in changing our environment, to use our political power to transform and take over the positions that belong to us. My greatest wish is for women to take over the economy, and to invest not in weapons and wars, but in development and education.

Tired! ACT Women in cooperation with Deborah Hunt and Dijana Milosevic 3. Women in Black, see more "http://zeneucrnom.org/index.php?lang=en" Presence in Life, Reconstruction Women’s Fund in cooperation with Ana Woolf and Vera Ribeiro 4. Women’s Court, see more "http://www.zenskisud.org/en/"

194 195 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Geddy Aniksdal Notes for Tomorrow

We were rehearsing Molière's The Miser for a performance in the backyard of a popular old café during our annual Porsgrunn International Theatre Festival. My husband, Lars, was responsible for the adaptation, as well as directing the play. Our son Tobias was playing the role of Cleante, whereas my task was to play Jacques, a female version of the domestic servant. Lars had written songs for the whole ensemble that emphasised the light, easy tone of the performance, which we tried to make as fast and funny as we could, albeit with an undercurrent of comment on the greed and egotism of modern times. The lyrics of the opening lines went like this:

Frugality is over-rated. To give will cost you less. Generosity pays in the end. Moreover, brings a good return. The shroud does not have any pockets, did you know that or not? The last journey we will make will be with empty hands.

During rehearsals, my mother became ill. After a week, we understood it was serious and, after another week, that it was terminal. That she would never come home again. She and my father lived next door. By the time we opened the production she was dead. I no longer had a mother. A situation I had often thought about but never experienced. I had felt vaguely that I was prepared. I was not.

… The shroud does not have any pockets…

No, it does not. I dressed her for the last time, and put her in her shroud. She did not travel empty handed. She died in May. All the cherry trees, her favourite tree, flower and fruit, were in full blossom. She went with her arms full of cherry branches. Goodbye, dearest Mama. Now there is a tree in my garden, called Anna’s Tree, which I pass every day. It has already blossomed and given fruit. Every night as I stood on stage dancing, singing, smiling, an image of my mother in her hospital bed flashed through my mind. Images of her lying there with closed eyes, so silent, so still, me in the bed next to her, my head close to hers, so I could hear her whispering: - Is it you? - Yes, it is me. - I am so fond of you, Mamma.- I am so fond of you. - Do you have any pain? - No, I do not. - That is good. - Yes. Continuing with the rehearsal work was difficult. To know that my mother would not come home again, that she had only a few weeks left to live. Was I not

196 197 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow strong enough? Feeling only the sorrow, waiting and pain? Not being present in the Then the 1st of May arrived. It was no fun to go and take the traditional glass work? What was it best to do? Who could give me an answer, who could help? of beer before the traditional march. It was no fun; it did not seem important to My sister and brothers also had to work. We took it in turns to be with my stand behind a banner once again demanding peace in the Middle East or No to mother; one of us was always with her. With our Papa. There was no way we could Nuclear Weapons. Why did the sun go on shining? make her well again. She was slipping away gently, every day. Quietly and without We managed to wash her hair in bed. I was impressed by the skill and any drama. ingenuity of the operation. This was what was important. My priorities were very Her silent, twilight room and the noisy rehearsal room were two separate clear. worlds. One so real, the other so make believe. When I came into rehearsals many After the funeral, at the end of the rehearsal period, I was so angry I was of my friends and colleagues wanted to know what was happening, to show their afraid I would explode. A hard, furious anger. Unfortunately, some of this was care and sympathy. It was not so easy to bring that head, that heart with me. The aimed at the director. I could not understand why he insisted upon certain scores ones full of her. and choreographies. I could not understand why he thought any of it mattered. I She would have loved to play my role herself. She was a great amateur actor, think in a way I projected my white-hot anger onto him because I believed, with and I had seen her perform in some classical rural comedies when I was young. subconscious logic, that he was the only one who could take it. Oh, such anger! She was shy and daring at the same time, a very appealing combination. She also I could have lifted tables, thrown them across the room; I could have destroyed lured my father into cross dressing. He made his debut as a classical ballet dancer, chairs, doors, anything that came in my way, and I felt dangerous. If I broke down with tutu, wig and two oranges for breasts. I was very proud of them. I thought my and cried, I would be of no use. My mother would not come back. She was dead. mother was so pretty, and when we were taken for gypsies, I thought that was a She was gone. Forever. This notion of forever was difficult to accept because I great compliment. There were five of us children born over six years; we were all still heard her voice, felt her presence, waited for her and woke up in the morning dark. Once when we took the ferry to see my grandmother, a man approached my with the impulse to go and drink coffee with her. Then the abrupt knowledge of a father and asked: “Sir, how is it being a gypsy family in Norway these days? What change. A loss. is your situation?” My father always smiled when he told this story. We had an old The simple old song from my teens, that I had used in my first ever workshop Chevrolet, we children were all stowed in the back; there was a kind of padded with Grenland Friteater came back to me: chain to hold on to whilst we bumped up and down. My mother would have enjoyed the Molière. She had worked as a servant Why does the sun go on shining, why do these eyes of mine cry? herself. She knew a thing or two about upstairs and downstairs. Now she was in Don’t they know, it’s the end of the world... her hospital bed, the walls of her room being the bulwark against our cavorting. I came and went between both places. Limbo. Lost. Words that hurt. If I Even though these words are naïve they are also true; it is extraordinary to see believed I was special, that our rehearsal time should focus on my situation… but someone coming to put out a rubbish bin as you are walking behind your mother’s I was not special, the situation was. Pain left a stain on my memory that fades only coffin. To see someone laugh heartily. It takes a split second to realise this sorrow slowly. I try to understand. No. That is not true. I do not understand. I accept. I is not everybody’s; in fact it belongs to very few. I compose myself, and understand. reason it away. Hs! How to concentrate? To remember the text, the score? I was Still: not present. My mind shut down or it went to the hospital where my mother was. I had to force myself to stay in the moment. My son and I had some scenes together, It ended when you said goodbye. funny, witty, fast scenes, where I had to jump up on an up-ended trunk! He was great: “Come on old Mum, you can do it.” In addition, after one scene more Weeks later: the sun went on shining, the performance went well, I calmed down, miserable than the last, he said with a clear gaze and a glint in his eye: “I think you and we understood that it was the fierce sorrow that had released the anger, a not are great, Mum!” Although I knew he was not right, his reassurance helped me uncommon reaction. Thinking back, it was the feeling of being trapped, caught. believe I could do it, because even though things did not go forward, they did not Even though I partly made that trap myself. Not so constructive in the rehearsal go backwards either. One part of me thought, you have the experience, when push situation. It is not easy to be constructive when you feel destructive. comes to shove you can find the extra strength. I think I managed to conserve I was probably rehearsing for the biggest loss in my life so far. This one I could some energy. To be able. not get right. There was nothing I could do to prevent my mother from dying. My mother was moved to palliative care close to my home. Warm, kind, and No matter how hard I worked, how high I jumped, how well I sang. No matter skilled people tended to her. I wanted so much to wash her hair. She loved to have how much my gestures and playfulness made the audience roar with laughter. The her hair washed, to have a massage, she always used to say: “I could fall asleep it is Director of Death had other plans, dealt in another currency. My anger was about so good.” Yes. You will very soon go to The Big Sleep. loss. Loss of words. Loss of power. How vulnerable my own sense of identity or role,

198 199 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow or the risk of losing them, felt. I have always said that if, for some reason, we could does not work. It is not me; it is my mother. My mother is dead, and I see her in me. no longer make theatre, there would be plenty of other things to do. It did not feel My Papa, his hands, shoulders and neck. His neck carrying twenty-five kilo like that. Only I could make my work important. I felt weak. sacks of coal. Bearing witness to all the heavy work. Heavy work at work, heavy After the performances, I went to my island. I call it mine. So does everyone work at home. Heavy work in his childhood home, heavy work in his own home. who goes there. From my camper van I walk down to the sea. Sitting on an old Heavy realities. Heavy loads. My Papa’s smile, his eyes disappearing into folds of log that washed ashore many years ago, the sky overcast, it is quiet and peaceful. skin, leaving only crow’s feet all over his face. A boat is towing a rubber ring with a little boy aboard. The boat is driving round All the hours, Papa, nightshifts, early shifts, extra shifts and double shifts. and round in circles. The boy’s cries of joy are louder than the boat’s engine. Time and time again. I recognise the hours. I am also a worker. My grandson is fishing for crabs. Over and over again. Filling the bucket. At Although it is thirty years since you came through the gates of the aluminium the end of the day, we empty the bucket, and the crabs swim and crawl back to factory for the last time, even now, as an old man, you scrub yourself in the shower their hiding places. Tomorrow we will fish for them once more. My grandson and with a scrutiny resembling a surgeon preparing for an operation. Every part of the I. As I did with his father, my son. I feel my life is stronger now. I can see the body is meticulously scrubbed, and scrubbed again: neck, ears, shoulders, back, circles. In the old log’s growth rings. In my own life’s growth rings. The waves knees, legs, feet, arms, upper arms, the hair, and the hair again, the face, and the crash against the shore. A mild breeze blows against my face. It is a beautiful face again, scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing. More water. So much dirt. afternoon. I will stay here, looking at the sea, at my grandson, the blue bucket and the It is morning; it is dark. My thoughts are still influenced by the tight darkness ever-present seagulls. In a scene in Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexander, the around. Light is coming, little by little. The hills become visible. The sky grandmother is sitting looking at photographs, looking through the family albums. lightens, a reddish light emerges. Sounds, a breeze from the ocean. I write in bed, Reflecting on the many past years, she said that the children were most important. it is warmer. It is “between”. The bed as a safe haven, as a place before. Before After all. I was thinking; yes, you say that because you have had it all! If you had day. Before full consciousness? I do not think so. Art can be as poor as it likes, only had children, would you say that? Ah, such thoughts can also come with the or my life as well, which it certainly is not. I am just preparing myself to take wind on a summer’s day. Then they drift away. responsibility. I am writing on a funny machine. Sometimes I think it is mocking Papa can hardly see any longer. He has one strong lens, as in a pair of me by not producing the letters that I punch, as if it is saying: look, your words binoculars, and one cloudy glass, because one eye does not work. In order to be come out differently! What you thought, what you intended to say, which means able to see something he has had to learn to bring the object close to his eye. It write, comes out differently. Who is writing? The trickster? The blind Tiresias is hard to relearn. He likes to hum, sing and whistle. He does not remember the rather. One hears with the eyes and sees with the ears, and writes with the walking lyrics. He makes his own special medley. stick, the white stick. Residual landscapes, remnants from what was nostalgia; a perfect site-specific Little pretty Anna if you want, belong to me for dwellers of yesterday. With all your soul and heart. I am young and ready, so we can go steady How do we talk? How long did it take our theatre group to build a common Tralalalalahmdum didumdidumdi ramtitam language? How do we build a structure? How do we explain and pass on what we have carved out, patiently and stubbornly, as our modus operandi? Can this be Always singing about my mother: Anna. Ever since I was a tiny girl, I have heard passed on? Even actors who have worked with us for years might not have come my father sing to my mother. If he wanted to tease her, coax her to give in, make across some of the experiences we had in the first ten years, experiences that are her sit down, make her sit on his lap (which was unlikely during the day) for half a embodied in us, as a knowledge we act from... cup of cold coffee, half a home rolled cigarette tucked away in her matchbox. Half Our sessions in the rehearsal room remind me of my Papa having to gather the a minute. My mother was always up and doing. sheep. He was sent out to look for the sheep, or the one lost lamb. He could not Now she is not there. He kisses the photographs he keeps in his wallet. From return home without them or it. He was five years old. He would just get a whack when she was seventeen to seventy-five. He talks to her, tells her how beautiful on his head and be sent out again. There is no use pretending you have gathered she is. your material, that you have the tools to carry out your craft before you do. It does His age, his doings resonate in me. Age is puzzling. Or perhaps I notice age not work. Too much of nothing. You need to find your flock. Your sheep, Papa. more than others do. Because I have reached a certain age myself? Am I starting to Your kin. look back, to reflect, to get wiser, or is it because there is relatively little time left I have notes everywhere. Notes for tomorrow: take the trout out from the deep ahead? Am I trying to recall a specific time or age? Who or what is trying to speak freezer; deliver the boots to the cobbler; talk to your daughter about training and to me? Why am I so receptive? To hold on to and cherish every day. This mirror lineage; remember to be happy; toilet rolls; lift your gaze.

200 201 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

In the Bible, it is written: “Those who cheer up others shall be cheered up themselves”. Sometimes I think that if an injustice has been done, and in return I give a present, I even things out. My action is too much, but since the other’s action was too small, or too mean, a balance is achieved on some kind of original scale. That I have devised myself. The pain of anger is expensive. My parents. Their life as they chose to live it.

Do not come with the whole truth Do not come with the whole sea for my thirst Do not come with the sky when I ask for light Come with a sparkle, dew, a feather As the birds carry drops of water from the spring And the wind carries grains of sand. Olav H. Hauge

Papa, I look at a portrait of you at work. There are fourteen of you. Fourteen men in work clothes. You have been made to sit in formation. In the way a football team would assemble. Two of you smile foolishly. Everyone looks at the camera. You are dirty. One man’s face is almost black. This is your shift at the factory. Papa, it’s a long time since all you strong men came out of the factory gate, straight from the shower. I was always afraid of that shower, afraid of the fence, Nils Aniksdal (bottom right) and fellow workers afraid of the number of people entering those gates, afraid you would not come out again. I had read about the concentration camps with their strong iron fences and My younger brothers were more useful, selling small baskets of strawberries huge showers. People did not come back from those showers, Papa. to tourists on the steamers: “Struberies, fresli pikked struberies, onli faiv krune!” My Papa, it is a long time since you came home with your pay check on Thursdays, brothers hollered, sold berries and bought ice cream with the money. No savings. when we all saw the money in the little transparent envelope. You sat down and No more jobs either. read the slip of paper that recorded how many hours you had worked, whether you Picking apples, picking potatoes, picking stones. Walking babies and small had done overtime, whether you had had extra hard work that was paid double, children. The grown-ups went dancing, I looked after their children. I had an eye whether you had worked during a holiday that was also paid extra. We children for it. were given some kroner, very few, Papa, less than most children, Papa, and you Why do I think more and more about my father, and look more and more like said every time that you needed to multiply our pocket money by five, since there my mother? Is it because she is dead? I look in the mirror over the sink when I am were five of us. It was not easy, Papa, to remember that, but sometimes we did brushing my teeth, a glance in the mirror, just because I am standing there and my not think ahead, we just ran down the hill and into the cinema, just in time for eyes wander, and I see my mother and myself. In the same face. If I concentrate a cowboy movie to begin, and without remembering that this would take all our very hard, she goes away, and I return. Nevertheless, if I am unaware, she is there. pocket money for that week. “If you want more money you need to work for it,” said the grown-ups. One day at work, a woman who works in our administration said: “Geddy, since So I did. Cleaned for old people. Washed old men’s dirty shirts. I learned you are going to Oslo, why not take your passport and visa application for India how to scrub necks so the grease would go away. Watch children. Take babies with you?” It turned out that I needed new passport photos so I had to run to our for a stroll. Do errands. Pick strawberries. Eat strawberries. Only strawberries. An local photo shop before I went. It was raining, and I did not have an umbrella. It enormous amount of strawberries. Big, red, tasty. Vomiting strawberries all the way was delicate rain, almost invisible, that you only feel after a while, when your scarf back from the fields. My sister and I tried to rescue the birds caught in the nets. or hair becomes misty. The field owner told us off. “Do not let him see you,” said my mother, one of the The photographer asked me not to open my mouth whilst being best pickers in the field. She tried to make us put strawberries in our sandwiches photographed, and I remember being surprised because I do not usually have my too. Since strawberries were free. Cheese was expensive. Salami too. I still like mouth open unawares, whereas my companion does. He was once criticised for this strawberries. by a famous theatre critic, who is no longer alive, and whom he never forgave. The

202 203 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

critic had made me self-conscious about leaving my mouth open in performances, how silly of me, but there you go. I shut my mouth and probably looked puzzled, wondering what this had to do with getting a visa or not. When the photographs were ready, I walked home quickly to fetch my luggage before I went to Oslo to celebrate my daughter’s birthday, an important occasion. In the car, I looked at the photographs and to my astonishment, I saw my mother, her hair shiny with tiny raindrops. Fighting so hard to become yourself. Depth is not an even or true measure unless it relates to something else that gives the measurement a context. I can be your something else. You can be mine. Inheritance, genes and social milieu - these have all intrigued me since I was young, seeking my own path, finding my voice. I am grateful for the few people who really saw me, and helped me grow in self-confidence. I know in a very concrete, brutal and real way that I am going to die. I know how a body becomes still, how breathing comes to a halt. The end has come. Everything ends. As we know it. My parents are forever linked to me, we have been so close. And I mean physically close: my mother and I doing the dishes, my mother and I laying the table, my mother and I hanging out the clothes, my mother and I walking down to the shop, my mother and I buying the groceries, my mother and I checking that we have everything on the list, my mother and I drinking coffee, my mother and I smoking, my mother being the only smoker and talking about how good it was that I had stopped smoking, my mother and I walking back home from the shop. My mother and I fishing, my mother and I laughing, my mother and I dressing up like Julebukk, or wassailers, going from house to house, begging neighbours for a little drink, singing for them. Laughing. An old tradition from The Middle Ages. My mother was still young and I was not a child anymore. I was home for the Christmas vacation and my mother wanted us to go Julebukk. She dressed up as a man, as a mountaineer, and so did I. We had soft hats, scarves, and flasks slung around our shoulders. We had nylon stockings over our faces, with painted eyes and mouths. False hair sticking out from under the hats. We were unrecognisable as long as we refrained from talking. The tradition was to invite the Julebukk in, to ask if he would sing, and to offer him a little aquavit. Sometimes the Julebukk brought instruments, mostly he sang in a distorted voice. Since we were disguised and did not want to expose our identity we could not stay long. Which meant we visited many houses and got an aquavit in each place. We got tipsy, laughed a lot, and our make-up ran down our cheeks. My mother was at her best. She was funny, daring, and a bit wild in a very charming way. She sang in a voice never heard before, she danced and made witty gestures. It was a side of her that was often hidden, or not present. She reminded me of her own mother. She reminded me of me. My mother and I going for a walk, my mother and I taking the sun, my mother Anna and Geddy Aniksdal, mother and daughter and I singing together, my mother and I writing songs of celebration together, my mother and I making plans, my mother and I… No longer my mother and I,

204 205 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow because my mother is dead. She was sad and we, her children, did not want her We had to perform five times, and a bell sounded to indicate when we needed to be so unhappy. We pulled so many tricks out of our pocket... little did we know to start and stop our actions in relation to the audience. I, the improviser, the that she was seriously ill, and perhaps had been for a long time. We just wanted her collector of new things, ideas, ways had to be precise in this minutes and seconds to cheer up, and she could not. way. Very challenging. She could not. Why is helplessness so provocative? When my mother died, I, a I worked in the Mario Mertz room. With his enormous glass igloo. This was grown woman looked at the bright, beautiful May sun and thought: are you here to the nomadic room, with the igloo by Mertz, a frozen white sleeping bag from comfort us? Or to mock us, to tell us that life has always been like this. People are Spitzbergen and The Healing Mountain by Marianne Heske. born and people die, such is life. I decided to use the character from Women with Big Eyes, who originally came from a performance called Heart of Dreams. A wild man, a shaman of sorts, both Earlier, this year, last year (what does it matter if I sometimes mix up the years, alive and imagined. He speaks in a deep raspy voice. He can walk through quite the months, the days, they all come together in time), The National Museum of different material, from different performances or settings. Contemporary Art in Oslo invited us to make a performance in response to the He sings. A certain kind of ugly song. Tor Arne and I spoke of him as the blind Museum’s 25th anniversary. It was also twenty-five years since their Arte Povera Tiresias. Wearing round black sunglasses, always associated with John Lennon. exhibition, an exhibition that created a huge scandal in Norway. Trying not to see in the usual way. The main cause of the scandal was The Pistoletto Room. Before the building There were guards in each room. It was strictly forbidden to touch any of the was turned into a museum this room was furnished with some cupboards, tables objects. I got permission to touch the bushes belonging to the Mario Mertz piece. and chairs that had originally belonged to the Bank of Norway. Pistoletto asked Once. I got permission to crawl on the floor. If we wanted to touch an item, we for permission to use this old, wooden furniture. He then lined the inside of the needed to wear white gloves. cupboards and the underside of a chair with mirrors and exhibited them. This If my parents had been there, they would have laughed so much! On the became an installation and later, the museum decided it wanted to keep this other hand had they known the price of some of the items they might have been artwork which resulted in the museum buying back its own, reinvented furniture offended. from the artist for a great deal of money, a transaction that was thoroughly mocked My father would have said, “if this is art, I am art too”. by an art historian, who also happened to be a close acquaintance of ours. Or, perhaps, “I could have made this!” If he were right all of us can make art If the workers from the factory in Ardal where my father worked could have and moreover, everything can be art so no one can lay claim to any of it. This been there! What a performance! essential question dogs my work and informs my attitude to it. Once, but only once, in the early seventies, the directors of the aluminium factory where my father was employed decided that the workers should get Everything will end, and sometimes there is a sense of haste, a shift in the air, a aluminium cufflinks as a Christmas present. A piece of art! The cufflinks produced shudder, as if it were cold. It is the end, telling us, me, that it will come. I see this were rather rough and clumsy, abstract and quite heavy. They offended the workers in others; I experience it in myself. so much that several of them just threw the cufflinks back into the furnace, where A sudden sadness at evening, looking out at the sea. The light is transparent, they melted and disappeared into liquid form again. grey. A melancholy in the light rays themselves. Sometimes beauty hurts. My father always snorted when he told this story. He has his cufflinks still, but On the other hand, it is difficult to live everyday as if it were the last. A bit he has never worn them. I do not think he needed them to represent either his tiring too! I pray to stay awake, to avoid wasting time. work or his identity. But I also want to waste time, to sit a while longer, to talk, be, smell and sense When it comes to awkward social situations of that kind, I always think of my the world, my world around me. To listen to the young women carving their way father and mother, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my family on both sides. through life. Strong, determined and with set faces, showing that they know I always think of how hard they worked, and how hard I work, and I find dignity that life is a risky deal. Where is my world? Where is my haven? My garden? My in working, thinking, planning, trying to do my best. I try to imagine what they floating island? My nest. What nonsense, of course I am part of it all. That was just would say in these situations, and why. time out. A sudden premonition that everything comes to an end. Back to the Museum of Modern Art: we were asked to make the performance My room of my own? My room of my own is in our rooms of our own; my art event in the museum because we work in the Grotowski tradition and Arte garden is a patch in our communal garden; my nests rest in the oldest oak tree ever Povera was, and is, an exhibition associated with his work. seen. These are my havens. There were five of us, working with our director, Tor Arne Ursin, and each My island is a real island. It was a secret for many years, many thousands of actor performed in a separate room. The audience was divided into groups of years, then the great ice withdrew and took sand and stones along with it, leaving fifteen and led from room to room at intervals. washed, polished glacial rocks. The cold ice made something so soft, round and

206 207 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow warm, so beautifully curved, it is inviting to lie down and almost disappear in its and I was able to meet her. Now several years later she still continues her work, curves. Fossils from thousands of years ago are forever impregnated in the stone; one of the few survivors to keep the tradition alive. I greet her. She gives me a sweet pink colours make surprising stripes between the light and dark greys. big smile. It is my island. My sand, which has swallowed my tears, my wind that has tried to take away my smile. My deep sense of belonging. My solitude. Actual reality makes me sick, makes us sick. That must be the reason why we My words. Our words. Mine are never just mine. There is much of you in me, cannot grasp the whole truth at once; it is so terrible that we cannot endure and yet I am I. I need to be, I cannot survive without being strong. These times are it. In a performance in Rio at the Multicidades Festival, five women and a dangerous. It is easy to disappear in the welter of demands and expectations that man made an aesthetically beautiful, powerful and terrible happening, an art the world makes on and of us. I also wrinkle my brow when too many corporate installation, a performance art piece about the horrific statistics of femicide in words come into our island, into our Magdalena Garden. We have a different Brazil. They started by entering in silence, bending down to us as we sat, giving currency. We trade in another economy. us roses and whispering words in our ears. The woman whispering to me said: Nowadays, since the universities are also part of the private economy, they “Inequality”. have adopted the language of bankers, traders, stocks and shareholders. For a The canvas that they rolled out had skeletons printed on it, anatomically while it is amusing, interesting to change and swop languages. As we borrowed correct skeletons, symbolising the many women killed each day. The canvas was words and expressions from sport, from martial arts. In the early years of my covered in facts, statistics and skeletons. Loud drumbeats made an aggressive theatre group, we had difficulty understanding our own evolving language. A accompanying soundscape. language that we invented as we went along. A language that changed according At the end of the short presentation that Thais Medeiros and her colleagues to which training or performance we were making. In the beginning, it was jazz. made, we were unable to leave: the cruelty of the facts in stark opposition to The language, vocabulary and philosophy around it. Always to make variations, the beauty of the Botanical Garden, and the vibrancy and vitality of the women alternations. To re-enact. To re-create. I am not sure that our new friends with present. post-graduate degrees have the same critical relationship to the language they are The performers left and we sat there looking at the printed canvas. Some of us speaking. There are other masters, but it seems as if the concept of apprenticeship had also received original prints with the same motif. Slowly we stood up holding is disappearing. Now we talk about entrepreneurs and curators, as if they were the baker and the butcher. Our language, we started to talk about a language of our own, yes, maybe there is a language to protect, rules to protect, something that should not be touched! I am a bastard, I am impure, and I am hybrid. I no longer want to be like a veteran car or boat, hidden away because it too costly to use. Rather be an old car or boat with scratches, rust and a lot of mileage. The writer Kjartan Fløgstad talks about unclean art, dirty art, B culture. I cling to this and inside I whisper to myself: there must be a C culture as well. How low can we dive? The stones, the cliffs sloping gently down towards the sea. So much comfort in a stone. So much beauty in the rounded shapes coloured greyish pink and black. Here is a here and now. The trees of Angkor Wat, the roots fastening themselves to the ground or threatening to dismantle the surface of the earth. Trying to reclaim the forest. Taking over, swallowing the splendid civilization that was. Standing underneath one of these trees, words and thoughts become like ants up in the tree trunk. You feel happily small and carefree. Death and decay. The cancer of our times. Our foreign minister says the world, seen as a totality, has not been better: fewer children’s diseases; lower death rates, fewer wars, fewer epidemics. The trees of Angkor Wat have survived many wars. The woman sitting on the little platform inside Angkor has survived the Killing Fields. She is now conducting the rhythm section in a concert given at sunset. We published an interview with her in The Open Page some time ago Geddy Aniksdal in The Miser

208 209 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow the red roses in our hands. As if by a common impulse, we started to pluck the rose All river creeks end, and as we are close to the sea, I save my companion and petals, letting them fall on the skeletons, the statistics, the numbers of victims myself the outburst. We are back on the trail again. The good thing about getting being murdered each year, each month, each week, each day and each hour. lost is the relief at being back on track again. Dropping petals like tears. As if wanting them to cover or wash away the truth. I am strong headed and stubborn and often, if not almost always, I feel Our rose petals could not cover anything. They resembled drops of blood. We different. Apart. I have always wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. hugged each other, and shivered in the heat. I wished, even against my own will, that I could be drawn to a religious practice. Patti Smith says: “Life is at the bottom of things, and belief at the top. While I wished for a communist practice, where we could all live in a community, wear the creative impulse, dwelling in the centre, informs us.” blue overalls and have nothing more to do with clothing. An attempt was made to I think of my daughter. Then I think of my new grand-daughter. She likes recruit me into the religious organisation, The Family International, but I did not to laugh. She likes to be tickled. To be thrown up in the air. I think of women go. I tried to belong to a political party but I was too critical. I wanted to belong pioneers, I think of young male soldiers. I think of the First World War. In Norway, to a movement, a collective, an urge; be part of a good cause, the long march, the we still celebrate May 9th, when Norway was liberated. The war veterans are new wave, the soft revolution. Perhaps I was looking for a ready-made alternative disappearing now. to my own big family. Perhaps I needed to separate from my family before I could My daughter was born with a red heart on her head. It glowed as she entered start to make an alternative one. the world. As she grew it faded back into her. I wrote her. Then my daughter wrote My fellow classmates created families immediately, I thought them old before herself. Daughters go on writing themselves, carving out their path, their rooms they had had time to be young. Perhaps they wondered what is she so afraid of? of their own, their environment. Autonomy and independence are valuable and Settling down. Knowing what you do not want, but not why. Against conformity. expensive. ”Deep inside my heart you find my brain.” Against the others. Longing to belong. Standing on the doorstep. Not going in. Afraid of being trapped, caught, held against my will. Panic if someone tries Morning. Greyish blue streaks in a soft sky. Something reddish seems to come to hold my head down. Wanting to belong and to sit on a hilltop alone. This through. I read in a magazine that the sun, always believed to be either yellow or paradox is my life. Feeling alone with others. In a performance, in our group, in orange, is actually white. The sun might be white. My sun is yellow. Fat, round, the collective, in relationship. We are deeply alone, since we are all different. By generous and yellow. I often think of her. More often look for her. When she accepting this differentness, it became much easier to take part. comes back after the long winter months she is thin, cold and lemony. There is no warmth either. Shining coldly over the frozen earth, over the ice, on the dirty, New morning. Dirty snow outside. White light. The surroundings look old. I pass scarred snow. However, my sun is not one to give up. Continuing to shine, little by the plum tree. And think of my grandmother’s stories. Her tales. She had a library little, like a wood fire, she gains strength. Frozen cascades start to melt, from their of them. She always had a story to tell. As we walked together, and we did a lot of bluish white insides you can hear water music; plip, plop, plip, plop, plip, ice water walking my grandmother and I. Near a plum tree, she told a story of another tree; breaks through, finds its way under and beyond. when we were passing the boulder where we could rest, she had an anecdote. Did My sun gets stronger and stronger, she melts the cascades, shines away the we see the bats? She related teasing them with her long bamboo fishing rod. I was flaky snow, leaving a muddy, rich soil, tempting the first grass and the early spring useful for my Granny. I was her hot water bottle, her hot stone. She preferred my flowers to come out and play! Teasing and tempting. Hi, dandelion! Come out little plump, round body. then! Granny’s husband died during the War. The War in Norway always means As I walk in the dusty waterless creek, I become slightly irritated because I the Second World War when the Germans occupied Norway from 1940 to 1945. would rather walk along the trail, and do not want to admit even to myself that I Her youngest son was five years old. He grew up amongst women. From an early do not like to walk along dry river creeks. I think a vivid image from a horror film age he accompanied my grandmother to political rallies and meetings. He was so has glued itself into my imagination. My friends do not want to believe me when little that he brought a stool to stand on. From there he tried to collect money for I tell them that I cannot really see, or sometimes even listen to, violent images the cause. He used to shout: “Classmates! Comrades! Fellow Workers! Give your or sounds, as I have an unnaturally hard time erasing them from my memory. support now!” Images that haunt me, pester me, destroy my sleep, my calm. Why should I want Uncle became skilled at imitating and making parodies. He took part in them? I think I have a limited capacity for such things: I cannot pollute my head amateur theatre, and sang well. Some affluent people offered to support him to go with too much stuff either. I get annoyed by silly adverts, or lame comments, and to Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, where he could study theatre as an apprentice. my concentration is disturbed. As I walk along this creek trying to suppress my My grandmother flatly refused. Later my uncle married a much older woman and irritation, I think of my father. Papa. He gets angry, gets irritated, and gets very joined the Salvation Army. It turned out that he got more drama than he needed stubborn. Angry, irritated and stubborn. There he is. Here am I. there.

210 211 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

My aunt yodelled. I enjoyed being with her when she was doing that. My Now, to be different, to stand out, is a positive quality. An advantage. My favourite song was about the cuckoo in the old wooden clock. My aunt always uncles and aunts did not think so. Neither did my mother. When I finally looked pretended that she was no good. Her voice was not in shape. Who would want to through her papers I found many unpublished song texts, written from a cleaning hear these old songs anyway? After the usual chit-chat back and forth and many lady’s point of view. please, pleases, like a warm up of sorts, she started to sing. Still, they did not waste their abilities. They did not hide or suppress them. When she came to the long yodelling part I was on my toes; she sang, rocked When Uncle Paul, another uncle, the (for us) famous fiddle player, finally played around, played the guitar fiercely, her cheeks hot, her black hair tossed back. She was his fiddle at my wedding, people were almost on their way home. The women in singing away and the yodels just flowed out of her: cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo lao lei my family always needed a lot of convincing; the men needed a lot of drinking and lao li! The family, her fans, usually a group of about twenty-five to thirty, crammed persuading to bring out this fire, this wildness, this chispa de vida. together in either grandmother or uncle and aunt’s living room, went wild! If we I hope I have inherited some of this, both genetically and from the social were lucky, a long night of entertainment would follow. Little did I know that here milieu. In my work, I have learned to give it a form. To place a form around the we already had our own potlaches. This was just what we did at home. content. Too much content, sometimes in danger of spilling over any form of Songs, poems, stories, charades. Guitars, harmonicas, accordions and container. fiddles. Someone playing the comb! We all sang. Sometimes my grandmother Not the why, often the how. Also with whom and when? My mother had five disappeared to reappear later, often dressed like a man, often pretending to be children. Then she got her guitar. Why go on about mother, aunts and uncles? We drunk. Why? Taking glasses from the others, stumbling and staggering about. She stand on the shoulders of Virginia Woolf, Emily Pankhurst, my mother and my never touched the stuff herself. Perhaps she thought she was daring? Perhaps she forever yodelling aunt. It is comforting to know that. was performing? I am back by the plum tree in the dirty snow. There are some straws left from And at a concert recently, listening to the wild and crazy yodelling of Polka Bear the Christmas Nek, an old rusty lantern hangs in the tree. My grandson and I like and Kleine Heine, I was the only one in the audience who knew the song about to light them in the December darkness. My grandmother has been dead for a the Cuckoo and The Old Wooden Clock by heart and I surprised myself by being long time. My yodelling aunt is in a home for people suffering from Alzheimer’s. both proud to stand up and sing the song, and shy because I was out of my usual My Salvation Army uncle is dead. They both performed at my mother’s 75th habitat. In a split second, I imagined that I could yodel too. birthday. My aunt complained of not having any voice left. My uncle took a My note for tomorrow is to remember the past, though not to be stuck in it. To lot of convincing too, a lot of hanging about, a substantial amount of liquid of look after my grand-daughter. Together we can look for plum trees, lanterns, rare the influential kind, half a pack of Prince cigarettes and ample help in finding a bats. Together we can rest by the boulder. That possibility exists. costume. However, when he came on, he came on. The theatre café became his Even before my mother died, I experienced time literally showing its face Variety Hall, and our gifted uncle was on the stage for the last time with his party to me. Time as finite, not infinite. I understood I would not go on forever. I was piece. I think we all knew it would be his last, and that coloured the experience watching a scene in a performance, full of careless actions, when this fact hit me. It with a melancholy sweetness. hit me like a branch in the face: Geddy, you will not go on forever. You are getting Did my aunts and uncles belong to a generation that did not have the courage older, and then you will die. to take the next step necessary to do what they really wanted? They could all have I often talk about age and death; several of my performances deal with this been members of my free theatre group! They all had secure jobs: male nurse, skin topic. I thought I was concrete and realistic and forthright about death. Realistic grafter, crane driver, employee in a hat shop. They worked to earn a living and had in a rough way. Ha ha. That we are born, live and die. We have been in close fun with their artistic skills in their spare time. touch with death before. On one level. Then this truth hit me, hurt me. Stung. They longed for something different but they did not dare. For my uncle to I was just so foolishly unprepared. I felt alone. Alone carrying this knowledge. I have gone into the theatre would have made him an outcast. Social justice was could not feel light hearted about it, since I myself carried the information like a strict within the working classes. new secret. I had a malaise. I stumbled. In contrast, one generation later, mine, there is a lot of support and interest Jon Hellesnes is a philosopher whom I have come to know through my theatre in my work in Grenland Friteater. Some of our gatherings, after a performance, work. Just as the essays of Virginia Woolf once fell from my shelf and hit me on the during a festival, whether here in Porsgrunn, or somewhere in The Magdalena head, when we were preparing the Magdalena encounter A Room of One's Own in Project, remind me of my childhood gatherings, where music, dance, food, an Porsgrunn back in 1989, I grabbed Life Interpretations as if it were a life line. intense sense of wellbeing and peace occurred in the midst of everything. I read it to help me. In sheer need. The fine thing is that it did help. To read We needed the 1960s and 1970s to take this further step, to fill our hearts and the book every day, to think about its meaning, to look up other philosophers heads with these possibilities. Go live your life. mentioned in the book, to see my life from more than one perspective, to

212 213 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow laugh with Hellesnes about the small, funny incidents that sometimes make us prepare for dying.) The word filosofar is a strange mixture of philosophy and father understand life’s more important issues. in Norwegian. Alternatively, and even stronger: to go, to fare, meaning going His laconic, witty renderings, the personal stories he uses to explain some of away, going somewhere with your philosophy. the philosophical thoughts and dilemmas, enabled me to lift my own gaze, and Yes. I met sorrow, I walked the street, I saw the things I had seen a look further than the tip of my own nose. thousand times before, I saw the ugly, ill-kempt, little area of green around our He taught me about Seneca and his Epicurean stoicism, or stoical neighbourhood pub and I thought that even that ragged patch had a sad beauty. Epicureanism. I reminded myself that to know that you are mortal does not mean that you He told me that it is possible, through thinking (or that is how I worked it will die immediately, and little by little, as spring and summer went by I came to out for myself), to free one’s self from fear, hope and greed, and through that win a terms with my new knowledge, carrying that new knowledge in a larger bag. lasting peace in one’s soul. In the way that we have learnt different techniques in our theatre practice, This life practice or philosophy, a way of caring for the self in extreme Seneca also suggests techniques that we can use to avoid worrying when days are situations of catastrophe or sudden death, comes from Seneca’s proposal for a good. In addition, he reminds us that there is more that will scare us than actually stoical meditation to overcome all ‘horrors’. It is called Meditatio Malorum. crush us. I cannot meditate. I have problems sitting still. I cannot train myself in these The positive thing about this phase of new learning is that I emerged from it thoughts. However, I can read them, and whilst reading and re-reading them, feeling much younger and in good spirits for the future. After all that is where we writing about them, comparing them to my own situation, I can try to will painful are going to be - for the rest of our lives. At a party to celebrate her survival after thoughts away, and time itself helps me to become at ease with the fact that time falling from a high ladder, my friend and I spoke about where we met, where our is passing, and I cannot go backwards. What had I been thinking? That I was still friendship started, and how our directions in life have coincided. This woman and young? That I could still have children? That I could be a trapeze artist? What I met at a bus stop in London, on our way to the first Magdalena Festival in Cardiff nonsense. in 1986. I had met Jill Greenhalgh, who founded The Magdalena Project earlier, I am not quite sure what I was thinking, but I know that being confronted while on tour in Italy, but this woman, Gerd Christiansen, had just heard about with the cruel and certain knowledge of an end, of mortality, hit me with a the forthcoming festival and written to Jill who had then invited her. So Jill’s yes powerful force, coming as it did out of nowhere. allowed us to get to know each other. Then we invited Gerd to come to work with What an irony! I had been so taken with Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality, us, where she met a man, had a child and started to live in Norway. How many of where he both ridicules and speaks with understanding about Goethe, great and us have not had the direction of our lives changed by a workshop, by going to a not so great men who want to be immortal, about Agnes who, in a casual gesture performance, taking part in a project, or going to a friend’s party? I think of when to her swimming instructor, sets everything in motion. Unlike my friend, Grethe we, the Magdalena women, first met: I see us in the cold potato factory in Cardiff, Knudsen, who says she does not want to die because she wants to see what happens drinking numerous cups of tea to keep ourselves warm. Then we are walking by next, as if life were an episode in a crime serial. No, more as if these characters the beach in Denmark, the strong, salty wind making our faces fresh and red. think they are so good, so important, that they need to go on living because the I recall warm nights in Aradeo. Several of us having become mothers by then, world would be a smaller place without them. Silvia Riciardelli had invited us to bring our children to a mother and daughter Our lives, so significant, so forgettable: “Life is a dream, and dreams stay project. At that time, I was working with the poems of Sylvia Plath. One evening dreams,” says Calderon. “What a wonderful world,” sings Louis Armstrong. “Life I presented some of them in the garden. The old family dog was walking around is but a walking shadow… it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and when I started the recital, he walked over to me. Silently. Stood by my side. signifying nothing.” How comforting to hear… Looked at me. I put my hand on his back and he lay down. And he lay there while I recited the last poem, Edge: Hellesnes writes about our need to interpret life, something that we all do, whether we have a (strong) faith or not. We interpret, understand, reflect and The woman is perfected judge. This is not science, not really philosophy either. It is an everyday activity - Her dead something we do more or less spontaneously, more or less reflexively. Body wears the smile of accomplishment, I suppose when the branch hit my face I started to think more consciously The illusion of a Greek necessity than I had previously, and knew again, learned again, without filters that the mere Flows in the scrolls of her toga, fact that we are alive is also a coincidence. However, as the saying goes, since we Her bare are here, only a few of us want to leave early. Death is not a detail. I read in the Feet seem to be saying: Spanish newspaper "El País”: Filosofar es prepararse a morir. (To philosophise is to We have come so far, it is over.

214 215 Geddy Aniksdal Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

later. Just during Sylvia Plath’s poem. Written on a bitterly cold January day. She herself said her poems were to be read aloud, being most powerful that way. Do we find our place when it becomes vacant, or do we carve it out ourselves? We each have a place, in the flock, the family, the group. We make our way. It is silent now. Only the hiss from an artificial fire makes a constant sound. I saw artificial fires for the first time in Wales. Wales is The Magdalena Project. Wales was also one of my father’s destinations as a sailor. One of his ports. There used to be a Norwegian Church in Cardiff. Now it is a café and cultural centre. In the mountains, the snow is everywhere. It is all white. There is a storm outside. There is a noise outside as the wind rises and falls in waves. The snow is wrapping itself around the cabin. Around me. A deep notion of being safe inside, with enough wood, food and water. Water in abundance. The snow. I carried water as a child. Two buckets full. I must not spill them. The buckets hit my calves, and they did spill. Water in my socks and shoes. Two buckets of snow are very light. Even heaped up, they weigh nothing. Next summer, my mother’s great-grandchild, named Anna after her, will run towards me. A new pair of eyes will look at me mischievously. A new pair of legs will take their first steps on the wet grass of the early morning dew. The sun will make patches of light and shadows among the trees. She is running fast. One of my notes for tomorrow: look out for that girl! Silence, only the sound of my pen scraping the paper. The small sounds. The tiny movements. The isometry of our lives. The details visible and naked.

Anna Melia Lindgren Vik, Geddy's grand-daughter

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odours bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.

When I stopped and became still the dog stood up, looked at me and walked silently away. He got all the attention, and he truly deserved it. Never seen anything like it. He had never shown me any attention before, nor did I get any

216 217 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

Dorthe Kærgaard Paintings

Images are wordless, so I paint physical objects with a symbolic meaning to represent À la Carte Transit. Stories to be Told the elusive content of my pictorial stories that mix reality, imagination and myths. oil on canvas, 135 x 100, watercolour, 42 x 21, The ideas - the inner visions - provoke wonder and curiosity in me. Questions in- 2012 2006 terest me more than answers and darkness seduces me more than what is revealed at a first glance. Water-lilies Waiting for a Miracle Working on my paintings’ possible interpretations gives me the feeling of ap- oil on canvas, 135 x 100, oil on canvas, 128 x 100, proaching the indefinable I long for. Escaping reality? I paint because it is a neces- 2009 2008 sity - despite contradictory feelings along the way. Or maybe exactly because of this paradox. I paint to experience what I imagine and seek the answer that will never come. The Embrace Troubled Water watercolour, 14.8 x10.5, oil on canvas, 90 x 70, 2015 2008

Transit. On the Periphery On the Beach watercolour, 42 x 21, oil on canvas, 100 x 128, 2009 1997

Free From Time to Time oil on canvas, 60 x 60, oil on canvas, 100 x 128, 2010 1996

Transit. Risk, Crisis, Invention Enigma Variation watercolour, 11.5 x 16, watercolour, 14.8 x 10.5, 2013 2014

Arrival at the Beach of Eternity Light-footed oil on canvas, 75 x 65, oil on canvas, 50 x 50, 1993 2013

Fish Tree Navigare necesse est watercolour, 18 x 13, watercolour, 14.8 x 10.5, 2014 2015

Interaction Red Labyrinth oil on canvas, 140 x 100, oil on canvas, 100 x 90, 1993 2016

218 219 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ANNA ANDREA VIK ANIKSDAL (Norway) is a partner of Kolab Arkitekter As, an architecture studio engaged in a wide range of activities such as exhibitions, competitions and teaching. Anna has a background from independent theatre, and preliminary studies in fine arts. She is currently involved in small and medium scaled architectural projects, art projects and set design, in addition to teaching architecture. Anna graduated from Bergen School of Architecture in 2013. Her thesis was awarded the Statsbygg’s student award, and received honours.

BRIGITTE CIRLA (France) began a career as a singer and actress after an education in classical piano. Brigitte’s passion for both a capella song and contemporary composition, led her to create Voix Polyphoniques in 1991 and the vocal group Les Dissonantes in 1996. She works as a director of musical performances for indoor and outdoor theatre as well as a singer/actress. As a teacher and choir director, Brigitte has led numerous workshops for amateurs and professionals in France and Europe. She is a founding member of The Magdalena Project. In 2006 she took part in Odin Teatret’s Ur-Hamlet and in 2014 in Alexander’s Secret for Odin Teatret’s 50th anniversary.

CAROLINA PIZARRO (Chile/Denmark) is an actor, director, teacher and organiser. In 2008 Carolina began her research into the transmission of experience, artistic autonomy and how to create a bridge between training and creation. This has become the basis of her artistic work. Carolina’s close ties with Odin Teatret since 2006 and, on the other hand, meetings with her master Lakshman Gurukkal in Kalaripayattu since 2011, serve as inspiration to continue practical learning and research. Carolina joined Odin Teatret as an actor in 2015 and is director of Triskel Artes Escénicas in Chile from 2008. She has performed in Historia Abierta directed by Lorent Wanson; Tierra de fuego (Land of Fire) and From Amagaki to Shibugaki: A Training’s Geography, both directed by Julia Varley; The Empty Nest, performance directed by Roberta Carreri; and performances at Odin Teatret directed by Eugenio Barba.

DAWN ALBINGER (Australia) is an award-winning actress with over twenty-five years of experience in creating solo and ensemble performance. Solos include ruthless, heroin(e), and No Door On Her Mouth - a lyrical amputation. She co-founded performance group sacredCOW and the women in contemporary performance network Magdalena Australia, and was artistic director of the 2003 International Magdalena Australia Festival, Theatre-Women-Travelling. She has taught drama, theatre, and performance at Griffith and Edith Cowan Universities,

220 221 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow and gender studies at the Australian Catholic University. Her doctoral studies, She has participated in Magdalena Project events since she was a baby following undertaken at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, investigated her mother, Jill Greenhalgh. the diva icon and its usefulness to feminist theatre praxis. Dawn regularly facili- tates women’s retreats for High Spirits and is co-proprietor of Archives Fine Books. JO RANDERSON (Aotearoa New Zealand), born in 1973, is a writer, director and performer. She is the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions, a Welling- DORTHE KAERGAARD (Denmark) became a full-time painter after working ton-based theatre production company. She has written, directed and performed in in Odin Teatret’s administration for fourteen years. She is an artist who trusts her theatre productions for the Victoria University of Wellington Student Drama Club sub-consciousness and intuition with its own logic and peculiarities. She lives amidst at the same time as at BATS Theatre, and made television appearances as a stand-up the wonderful natural surroundings of Thyholm in North West Jutland. The interest comedian. After graduating, she co-founded the theatre group Trouble in 1995. In in art stems from her father who taught art and was also himself a keen artist/ 2012 she finished her Master of Theatre Arts in Directing from Toi Whakaari Drama draughtsman, but a great part of the raw material for her paintings was gathered in School and Victoria University of Wellington. Her writing has been twice shortlisted her formative years whilst living in Rome. The past twenty years her paintings - oil, for the IIML Prize (2006 and 2008), she has won Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. As watercolour, mixed media - have been exhibited all over Denmark; in 2016 at the a playwright Jo won the Bruce Mason Award in 1997 for her first play Fold. Her books Transit Festival, the cultural centre Remisen in Brande, Limfjordscentret in Thy, The Keys to Hell, The Spit Children, Tales from the Netherworld and The Knot have all Bovbjerg Fyr at the North Sea in Ferring. Dorthe has illustrated all the Transit been critically acclaimed. Her work is characterised as dark social satire. brochures. Her painting “Transit” gave the original title to the Festival. JULIA VARLEY (UK/Denmark) has worked as actress with Odin Teatret since GEDDY ANIKSDAL (Norway) is a long-time member of Grenland Friteater, 1976, is an active member of The Magdalena Project and artistic director of Transit Norway. She has also been working closely with The Magdalena Project since International Festival, dedicated to themes of interest for women working in theatre. the beginning. Her solo performances have toured internationally within the Julia Varley has directed twenty- four productions with actors from all over the Magdalena network. Geddy Aniksdal has also been on the editorial board of The world. She has written various articles and essays published in theatre journals, is Open Page since the beginning and has published articles in the journal and in an editor of The Open Page and author of Wind in the West and Notebook of an Odin other theatre publications. Geddy is also the artistic director of Sense of Place, a Actress - Stones of Water published by Routledge, London in 2011 about her work as multicultural project. an actress of Odin Teatret, and An Actress among her Characters, published in Brazil.

GILLY ADAMS (UK) is a workshop leader, director and dramaturg who special- KATARZYNA KUŁAKOWSKA (Poland) has a PhD anthropologist of culture. ises in the development of text for performance. She has worked in theatre and radio She completed the PhD programme in cultural studies at the Institute of Polish drama and has been involved with The Magdalena Project since its beginning. She Culture at the University of Warsaw in 2016. The subject of her dissertation is a member of the Editorial Board of The Open Page. was the specificity of women’s experience in Polish counter-culture theatre. She published a monograph on Maria Peszek, one of the most controversial Polish JILL GREENHALGH (UK) has been a professional theatre maker for forty contemporary singers (2013) and an article on Danuta Wałęsa in Feminist Media years. Her career as a performer, director and producer has primarily focused on Studies. She is member of the Polish Association for Theatre Research. experimental practice and her specific interest in the performance work developed by women resulted in the foundation, in 1986, of The Magdalena Project. She has KORDULA LOBECK (Germany) has an M.A. in Linguistics and Literary Science travelled and worked extensively within Europe, Australasia and the Americas. and is a freelance director, theatre educator and arts administrator. Apart from her Her most recent performance projects include The Water[war]s, Las Sin Tierra - 7 work as an artist and director she teaches regularly at various independent and offi- Attempted Crossings of the Straits of Gibraltar, The Acts - Vigia. Most recently she cial theatres in Germany and abroad. Since 1989 she has been Artistic Director of has been touring The Threat of Silence and Daughter and is working on The Book of Unter Wasser Fliegen, a non-profit association focusing on the international cultural Space. From 2002-2016 Jill was a lecturer in Performance Studies at the University exchange of (women) artists, mainly in the performing arts. One focal point of her of Wales, Aberystwyth, specialising in devised physical performance and actor activity is the artistic work with people who live in social and cultural exclusion with training. She has two daughters and lives on the west coast of rural Wales. an emphasis on integrative projects. To link the international cultural exchange also in these fields, always under the premise of working with professional artists, is her JESS BROOKES (UK) is a school teacher, currently working in London. She particular concern. Apart from Wuppertal, the city where she is based, she works a graduated at Darlington University after studying at Atlantic College in Wales. lot in Latin America, but also in many European Countries.

222 223 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow

LIS HUGHES JONES (UK) was born in Swansea, Wales in 1954. She studied MEG BROOKES (UK) graduated from Trinity Laban Conservatoire where she English Literature at Exeter University before embarking on a life in theatre. studied classical cello and jazz vocals. She now works professionally across the In 1981 she co-founded Brith Gof with Mike Pearson and was a member of the UK as a session and freelance musician under the name of Meg Ella, and performs company until 1992. After working in broadcasting, Lis trained as a Gestalt regularly with London Contemporary Voices, folk rock band Gallows Ghost and psychotherapist and now works in private practice. She has a son. Sam Frankl. As a singer/songwriter her first solo release was in 2016.

LUCIANA MARTUCHELLI (Brazil) is an actress, director, teacher and film PARVATHY BAUL (India) has trained in traditional singing and dancing since maker, graduated in interpretation and directing at Instituto Superior de Arte, she was a child and has developed a deep interest in India’s folk and spiritual culture, in Havana; at the Fashion Institute of Design, in California; and at Faculdade specially the Baul tradition and painted story-telling theatre, dance and music. de Artes Dulcina de Moraes-FBT, in Brasília, where she also became an effective She is a carrier of the lineage of her Baul Gurus, Sri Sanatan Das Baul and Sri professor of dramatic literature, interpretation, staging and multimedia commu- Shashanko Gosai. She is a founder member of the Baul Gurukul (traditional school nication. Since 2010, Luciana directs Solos Férteis - International Festival of for Baul practice) “Ekathara Kalari”. Since 2000, Parvathy has been travelling and Women in Theatre, focused on solo performances, connected to The Magdalena performing in various festivals, both inside and outside India, and has organised two Project. In 2008, she created “The Secret Art of the Performer”, an annual editions of Tantidhatri Festival in connection with The Magdalena Project. masters-in-residence with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley, in Brasília. Luciana is working on her first solo performance Mare Serenitatis directed by Julia Varley. PATRICIA ARIZA (Colombia) is a founding member of Teatro la Candelaria of Bogotá. She is an actress, director and writer, and president of Corporación MAGGIE B. GALE (UK) is Professor of Drama at the University of Manchester Colombiana de Teatro. In addition, Patricia is very active in producing, directing in England. She is author of West End Women: Women on the London Stage 1918- and organising performances and events with young people living on the streets, 1962 and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Actress. She has been on people displaced by the war, and widows and children from the most violent the editorial board of The Open Page since its inception. regions of Colombia. Patricia has been part of the Magdalena network for many years and organises the Magdalena Antigona Festival in Bogotá and the annual MADELINE MCNAMARA (Aotearoa New Zealand) has been a theatre Mujeres en Escena festivals. practitioner for thirty years. She regularly tours with her theatre work internationally. As well as her work as a performer she is involved as a director, teacher and PILAR RESTREPO (Colombia) was born in 1958. In 1983 she graduated in producer of original theatre work by women. She co-directed Magdalena Aotearoa Literature and Education at the Universidad del Valle and then continued her with Sally Rodwell. Master's degree in Latin American Studies at the Haute Bretagne University in France. She has worked as an actress in Teatro La Máscara and presently as theatre MARGARET CAMERON (Australia) was an actress, director, writer and critic and collaborator. teacher. She died in 2015 at the age of 59. Her original works are situated somewhere between performance art and theatre and have been produced by LaMama RAQUEL CARRIÓ (Cuba), born in La Havana in 1951, is a professor, play- Theatre, The Playbox Theatre, DanceHouse, The Deborah Hay Dance Company, wright and essayist. She is the founder of the Institute of Scenic Arts of the Performing Lines Pty Ltd, ABC Radio and Magdalena Australia. They include Things University of Arts of Havana and of EITALC (International School of Theatre Calypso Wanted to Say! The Mind’s a Marvellous Thing!, Knowledge and Melancholy of Latin American and the Caribbean), and full time professor of Drama and and Bang! A Critical Fiction! Margaret was financially assisted by the Commonwealth Methodology of Theatrical Research with a Ph.D in Dramatic Arts. She has Government through the Australia Council, its arts and advisory body. received numerous awards and honours for her essays and critical studies. Raquel has been dramaturgy consultant to Teatro Buendía since its inception, working MARISA NASPOLINI (Brazil) is an actress, teacher, movement analyst and on productions like Circular Ruins, Another Tempest, La Vie en Rose, Bacchae and researcher. She founded and organises, together with a team of artists, Vértice Charenton, with which she has toured the world. Brasil, a Brazilian version of The Magdalena Project, with four editions. She collab- orates with a Post-Graduation Programme in Arts and has written a PhD about ROXANA PINEDA (Cuba) graduated in Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy at The Magdalena Project. She is currently mostly committed to writing and working the Instituto Superior de Arte de Cuba in 1985. She founded the Estudio Teatral with groups combining Psychology and Movement/Theatre. She has published two de Santa Clara in 1989 with Joel Sáez, and has performed in all its productions. books: Confessions of the Body and We Are All Part of the Same Cauliflower. Roxana has toured festivals in Spain, Colombia, France and Venezuela. She is

224 225 Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow also a theatre scholar and professor, and as such she regularly gives workshops on improvisation and composition. In 2004, she founded the Centro de Investigaciones Photo Credits Teatrales Odiseo (CITO), a pedagogical theatre research project, which has organised five international meetings. She is the director of Magdalena Sin Fronteras (Magdalena without Borders), a triennial international festival and meeting which has held five editions, the first of which in January 2005. In 2016 she founded Teatro p. 17 Anna Andrea Vik Aniksdal - photo Sindre Wam de la Rosa in Santa Clara. p. 19 Brigitte Cirla - photo Claire Acquart p. 22 Marisa Naspolini - photo Cleide de Oliveira ZOE GUDOVIĆ (Serbia) was born in 1977. She is a feminist, lesbian, art-ac- p. 31 Violeta Luna’s table in Daughter, Transit Festival, Denmark - photo Suzon Fuks tivist, involved in work and research of non-formal and committed theatre since p. 34 Jussara Xavier in Daughter, Vértice Festival, Brazil - photo Loli Menezes 1995. She connects art and activism with the aim of changing the status quo of p. 39 Margaret Cameron - photo personal archive conscience and social relations, lecturing on issues of Feminist Art in public spaces. p. 52 Kordula Lobeck - photo Lothar Jessen She is a theatre educator, performer, drag king, organiser of street performances p. 57 Jo Randerson - photo Owen McCarthy against violence against women and works in the Women’s Reconstruction Fund. p. 60 Parvathy Baul, Guru Sanatan, Guru Ma Meera - photo Ravi Gopalan Nair p. 64 Katarzyna Kułakowska - photo Mikołaj Starzyński p. 67 Ewa Benesz with workshop participants, Italy - photo Celeste Taliani p. 68 Carolina Pizarro in Land of Fire, directed by Julia Varley - photo Tommy Bay p. 76 Jess Brookes - photo Jill Greenhalgh p. 78 Iván Bormey, Roxana Pineda, Ana Lilian Medina, Dorian Díaz de Villegas, Eylen de León, Odette Macías of Teatro de la Rosa, Cuba - photo Joel Sáez p. 107 Madeline McNamara in WhiteMess - photo Pippa Sanderson p. 118 Madeline McNamara in White Elephant - photo Owen McCarthy p. 120 Luciana Martuchelli - photo Johil Carvalho p. 126 Meg Brookes - photo Laura Harvey p. 134 Anónimas, directed by Julia Varley - photo Francesco Galli p. 151 Odin Teatret’s 50th anniversary, Alexander’s Secret - photo Francesco Galli p. 154 Julia Varley in The Tree, Odin Teatret - photo Francesco Galli p. 168-169 Image 1, 4, 5, and 9 Lis Hughes Jones - photo Mike Pearson; 3 Capel Rhiwbwys - photo Mike Pearson; 5, 6, 7 and 8 Sian Meinir - photo Russ Ritchie p. 170 Flora Lauten in Extasis (Ecstasy) - photo Sonia Almaguer p. 172 Dawn Albinger in An Invitation to Sit with Death Awhile - photo Suzon Fuks p. 190 Zoe Gudović - photo Nada Pleskojic p. 203 Nils Aniksdal with other factory workers - photo personal archive p. 204 Anna and Geddy Aniksdal - photo Nils Aniksdal p. 209 Geddy Aniksdal in The Miser - photo Dag Jenssen p. 216 Anna Melia Lindgren Vik - photo Tobias Vik Dorthe Kærgaard's paintings - photos Tommy Bay

226 227 Printed in Skive, Denmark Skive Offset aps October 2017

228