Saturday 2 June 2007

Rebecca and site specific chat



Specifically, we were in the kitchen this morning talking about the difference between the kind of site specific work which still takes place within a clear frame (a start and end time, a defined location, a ticketing system which controls access) and the guerilla appearances which she and I have started to do. She's been very successful at creating events which occur within particular frames outside of the theatre space, but she's also done performances which arrive out of the blue and land in some public space - a shopping centre in Athlone for instance. Of course the performances are not really out of the blue at all, since they are the result of careful crafting in a studio environment.

That careful crafting is an important aspect to what I'm trying to do too. It gives the work its integrity. But once the material has been prepared, I don't want to keep it in a glass display case. I want to find out of it's strong enough to go out into the world and encounter whatever the new environment offers it. It is this encounter which I hope can be transformative, both of the material and of the environment which the material temporarily inhabits.

So mornings in the clean and comfortable spaces of Dancehouse (http://www.danceireland.ie/dancehouse.htm)
Afternoons on the dusty building sites of Docklands.

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