Post 13: AJ: What is screaming?

Ambient Jam

Image: Roswither Chester

A contemplation of what is screaming

Charles, our musician, amplifies the growls and squeaks he hears from the dancers, from all of us, in the room.

This carries personal resonance.
I wonder at when I have been mauled by a critic, undercut by an administrator. What are those screams. What if I could amplify their sounds, as Charles does, play out the emotions behind their words?

This would be 'drama therapy', in a way, but more cut to the chase. What are they really expressing, perhaps the chasm that opens in their world in contemplating something new: a primal scream that just roars for its own sake; that roars and screams because something is shifting, something is new, receiving information that it does not know what to do with yet, or, feeling the new and being shifted and then screaming because of it.

Who breathes this process, who in our lives, which bureaucrats do and don’t, which Commissioner or funding body. Artaud would have nailed it: sighs and screams. Being pushed, nudged, re-minded, re-considered.

The problem is, how to deal with the supposed power such people hold. The scream of their authority. What do I do with this. Do I have to sit on my hands, soften my words, dumb down…or, just wait, until the screams subside.



c. Z Soboslay 2015.

Post 2: ARRIVAL

Bodies and discombobulations

So my plane here was delayed 6 hours because someone had a cardiac arrest on flight coming in from Singapore. The airline told everyone the truth; consequently, most people were good about the delay. Of course, each of us could hear the penny drop, reminding us of our collective mortality but in a gentle way. Nothing fell out of the sky, nothing exploded mid-air; but for one person, something seized up in the small box-safe that held her heart. 

Landed and lost

Every first time anywhere, my cognitive functions are disarmed. I look at new coins as if they were a mystery, unfathomable; I head out the door—any door—in completely the wrong direction. I have no compass; the sun cannot direct me for a few days. 

But I am not a complete alien to myself.  I can talk to and see my family back home via Skype, my eyes and voice known to them and theirs to me, no matter what else sags and strains with jet-lag. How strange when those glitches happen, when time stands still mid-sentence and my loves are frozen in time, whilst they are still thinking, breathing, gesticulating, in their own corner of the globe. And when the system reconnects, their sentence finishes, they finish the sentence.  What has happened to time, in that moment? Where did it go?

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

Post 1: INTRO: Ambience, Jam, Elders, and London Calling

June-August 2015

                                          "Charlie Chaplin Walk. No Pedestrians". 
                                                          London, near Southbank.
                                                             
                                        

This blog has been set up to record my journey to London to work with Entelechy participatory theatre company for two months, June-August 2015. I received funding for this journey from the Community Partnerships section of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Entelechy (http://www.entelechyarts.org) currently runs ongoing projects for groups of Elders (the 7 Ages Theatre Company, 21st Century Tea Dances, and a weekly gathering of artists and participants called 'Meet Me at the Albany'), as well as outreach programmes, trainings at Barbican learning lab, cross generational 'happenings' with Siobhan Davies Dance studios and 'Ambient Jam', a participatory sensory development and movement class for people with profound and complex disabilities.

Entelechy Staff: AD and head of the 7 Ages Theatre Project: David Slater. Creative Producer and head of Ambient Jam: Rebecca Swift. Director of Meet Me At the Albany: Dominic Campbell. Office manager: Lisa Brailsford. Entelechy Executive Director: Teresa Veith.  Elders' Flying and Falling theatre project co-directors: David Slater and Vicki Amedume.

The blog also includes ramblings through London, items on health, ageing, austerity and abundance, and theatre, dance and music reviews. Each entry is labelled according to subject interest.

Images from the 7 Ages, Meet Me.., Ambient Jam and 21st Century Tea Dances are courtesy of Entelechy. All other photos by the author, unless otherwise stated.


All text c. Z Soboslay 2015.