Whose Cloud is it Anyway?

Where is the Author and What is He?

I have started a line of enquiry in relation to Whose Cloud is it Anyway that rotates around the nature and position of authorship / creation in the performance. I was asked somewhat directly whether I was the author of the work and it is this provocation that I wish to explore. My immediate response was one of fear, one of reticence, I was uneasy with admitting authorship over the work - a work that always felt collaborative and democratic. Which leads on to my first question, in a democratic ensemble, can there (should there) still be a single author?

The performance itself was a 6 hour durational work that aimed simply to represent live the materials of our exploration over the past several months. The whole company was exposed in the space, making and shaping a work for multiple audience, utilising, live and recorded performance, sound, light and video. The piece took in themes of leaving/making traces, the digital age we exist within and cloud culture (from Charlie Leadbetter's Counterpoint Essay). During the 6 hours I was constructing the work through a series of skype messages that the audience could read - I was fielding questions and leading the work from fragment to fragment, offering new pieces of work, repeating existing fragments and observing, editing, composing throughout.

In many ways I was a conductor - but more than this, I was authoring the dramatic context live (to varying degrees of success and failure).

However, this authorship, live and of the performance work itself was built upon the co-created material from weeks of workshop and rehearsal. Here is the distinction I feel I should reflect upon. By exposing the director in the performance, like a conductor - a certain responsibility is placed and control over the direction, beginning, end and totality of the performance event is accepted. However, this is only facilitated by the strength of co-created material across weeks of ensemble exploration. This for me is a fascinating development of the role of the director and I think takes me closer to understanding the possible future and roles for a director in a collaborative ensemble of theatre artists.

Co-creation is something that I have also been spending a lot of time with, in preparation for a research conference presentation in late April at CSSD, London. More on that I am sure over the coming weeks, (but for now...)

Lights, the other side

So somewhat bleary eyed and pale faced it seems that I have emerged from the work of crafting 'Whose Cloud is it Anyway' with newly formed theatre company, debunked. The performance, a durational piece:

Whose Cloud is it Anyway? is a vital attempt to comprehend the digital landscape that exists above our heads. Vast amounts of our data, our social interactions and information increasingly exist in digital clouds. Even our books, films and art are being transferred and uploaded by Google and Apple, who now seek our trust in them as custodians to the future of our culture. This durational performance work is made up of that same information, relayed and remixed alongside multiple narratives exploring the necessity for human traces in this digital age. An absent father is manifest in the postcards he leaves as bookmarks and a woman silenced online protests atop a roof against an unjust regime.

What was fascinating was the challenge of finding myself so very much outside of my arena of known practice as a maker of performance. Reading numerous articles and reviews of durational pieces was helpful but little real preparation for finding myself live directing a 6 hour piece. I had the task to filter the material through some form of conscious engagement with both performers and our audience, challenging both and still being mindful of the direction the narrative or fragments were taking. Fragments firstly is something that I had to re connect with, after creating 'A Question of Everything' I became fascinated by the audience and its willingness to piece fragments together so long as they were encouraged to do so, (say by promenading through the work - thinking like detectives). However, was the same true of Whose Cloud.... I am not convinced it was always the case and would like to discuss how we could encourage more of an active audience in the room who were able to trace the work and perhaps then create meaning for us and for themselves.

The piece, which I will reflect on extensively over the coming weeks has been a brilliant risk, encouraging not only I but the whole company to reinvestigate and imagine what our own practice may be and how it can be re directed or perhaps even teased into a new direction or form. The future of the work is now absolutely fascinating, we have had many suggestions and offerings for where it can, should or could be taken and these are all inspiring a lot of honest and rigourous reflection on the merits and limitations of the work. As we go into this final week of debrief meetings, tidying up of loose ends and individual tutorials a lot will be said about the work and I suppose as a part of that work, my own practice. I will try and represent those discussions, fairly and as fully as possible here.