Last Reflections

Last night we performed Echoing the Ghosts at Galatos, the Moving Image Centre group presented the outcome of their 3 weeks spent workshopping with us and I officially ended my time as creative director for The Literatti.

When I explained my crazy set idea about lamps and giant picture-frames to Christian I was sure he would tell me it couldn't be done. But he spent about 10 seconds thinking, eyes to ceiling, and then said that First Scene had big frames we could probably adapt and he knew where we could get some light bulbs. Awesome to have him co-directing and there to facilitate wonderful things with the First Scene props department. I was stoked with the way the stage looked last night. It was fantastic to perform in it. Echoing the Ghosts was the perfect way to crown the end of my time as director.

It has been an amazing 3 and a half years full of things I never expected I would do. We've toured twice to Whangarei, once to Parihaka, once to Dunedin and once two of us even toured to Ubud in Bali. Camp Literatti back in 2008 as we prepared for Word of Mouth was a major highlight and something I hope we get to do again. Getting to work with Nikki Patin last year on Growl, working with Craig Humphries, Just the Tikit and Karen Hunter and collaborating with digital artist Kate Barton for One Foot Forward the year before - more things I'll never forget. We've made some freaking awesome pieces of performance art in this time.

From the very first duets that we performed at The Kerouac Effect in 2007 - Getting Game Jaded with me and Murray Lee, and a Kerouac piece by Andra and I - the collaborative performances have just consistently got my wheels whirring. Later on we'd adapt Alternative Angels and send it through a series of reincarnations that would see it eventually performed with an animation projected on a giant screen as a theatre-piece. Shane and Andra started melding poetry and song. Murray Haddow got Murray Lee performing poetry in French with him for the Dunedin Fringe Festival. Shane performed No Fixed Abode with Craig Humphries on the broom-bass. Murray Lee got audiences creating his backing tracks for him in Train Gang. Christian and I started getting complex on the layering with The Thing Is in One Foot Forward. We made poetry across the globe with Nikki Patin.

Oh there are so many things that we have done and it's been hard work, but an honour to have had a hand in making those things come about, in creating the space for the other literartists to create what they have - and they have created so many cool, cutting edge, inspired, funny, sad, bitter-sweet, beautiful pieces of poetry and performance.

I've learned a lot. I really didn't know anything about events or directing the creative process when I started. I remember being stunned at Shane's suggestion I take on the role. Hopefully the people I've shared the journey with have grown from it along the way too. It's hard to know what it means to other people really. It is so intangible a thing, to have been a director of these performances that live for such a short amount of time and are only ever witnessed by a select few people, when really all you did was facilitate something anyway. But I am proud of it nonetheless.

Finding a new Creative Director was a task in itself. At the end of 2007, I had my eye on Charis Boos for the role, but she got whisked away to Wellington and no one else was prepared to do it at that time. They were probably right to be wary - it is a taxing job! At the end of 2008, Murray Lee started to prepare for the role in 2009. But then he got domestic responsibilities and decided to pull out. I have no idea how I managed to keep the group going at all while I did my Master's study in 2008 and then wrote my thesis last year, but somehow it happened, we produced Growl. And we've pulled through stronger than ever.

I'm glad for this time, for these people I have had the opportunity to work and play and create and cry and laugh with.

Thank you.

Today I did some gardening. Next weekend I am going to finally type up and begin editing my latest poetry. And then I am going to play around with some new performance stuff. Just for fun. Because I will have time.

I hear Christian has hooked us up to evolve Echoing the Ghosts in collaboration with the Wallace Art Trust, so I can't wait to see what he gets out of me for that. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to be directed and led into new areas of myself in that way. I can't wait.

And to part, here's an interview with Christian, Sabrina and I in Renegade House.

http://renegadehouse.co.nz/?p=272

I'll see you all next time - as a plain old performance poet and I'll be loving it!

Over and out,

x

Miriam

Things are heating up

With only 3 weeks until Echoing the Ghosts opens at the Corban's Estate chapel building (September 18th), one might say that things have been moving rapidly since our return from Whangarei. We're also performing the same show on September 25th at Galatos.

Last weekend we watched the footage of the Ghosts previews we performed and took things up a notch. Now we are preparing for our first rehearsal in our performance space at Galatos. The set is about to be constructed. I don't want to ruin anything, but this involves suspending things from ceilings and collecting vast amounts of lamps.

Each show is going to be slightly different, the content the same, but with such vastly different venues, the set and lighting must adapt.

The chapel show is going to be more intimate, with the smaller venue. The building itself, being historical in vibe, will become part of the scene; though the show itself has almost no religious content, I can't help but wonder how the building itself could change the lens people view the poetry through. This will be interesting to observe. While we have full sound capabilities at the chapel show, the lighting side of things has required some inventiveness, with what we think will be beautiful results. It's just not the kind of thing you could achieve in a big venue, with a stage like Galatos.

But at Galatos we get to present the result of a three-week series of workshops with moving image artists from the moving image centre as a prelude to the main event. At Galatos, you'll be further away from the poets, but there's capacity for full lighting and more room to move around in.

We've all been rehearsing with our music hard out, and will start rehearsing with our sound tech on the 4th. After so long with these poems, you better believe it feels good when you finally start to get your music cues bang on every time!

Sabrina and Christian just left after an hour or so of extra rehearsing - our multiple person pieces have become so much more complex, and cooler. We've been doing this since 2007 now, and it's great to be at a point where we can now start experimenting a bit more. Daniel and Christian have THE most awesome duet where the product of Jung's mind is pitted against that of Voltaire's. I love it. NIN's music is freaking awesome, travels us everywhere, it is amazing that they made this kind of project possible. I wonder if they ever got our emails saying we were doing it. We did run it by some official representative in Auckland, so it got a 'go ahead.' But I wonder if Trent Resnor himself knows. It would be cool if he did.

Last night Christian, Dan, Shane, Murray Haddow, Anna Kaye and I, trooped into Poetry Live to check out the guest appearance of Gus Simonovic and his new group Printable Reality. The name is highly misleading, because they're actually a brand spanking new performance poetry group. We are pretty stoked because on their website they proudly state that they combine theatre, poetry, music. We think it is about time that another group of people come out and try their hands at it. I'm especially pleased to see that they haven't just taken to reciting poetry over music and thinking that they've made it - but that they've also tried their hands at the theatre component of what we've been doing too. Totally jealous that Siri is Gus's girlfriend and not mine though - a beautiful dancer - oh we've been planning on working dance in since forever, Haddow and Shane did it out at Lopdell a while back, and there was that awesome collaboration that ummm, damn I forget the artists, they presented photos of it at Winter Warmers at the art gallery in 2009, was great. Anyway, awesome to see that in action. Pissed we didn't get to it first!

Anyway, it's time that someone else has come along and stoked the revolution in word again, it was needing it. With us off workshopping for a year, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in spoken word in Auckland aside from Freaky Meat, which has continued to churn out the jewels. It's be great for us to have another group of peeps making stuff along the lines of what we do, great things can only come of it, there will be some local people to respond to, instead of having to turn only to other countries for connection with other people doing what we do, (not that we're about to stop doing that).

They've got a real collection going on, including resident visual artists, and of course Siri Embla, the dancer - who brings other dancers too. So I expect they are going to produce some cool stuff.

Last night I caught their guitarist, and then Gus performing with the guitarist, while Siri danced. One dance was a bizzare thing involving a chair that I won't go into. It was emotive to say the least. They projected images onto a white-clothed dancing body and I thought it was amazing. We think they're going to do some really good things together. If you get a chance, check them out sometime.

Here's to performance poetry though, may it live long and prosper!