For the last two days I've been researching / writing in the mornings before heading down to dancespace and playing under the insightful eye of impro / movement coach Brenda Waite in the afternoons. This particular combination of activities has provoked interesting results...

Thursday morning was spent neck deep in stage fright theory. The afternoon's play session was hijacked by my inner academic who wouldn't let go of her research. She thought we could find playful ways of responding to it through impro, but she wasn't prepared to give us space to play. She's very serious about her research.

This morning, my inner editor showed up and paired down the academic's stage fright research, but the academic had another itch to scratch, so I let her overdose on the neuroscience of fear, whilst I physically experienced all the symptoms she was researching. By the time I got to the dancespace, I thought I was going to cry, vomit or run away from my own project. Luckily Brenda was there to give me permission and structure to play with it all.

Brenda focussed on getting me present, responsive, light and curious by running me through her standard liberating yet containing impro score (things like- stay with that, go deeper, shift, find the dance of that...). Satisfied that I'd arrived in the room and found my pleasure to play, she set me loose on three timed improvisations (first 10, then 20 and finally 30 minutes). I had some of Wednesday's performance propositions written on pieces of paper, in the playing space with me and integrated them into my improvisation when my instincts told me to. This felt brilliant. To have the freedom to move in and out of pre-considered (but not rehearsed) material.

Tomorrow is a full day of writing, I'll audit all the material I've generated and select some that might make it into the show. I'm not sure how much I'll set in terms of finding an order for the material, I really enjoyed the fluidity of todays improvisation, so maybe there's some clear guidance for me there... 

Come and see the show on 5th February at 7.30 at The Wardrobe Theatre. Pay what you decide at the end. Venue info here.

Facebook event here.

All the blogs from This Work In Progress Project are conveniently listed at the bottom of the first blog, which you'll find here.