Yawazzi Fish Tank

PERFORMERS:
Vaneshran Arumugam
1 Sonnet 27, William Shakespeare, Shapiro Theatre, 2008 /
2 Comedy of Errors, Wits, 1998 /
3 Hamlet, RSC, 2006 /
4 maskhande waltz, 2011 /
5 Still feel the same, from You Expected Something Else, self-written, 2007 /
6 Yunus Hafajee, Cissie, Baxter, 2008 /
7 January, self-written poem, Taxi Radio, 2012 /

Jayne Batzofin (FTH:K)
8 Tsotsi, Benchmarks, FTH:K, 2011 /
9 Acolyte daughter, QUACK!, 2009, FTH:K /
10 Monster Girl, Clowns without Borders, 2010 /

Brydon Bolton
11 Song for the Unamed One, 2011 /
12 Benguela, 2010 / Akoustik Knot /
13 Kardiavale, Conspiracy of Clowns, 2011
14 Heart of Sand, La Rosa Dance Company, 2009

Mdu Kweyama
15 Altyd Jonker, Rys, Vleis en Aartapels, 2009 /
16 Baxter Festival, Remix, 2011 /
17 Tango Class /
18 Heart of Sand, La Rosa Dance Company, 2009 /
19 Karoo Moose, Aardklop, 2008

Rebecca Makin-Taylor
20 Nurse, Romeo and Juliet, UCT, 2011 /
21 Constance, King John, UCT Class Task, 2011 /
22 Then and Now, Gideon Lombard & UCT, 2011 /
23 Kvetch, UCT Class, 2011 /
24 The Treatment, UCT Class Task, 2011 /
25 Memory of Water, Shelagh Stephenson, UCT Class Task, 2011

Lesoko Seabe
26 The Woman, Migritude, Mwenya Kabwe & Out the Box, 2011 /
27 Ma, Op Dees Aarde, UCT, 2006
28 Anna, Closer, UCT Class, 2005
29 Spanish Dancer, Untitled, Wits, 2000
30 Million Man March Poem – Maya Angelou, UCT Rehearsal Studio, May 2006 /
31 Love Rain – Jill Scott, UCT, 2006 /
32 Mammy Louise, The Trial of One Short-sighted Black Woman vs Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae- Marriane Messina, UCT, 2006 /

Luvuyo Simandla (La Rosa Dance Company)
33 Heart of Sand, La Rosa Dance Company, 2009 /
34 Solea por Buleria, La Rosa Class /
35 Domingo Ortega Workshop, 2010 /
36 Sentimientos, La Rosa Dance Company, 2009 /
37 Flamenco Puro, La Rosa Dance Company, 2011 /
38 Celebracion Flamenca, La Rosa Dance Company, 2010 /
39 Viaje Flamenco, La Rosa Dance Company, 2007

Marlon Snyders (FTH:K)
40 Acolyte Son, QUACK!, FTH:K, 2009

COSTUMES:
Leigh Bishop
41 Hamlet, UCT, 2009

VISUALS:
Jon Keevy
42 Beginning with the White Sheet, Yawazzi, 2009 /
43 Under the Stars, Above the Tree, Yawazzi, 2008 /

Sanjin Muftic
44 Autopsy, Magnet Theatre, 2010 /
45 ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela, Magnet Theatre, 2009 /
46 Attempts on Her Life, UCT, 2008 /
47 Vrh Prsti, Out the Box, 2010 /
48 Heart of Sand, La Rosa Dance Company, 2009 /
49 Under the Stars, Above the Tree, Yawazzi, 2008 /

LIGHTS:
Gabriella Pinto
50 Stage Manager on various productions

PROPS:
Suitcases
51 Migritude, Mwenya Kabwe & Out the Box, 2011

Dagger
52 a Shakespeare Production, UCT

Flowers
53 Hamlet, UCT, 2009

SET
54 Slave Church Museum, 40 Long Street, Cape Town

The whole point of Bricolage was not only to sample the pieces, but to hint at a narrative from all the samples. In my mind it was not enough to just put the various pieces of previously performed stage material in one place and invite the audience to watch. I wanted them to leave with a story, perhaps not an explicit one, perhaps not just a single one, but at least to walk away with a journey in their mind. A journey that the piece had taken, a journey that the characters had taken, as for me that is a very simple definition of a story. It is not the complete definition, but I feel the moment that there is a journey there is a story. And for a journey, of which there are many different kinds, you need someone to travel it for you.

So after creating all the tracks with the performers of Bricolage, somebody has to be chosen as the one to do the journey for the audience – and that will be Marlon Snyders, or more specifically his character from FTH:K’s QUACK! My hope is that by using him as our emissary into this crazy museum of performance samples – the audience can piggyback on his reaction, interest and experience. Marlon comes with a great stage presence, a willingness to throw himself in and all of this while working with a cast of hearing performers and a hearing only director (many thanks for Jayne for the swift translating!).

As we were trying out a few of the links between the tracks, I suddenly realized that I was doing a bit of sampling from my favourite film – Ulysses’ Gaze by Theo Angelopoulos (who passed away recently). In the film, an exiled Greek film director (Harvey Keitel of all people) returns home after 30 years abroad, his quest to find the first reels of Greek cinema, shot by the brothers Manakis. His mission becomes epic, spanning border after border until he reaches my first hometown Sarajevo, and so does the movie – Angelopoulos’ shots mesmerize you with their theatrical fluidity. The film is staged (yes staged) in such a way that Keitel’s character interacts with samples of his memory, his country, and film history as his old exiled self. The film for me is that quintessential journey through time and place to find some kind of home. And that home can be anything from reels of film to someone that you love to a childhood hiding place of comfort.

Marlon, with his character, will interact with these pieces of live performance in Bricolage, all while looking for his home. My job until the first performance is to construct this piece so that the audience travels with him on this journey.

We spent the whole of our Saturday rehearsal creating tracks. Everybody got a chance to be the stimulus – get up in the space and give their little something that they would repeat and see what kind of responses it would get. What struck me most of all is how each track began to form its own texture, and the sense of play kept increasing. All the performers began to develop a very acute sense of listening – knowing when to defer the focus to somebody else. It was such an organic creation of live performance, with much humor and the most surprising releases of emotions. It really helped to have such an eclectic group of performers, as we never stayed too long in one mode of performance. I tried to simply sit and capture it all in, allowing the performers to do what they are best at, to play as much as possible.

But now with the 9 tracks we created, the director DJ has to step in and try to make out a story: link the tracks together and rehearse them so that there is structure within the playing, and get it all sorted by the 7th of March. Thankfully, Gabi has taken detailed notes of the tracks, so I can go back over them and access my memory to arrange into some kind of album – I mean live performance.

What Saturday also helped with, was illuminating what the piece is about. A common question to ask, but up until now I was more interested in the process of how to put it together. While that is still a challenge and the reason why I am doing the piece, I can now discuss the themes and the texture of it. I have a feeling it is going to be a slightly irreverent live performance take on the passage of life. The themes from Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring , in a church, with epic costumes, and re-mixed performances interacting with each other to capture each season. If such a thing is possible. I tried to be a bit more eloquent about it when asked by Robyn Cohen, to which I responded:

Bricolage is a celebration of the things we share in life. It explores the simple, yet ritual events that we commemorate to mark our journey from young to old. Bricolage performs how we build these celebrations from all the things around us. A birth, a service, a love, a death – we acknowledge all of these rites of passage, no matter what our culture or place. Bricolage is a story that is built around the small moments that reside at the foot of these rituals, celebrated with the people around you, in place that connects you to something greater than yourself.

What makes the performance unique is how it is told, constructed just like a bricolage, using material that already exists. In this case from performances that have already happened. Dances, music, spoken text, visual projects and movements from different productions are combined to celebrate what is shared between them. It is almost as if a live performance collage is telling its own story. A mix of differently styles, communicating together, to narrate a life story.

The idea behind Bricolage, of using pieces that already exist, comes very much from my nomadic background (Bosnian, Ethiopian, Canadian and South African) and the exposure to a variety of cultures and ways of thinking. I seemed more intent on finding that which is common among them rather than on highlighting that which separates. I found that all the stories I wanted to tell had been told in various different cultures and ways. I believe that at their core, rituals are most shared, and that should be celebrated. This is why, with Bricolage, by using various elements of live performances, I want to bring the together to tell one story, to argue that even though we speak different languages, we are all trying to express one thing. Something not easily expressible, something that connects, something outside ourselves, something that makes us feel alive. Bricolage hopes to celebrate that thing through performance.

The audience should walk away with a voyage in imagination, their own story and a realization that we are more alike than different.

Hopefully tomorrow I can give more of an idea of the plot of this voyage…

The three most productive hours of my weekend took place on Saturday morning with the Bricolage crew. We spent half the time getting ourselves dressed, Leigh Bishop and Alica McCormick were super-fast and patient digging out the old Hamlet costumes and dressing the Bricolage cast, much to their amusement. After that we spent some time playing around with their samples. Still quite early in the process we did have some good moments putting together a few flamenco flourishes, a sexy mask, eerie double bass scratchings, some sliding on the wall, and a monologue about a Thursday afternoon.

Last week had an atrocious posting rate, which is bound to change this week with the following schedule of posts:

• Monday – weekend recap
• Tuesday – technology and the performance
• Wednesday – all about the church
• Thursday – service, baptism, wedding and funeral

In the meantime here is what half of our Saturday looked like:

I get very nervous for first meetings with a cast and crew.

It is kind of like a first date.

Now, I haven’t been on a first date in a while, but from what I can remember they can be pretty stomach upsetting events (I think i was even too nervous to show up for some of them).

Lesoko (actress)

Will I look attractive?

Vaneshran (actor)

Will she find me interesting?

Marlon (masker)

Will she think there is a future in us?

Brydon (musician)

Will I like her?

Luvuyo (dancer)

Will we be able to hold a conversation?

Jayne (masker)

Will we be able to work and create a piece of art together?

Rebecca (actress)

My she in this case are 8 individuals who have signed up to build a performance with me for the Infecting the City Festival that is to take place in the first week of March. The piece is called Bricolage, and is the end result of a year fellowship at GIPCA, UCT. It all started with a very simple idea, to copy a process they do in music, to attempt to construct a new piece of performance using only sections of old performances, to sample. In 2011 I did several performance experiments attempting to find the best method of layering bits of monologue, dance, costume, projections together. I discovered that what is most interesting is when two performance samples, different in style form a dialogue on stage. This dialogue can only happen with the play of the performers, their willingness to allow past performances to engage with those of other performers on stage. Those moments of interaction are when you can appreciate that underneath all these various styles of performance, we are all telling the same stories.

Story is the focus of Bricolage. It is not enough to simply put these individuals in one space and identify how cool it is to have all of them sharing the stage at the same time. Bricolage is going to build a story. I don’t now what that story is yet, I am not even sure of how clear it will be, but those who come to watch us on the 7th and 9th of March should walk out with one in their memory. We have a venue that suggests a story, the Slave Church Museum on Long St, Cape Town (photos tomorrow).

We will not hide from the fact that everything on stage will be something old, something that has been performed before. We will point and identify it. However, we will also re-examine it, juxtapose it, interact it, and build a new narrative with it.

Missing from photos: Leigh (costumer), Mdu (mover), Jon (drawer), Gabriella (manager) and myself (bricoleur)