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And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed; perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers—perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Working with source material

I’m currently preparing a “prac” session on using source material for Theatre Works​ Directors Lab next week.

A bunch of theatre directors in a room and me giving them tasks ! Theatre directors, that’s their bag right?

But I’m going to use some of our projects to explore the following aspects of using source material…

1. Collaboration/portraits – whose autonomy?  Looking at working with Restless Dance Theatre on “Necessary Games” and “To Look Away”
2. Ethics of using someone’s story – keeping your self implicit and culpable in the discussion.  Looking at Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure and when using someone’s story is compounded by making a film about someone who is using someone else’s story.    
3. Noone’s story, everyone’s experience.  Looking at 52 Tuesdays and how we critiqued a character choice while being bound to the same self-created rules. 
4. Fiction and non fiction – writing the “truth”  Thinking about the use of someone’s archival footage in Life in Movement and Sam Klemke’s Time Machine and us using it to speak our viewpoint as well as how we might consider fictionalising (or being playful with) some stories in the most unusual and enjoyable ways. 

It’s going to be fast and furious and quite daunting with all those directors in a room…but fun too. I don’t think i can recall a room of directors before – is there a term for a group of directors?  A gaggle? A pod?

Asymmetry is freedom

Once I purchased a pair of earrings from a guy in a market. Each earring was made up of one strip of leather and one strip of silver – one earring was longer than the other. Later, wearing the earrings and walking around the market a guy (Bryan swears it was the guy who sold it to me, but I thought it was someone else) came right up to me and said “Asymmetry is freedom!” Such revolutionary overtones! I was immediately sold – asymmetry is freedom I told myself, bugger all this symmetry!

I choose freedom over almost everything but it’s not a rebellion or rejection. I try for freedom inside my life, inside a film industry, inside a loving relationship, inside being a mum, inside being a creator, a friend. I choose freedom over money but I still need money. I choose freedom over being told what to do with work, but that took a long time and there are still lot’s of things that restrict it and lot’s of voices I listen to and want to hear. Freedom for me doesn’t mean stubbornness. Freedom doesn’t mean going solo. Freedom doesn’t mean no responsibilities and no consequences. Freedom means choosing – room to consider and room to choose.

In my work I choose freedom because I think I need it because I am not good at being told what to do. It’s a balance. Routine and freedom. Restriction and freedom. Collaboration and freedom. Budget and freedom. And in creative work I do like restriction, tasks and boundaries, rules and schedules, things that can be fought against and bent and used. Everything in service of the work.

Matt and I had a great conversation about Marie Curie. When reading about her she does seem to be more free from societal expectation that some of her contemporaries. Through the lens of history we see her as someone who defied the rules of her world by studying when women could not and achieving great scientific strides alongside being a mother and a wife at a time when this was unheard of. In doing what she did, she appears free, but in reading about her it’s easy to see how lacking in choices she was, how hard she had to fight for everything she did and how seemingly un-free she must have felt. In so many ways, she did much more than those around her who were free to choose from many paths.

As a mother and loving someone and being committed to the people I work with as well, I understand that there is no such thing as a “clean escape” and so freedom looks very different in real life. You can’t just walk away and suddenly have a life less full of all these responsibilities. They still exist – freedom evolves. So freedom for me sits, happily, inside this real life and one of my jobs is to find it all the time.

But what does freedom mean to you? What do you do with your freedom? What do you fight for and push against?

(i don’t know whose image this is, if you do let me know so i can thank them and credit them)

Development – looks like this today

I’m a bit fascinated by process. It’s true that I love to hear about other peoples and mostly that I love to feel really inside my own. I like making. I really like thinking about work. I enjoy pulling apart an idea especially if it truly makes me think about how I behave in my own life. So I am also interested in what works during develop (for me/us) and what doesn’t.

Right now we are in lot’s of development which is fun and frustrating in equal measure and there are lot’s of ideas floating around and all different ways we are pushing those ideas into action.

This is about one project that I am developing with Matt Cormack. It’s called Modern Romance.

Things I know about myself during development

I love to work in public. I write in coffee shops, I do interviews walking the streets and I want to be able to work anywhere. I’m not a big fan of an office but sometimes I miss having a little nook where I keep focused on one project

I like to talk things out. I am a deeply collaborative person and I always need more than one collaborator. I like to bounce, to re-iterate, to shift.

I like input – research, new places, new sounds, real stories from which to grow new things

I’m a bit of a “wanker”. I’m not at all flippant about work. I think making stories is really important and that every choice inside those stories matters. I believe stories are powerful and making them well is hard and so, some people would (and do) certainly think I’m truly a wanker.

I like some consistency but I detest feeling too locked into a routine.

Things I think about Matt and development

He’s a keen observer and needs time that is quiet. He likes some routine but he likes freedom too.

He loves to talk things out and needs fresh energy and conversation to remind him of key ideas

He’s funny but don’t tell him he’s writing a comedy

He’s pragmatic, not overly romantic but writes lovingly and is determined to create a great life that includes writing

He needs deadlines even though he almost never meets them.

We began developing this film, as always, with conversation. Me trying to express what those bits of inspiration that started us working. Us trying to work out why we cared about it.

We spent a week together going between my back room, our studio in the backyard and the Closer office at the Adelaide Studios. We tried to just “card” the film – write scenes onto cards and put them in order. It was quite large. I wanted to set part of the film in Krakow because I had been to a festival there (the brilliant OFF PLUS CAMERA) and had fallen a bit in love with the city. So we had our actress lead character making a film in Poland, where she fell in love with her co-star and then her partner joined her and things got…well…messy.

And matt and I started to wonder what this film was that they were making inside our film. A historical film (hence Poland) but how big was it? We began to research and we rediscovered Marie Curie (I say re-discovered because I did a project/presentation on her in year 2 or 3). The discovery that Marie was in fact Polish and finding out some of the stories about her life made us doubly inspired. What, we wondered together, would happen if we made two films, the original film idea with our actress making a film in Poland, and the film she is making, a historical film about Marie Curie? Head exploded with possibilities and excitement because for some reason we love things that push on fiction and reality, that ask you (us) to question authenticity and keep us having fresh input form the real world as we are making. This had all those things.

So we hit this point and we had carded our film and we had this idea about a particular moment in Marie Curie’s life and so Matt went and hibernated into the work and wrote a draft. And what I will say about that process is this… it wasn’t our best work. We were replicating what we saw in other people’s process and in the way that films are “usually” written. What we discovered reading that draft was that we had set out with questions that didn’t allow what we were interested in to sing, and Matt had persevered through that, trying to make the story work and the characters function within it. It was a slightly scary moment. What if we had put all this time into something that we didn’t want to make? We have had the great privilege over the last 5 or 6 years of taking everything that we have worked on (for any real length of time) into production. We didn’t like this feeling.

And so we rethought our process. What is good about us writing together? What skills do we have? Where is our combined strength?

Since that moment we have worked in a very specific way and it’s working (phew)

We switched to the Marie Curie film and we plotted the story in the simplest terms. We fleshed that out to include more about what each character wants at any one time and the purpose of each sequence. Our outline.

Now Matt writes a scene (or sequence) on his own based on our doc. He researches, thinks, finds the solution for how to do what we want them to do and creates these gorgeous scenes. He sends each one to me. I read it on my own, think it through and then we get together (in person, phone or skype) and read the scene aloud and discuss changes. In this way my gut response comes out easily and I also have a chance to see how good he is at creating scenes and fleshing out the characters in action and dialogue. It gives him room for offers and me a chance to give detailed response. He takes that and reworks the scene before we discuss the next and he moves on. It’s time consuming but wonderful and I love it.

We are doing that at home where we are close together. He comes to me at the office, in our back studio or on set if we are filming or we talk remotely, but generally we are helped along by long coffee shop talks and occasional afternoons of vodka, to keep us in the work. We are old friends and I treasure this time where we circle around from the work to our lives and back.

But Matt is about to go on an adventure to NY for three months with his lady. And so we are going to have to work remotely. And now that we have discovered this glorious system it makes me nervous. But you can’t be afraid of change right (or you can but you have to go for it anyway). So we (with the help of our producer Bec) have set up a schedule to work in. I get up at 6:30am and walk then return home for a cup of tea and to read the script he has written that day (NYC is at the end of their work day the day before, just as we wake up here in Adelaide).   Then I ruminate for an hour and then we talk on skype, read the scene, give feedback and he returns to his NYC night, I have my normal work-day and repeat the next morning. I hope it works.

And how will I go with that routine? Will I settle into it because it’s creatively productive or will I want to smash it apart?

Freedom is everything, but it doesn’t always get everything done and I would like to get this done. Let’s see.

Learning about your body

How did you learn about your body?  Did you mum tell you?  Did you examine it physically, emotionally, scientifically?  Did you listen to friends who described every activity they had ever undertaken, speaking in gory detail about every sensation and fluidious touch? Did you learn by fumbling along the way through monthly changes and burgeoning hormones and…well…fumbling?

I think i learnt from all of the above.  I was never made to feel shame about my body or about sex.  Sex was always a healthily respected thing to talk about in our house – probably sometimes in too much detail – and i’ve probably continued that joyous (and perhaps a little cringe-worthy) conversation into my home with my daughter.  But really i am still fascinated by our bodies and the way they work, by the power of sexual feeling – by it’s normality and wonder and by the way my body can sometimes rule me and sometimes be beaten to submission by my brain.  So i am still learning a lot about my body.  How about you?

Who taught you about that body you have, and how?

Is your body a place of private parts or do you share it willingly, easily?

Does it still hold surprises?

(You can respond via the “call for stories” page)

______________________

PS – thanks all for the responses last time – in long story, quick message and coffee fuelled conversation – i appreciate it immensely.  Here are some thoughts from that…about when people first noticed their bodies.

Someone feels like their finger IS their mother or the thing they have most like their mother.  And i love this. She also expressed that she has always wanted to have a chance to say this.  And i love that too.

Someone wrote about the change in how they felt about themselves (from feeling fat and ugly and unloved) while posing for life drawing classes “It was at that moment  of standing naked in front of art students at the North Adelaide School of Art I came into my body. I remember it clearly. I became aware of my own sexuality and for the first time felt good about my body. I went to be a life model for many years, both in SA and NY for painters, sculptors and even an Episcopalean Priest, who thought i was a unique beauty.”

Someone wrote about becoming “more aware of my body both in an aesthetic way and a functional way” when becoming a stand-up comic.  ” It made me really aware of how I use my body to convey humour. It made me aware of how my body looks when I’m performing for people. I’m aware of how it functions when I’m on stage”

Someone talked about being aware they had a body because of being told to cover up…and “I also knew I had a penis, which I liked”

Thank you

Portraits

I’m working with some of the guys from the ensemble at Restless Dance Theatre and Tilda and Sam from 52 Tuesdays, to create a series of moving image portraits to hang at Carriageworks in 2015 as part of an exhibition called 24 Frames Per Second. 

Restless is Australia’s leading dance company working with young disabled and non disabled people to create dance theatre.  It’s an integrated dance company where the art is made by young people for a diverse audience and one of the great things is that it’s a place where dance is used as a mode of expression which allows people to speak eloquently to everyone.

Which is sometimes a challenge for me…cause i talk a lot…and when i’m directing i talk through a lot of things…

The first few sessions were a relief.  i remembered how good these guys are at creating.  They are a group of people who work every week to create movement and they do stunning shows.  I am always captivated by the mix the inhibition but also how the performers frailties and insecurities and individuality actually stand front and centre with them.  These are not “tools” or bodies that are trained to do very specific things, they are very much themselves, and from that comes movement and performance quality that i think is divine.  But they are also really skilled – they “make” all the time.

6 years ago we made a typtich of short dance films with them.  Necessary Games was a feat of collaboration working with the performers (who build much of the movement) alongside a choreographer/co-director for each one of the three films and a creative team across it, including Gaelle Mellis (the wonderful designer behind so many of the Restless shows) and Bryan Mason (cinematographer/editor) plus DJ TR!P for music.  I Love those pieces.  They continue to screen all over the world…happily.

Some of the performers from Necessary Games are still in the ensemble, but this time i am working with three people i haven’t worked with before.

Michael

michael colours

Chris

chris colours

Catherine

catherine colours

Working with us this time is Sam and Tilda from 52 Tuesdays.  I was very interested in messing with our process (all of us), so working with people that i spent a good long year creating really naturalistic scenes for a film with the Restless folk, who create dance theatre.  i wondered what the mix would bring.

sam colours

Sam has been working in with us for the workshops, but Tilda is away acting in a new Australian TV show and doing that TVC as well…but she returns soon…

Our workshops consist of experimenting with non-movement stuff – like choosing favourite colour combinations and bringing in objects that help explain yourself- to movement tasks.  Michelle Ryan (Restless AD) and i generally ask the group to each work individually and create some movement to share.  Sometimes we have worked simply with words – frustration, joy, fear.  Sometimes each person has chosen an image to respond to.  Sometimes we have worked with other ideas – a caged lion for instance.  Last time we worked to recall a moment or feeling from their week and they turned those feelings into movement.  They are a really cool bunch – all very different – but so far, i’ve found it best when they are all there in a group.

So i am loving it, but i also just started to realise that i have to make some decisions and shoot these things at the beginning of the new year…

we are creating moving portraits  but our references are a lot of regal, traditional painted portraits like this of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha from the National Portrait Gallery in the UK.

NPG 237; Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha replica by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

and also some contemporary re-workings like this from the excellent Dorothee Golz 

*temp*

But i’m not sure yet whether to create a set for everyone, or to film in locations but light it like a painting…or maybe there is another painterly way…

so the movement is coming along well.  Hopefully i can navigate this holiday period to still mean we can make these things in Jan

52 Tuesdays VOD and DVD in OZ

If you are in Australia or New Zealand and you haven’t seen 52 Tuesdays yet, well now you can, in the comfort of your home

It’s just been released on DVD and VOD.

You can purchase it on DVD from us HERE

Or you can view it on many VOD platforms including ITUNES and DENDY DIRECT

For those of you in Europe and the USA- it’s yet to be released, expect it early 2015. You can check this page 

Enjoy

Horizon award

The Horizon Award.  Established by Christine Vachon, Lynette Howell and Cassian Elwes to get a young female director to Sundance to hang with them and see how it all works. It’s for new directors and i think only Americans.  Right now they are raising money for it.  The stats about women directing films in Hollywood are so terrible, this is a good step.

Imagine one in Australia.  Which festival would be best?

Watch a video from them here