(In)Silencio – A Poncho In Peckham by Camila Fiori

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013

What has been your approach on the material so far and how have you been developing your piece until now? What resources or techniques do you use? Basically, how do you define your work and how do you do it?

Stripping, selecting, moulding, mining, pacing…
My approach with this piece has been part of a new working process, and has also been different to my approach with the longer-term project and ideas for the full-length play. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I see this 15minute work-in-progress for the CASA Scratch, as a separate ‘piece’ to the play itself. In trying to shape something that stands on its own but points towards the whole, the pacing and structure is very different, so the process of selecting and creating material also changes.

R&D
Because the story moves between generations and countries, selecting the best moments, structure and points of reveal in a ‘full-length’ production already means having to make bold choices, so in fifteen minutes, the choice of what to show –
how much, at which point and whether through aspects that are driven more by
dialogue, physical action, sound or visuals – is both challenging and a really useful exercise. For me this opportunity has been and continues to be, as I’ve only had one day in the rehearsal space so far, one of ‘R&D’ rather than polishing something I already have. Saying that, with only three days in a space I have to balance that with refining the piece, and by the mid-end of afternoon tomorrow (second day), I plan to have the piece formed so that the third day is for working into it and refining… Let’s see! I applied with the sense that in having the right space, support and framework within which to be able to look at all the material I have and to play around with just a few of the ideas in a short time period, I would be choosing to put myself in a position of necessary constraints so as to make things happen. So it’s a case of stripping away, selecting, moulding, and writing/devising specifically for the purpose of shaping a ‘taster.’ While crossing both Lara’s world (London 2013) and Manuela’s world (Santiago circa ’73-5/6), I aim to capture some of the key links between them without trying to give a synopsis of the whole play.

Since being offered the residency and before getting into the rehearsal space, I have been looking at all the pages and pages of text – mainly prose but also some poetry – interconnected vignettes… dialogue… notations for action, play-with-spacing… images… sounds… and a few key props(!), and mining through to pick out the kernels of the piece. While on one hand I have a clear sense of it, another part of me feels I am really still working that out – as the creative process needs to be; a discovery. Having too many ideas and too much material is something I tend to find harder than none at all. It is often the selection process, decision making and letting go of what might be the best or strongest ideas in terms of the overall piece, to what are the ideas that will best serve the task at hand, is often where I get muddled – so having this sort of framework is invaluable.

Liveness…
I’m always interested in the dynamic between audience and performer, and when it’s just one wee bod on a stage, it becomes another way of relating to the audience than when working with other actors. I like to acknowledge the audience, and their complicity in the piece – for me that’s the buzz of live work.

‘Defining’ my practice… ‘Making’…
In terms of ‘defining’ my practice generally, as a performer with a background in theatre, dance and visual arts, my work takes several forms – both in terms of the pieces I make myself and creative projects I collaborate on. My background is in ‘making’ – be that visually, ‘sculpturally’ through movement and body or installation, or with text.

Acting…
Alongside making my own pieces, I work as an actress in other productions, either devised as part of an ensemble or scripted plays/films written by others, where, depending on the project, I’m not necessarily so involved in the creative development. But I do that less often as it’s the creative process that really drives me.

Writing…
…is something I’ve always done, but using it in my creative work has been more recent, and for the past few years it has increasingly become the primary ‘material’ I work with. Most of the pieces I’ve written and performed have been poetry, and although I’ve written a couple of short plays for others to perform, this is the first time I am writing full-length script-based piece.

Play and exploration…
I find each of my projects find their own process by allowing story or concept to drive and shape them. Having trained in each of the art forms separately and then in the less ‘box-able’/tangible process of combining them, play and exploration are at the heart of what gets my juices flowing, and when I feel stuck I try to remember that. In a sense, I believe in always being open to exploration in the making, while drawing on a set of tools and techniques (which are always being refined/developed), and very importantly, maintaining the ‘juice’ of ‘you-ness’, or ‘me-ness’ – the ‘bricks and mortar’ or core qualities that make each person’s work their own; the vein that runs through it all, whatever form it takes.

A lot of my work is cross-disciplinary and I’m often drawn to the murky ‘in-between’ spaces: form matching content as I find myself returning to themes of displacement, boundaries, gaps and cross-overs between cultures, languages, audience and performer, the(un)/(mis)spoken-word.

Verbal/Non-Verbal…
Even when writing the starting point is usually sensory or more ephemeral/conceptual, so in a way the source is still the body or link between instinct and brain, which can’t really be defined within the limits of language, never-mind that which is lost between languages when working inter-culturally. Sometimes words get in the way of my instinct to work from the body and voice, and while I love writing, finding the right balance between making as a performer and making as a writer is a process I am learning and varies from piece to piece. Not having a regular ‘space’ to play in, I tend to opt for desk but even find playing on paper is often more freeing than on my laptop because of the kinaesthetic process of shape making through my arm rather than my digits! (She says sitting at laptop two-finger typing!!)

Accepting the word-nerd in me…
Although I had used fragments of text I’d written in previous devised pieces when I was doing a lot of movement-based work and video installation several years ago, really using my writing as creative material was not something I did until I finally realised/accepted that the boxes, drawers and shelves full of scrawled wordy ‘bits’ I’d been gathering all my life were – in the words of the individual who eventually convinced me, and of the word-wielder that is Stephen Fry – ‘not normal’!… Long story (not-so)short(!), I found myself unexpectedly put on the spot with a one-night deadline to write and perform a piece in front of a panel, after which I had to perform it on the radio. So, realising it might not all be gibberish, I began to commit to it more though still not enough or with the necessary discipline, partly due to other acting and unrelated work. After a push in the right direction from a director who liked some bits, I performed some material for the first time, hid away again for a year or so, and then really began thanks to another director who ran a regular sketch, comedy and spoken-word night and had me doing my first proper poetry gig. Gradually this began to develop, and I’ve done several since.

Poetry…
But although my work has crossed over into the ‘poetry scene’, it’s often in a more theatre-based or live-art context. From spoken-word pieces where I’ve been mute, to interactive-installations and performative commissions as my costume-making, quirky head-gear donning nomadic alter-ego – all of which have used poems as the primary material – the pieces are totally different both in process of making and of experiencing as an audience member/participant, to when I stand on a stage with a mic and perform a poem, or send a poem to a reader for them to play on the page.

Boxes and labels
I guess I revel a bit in being able to travel between ‘scenes’ and ‘boxes,’ but in so doing, can find my practice is hard to define! From the National Theatre Watch This Space Festival to the Whitechapel Gallery, Southwark Playhouse to Rio’s streets, I aim to make pieces that encourage integration, question boundaries, and make people think creatively. A lot of my work involves interactive elements, creating spaces for reflection, curiosity and response. While some projects are solo pieces, I also work collaboratively, and often include the public, or audience in the process or the work itself. Theatre is, in my view, for everyone and about everyone.

‘Tangibles’…
In writing the previous sub-heading, I noticed ‘boxes’ and ‘labels’ also happen to be props I’m using! For months now I’ve been in engaging in an on-going inner-(and at times outer)-dialogue about ‘things’ or ‘nakedness.’ I often find that the ephemerality of live performance and wonderfully messy process of making it can leave me craving the tangibility of ‘stuff’ and physically creating product or working with props to feel grounded or know I’ve ‘done’ something – even more so as I am working without other performers. That can be where written words come in – either serving well or at times getting in the way. But I have been balancing that with the idea of stripping down to just body and voice (including but not cluttered by spoken word.) It’s finding the right balance both in practical terms (and that includes what each venue is able to accommodate technically/space-wise) but most importantly, in terms of what will best serve the story. I have several other connected ideas (largely visual and sound based)which may or may not be possibilities for exploration in terms of the full production, but for this piece, I’m opting for some key props and simplicity.

Music and Sound…
I’ll be exploring some sound ideas tomorrow with a musician and if it works for the scratch piece, we’ll include some live instrumental elements. But that might be too much, or just very minimal for now.

Seeds and research… Personal and Political…
The original idea began as an extended monologue that was part poetry part prose, but which I then left dormant for a few years for reasons touched on in my last blog entry. The recent events that triggered my re-visiting of the ideas have led me to engage in a process of more intensive research. For several months I have been looking in detail at the background, however it is essentially the personal story that I come back to when considering the play, and that is something I had the seeds of before, though it is continually being refined/formed.

Nevertheless it is in my view essential to do the research (and this is ongoing, particularly this year of the 40th anniversary since the coup), in order to ensure that the piece is totally credible. Not that there is no room for fantasy or artistic license, but for me, that has to be informed by authenticity and, where relevant, historical/social/political understanding of the context. Saying that, when it’s something both of huge interest, historical and current relevance, and also emotional importance, I get easily bogged-down and end up not being able to get through most of the mountains of material I’ve been archiving! Trying to do so has often been holding me back from the creative work and so it’s important to put myself in the situation where I just don’t have the time for all that and have to focus on the creative task at hand.

Being September, it has of course also been a month of many commemorative events, a lot of which I have been involved with, and I feel honoured to have been able to (re)connect with the compañeros of my parents from Chile who are still here in London, and meet many new people in the process. Although this is at the heart of the overall context within which this play is being created, these events, including the night of poetry and music I curated and performed at in June, and the others this month I have been performing at and attending, are not the piece itself, and over the past months I have put so much time and energy into that aspect of research, planning and supporting, personal archiving and discovery, that I have at times not made enough space for the play, while still feeling totally immersed within its subject matter. But the actual ‘grit’ of it – the mother-daughter separation and the cultural split/disconnection, are ‘subject matter’ I live with minute-to-minute, so though the piece I’m making is not at all autobiographical, it’s again about connecting to the wider context though our personal stories…

Directorial Support…
After being introduced at an arts-centre where we’d both run workshops, Anthony Shrubsall and I began meeting intermittently earlier this year to talk about my ideas for the play. Anthony is a free-lance theatre director, recently working with spoken-word artists on one-person-shows, touring nationally and abroad. He became interested in collaborating after seeing some of my other pieces and invited me to a one-day-masterclass he was running on the director and writer-performer relationship so we could both get a sense of each others practice.

One-person shows…
Although the idea for this piece began as an extended monologue/poem, I wanted to be sure that a one-person show was the correct form for it as it is not something I’ve done before. The fact that the central and secondary protagonists are daughter and mother and never meet after early separation, seems to lend itself well to the form. But while I kept considering whether to introduce other performers, Anthony’s enthusiasm for the project and experience in working on one-person shows became instrumental in encouraging me to develop the play in this way. He is joining me in the rehearsal space for most of the three days at CASA.

We had started to look at some of my ideas/fragments for the piece, though much of our time was spent talking about the historical context. Even amongst people with fairly active social consciences and political engagement on a local level, it’s incredible how little is really known here, and across the world generally, about the true horrors of Latin America’s recent past. Yet the role of British Labour movement and Unions at the time was crucial in campaigning to release political prisoners, and put pressure on the increasingly right-leaning government to support the process of giving visas for political exile and supporting the welcoming of refugees from Chile. All that ended with the election of Thatcher, who stood hand-in-hand with her US counterparts – drivers of the neo-liberal ‘experiment’ that brutally ripped through Latin America.

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