I half scream to myself.
I have just walked off stage.
I am topless and I have smeared myself with bolognese, it’s the christmas party.
Even this blog might be an example of the very thing it’s about, maybe this is also too far, too exposing, too weird, not well thought through, and potentially harmful.
Fine.
I maintain the right to harm myself, recover and learn.
Making performance is a route to joy and understanding for me. I often don’t grasp an experience until I’ve digested it via putting it on stage in some way. I bloody love it, I feel so alive playing one to many, energised, fully free and delighted. I play most with fooling, making everything up in the moment.
I have gotten better at editing myself in the moment, knowing where my edges are, what I feel comfortable playing with and what needs to be worked on in a small group studio setting rather than the public stage.
But sometimes I go too far for myself.
It is the Interval Christmas party, we have eaten a wonderful meal prepared by the members of the collective. I’ve set up speakers, running cables up and over so later on we can dance. Right now it is the performance round of the quiz, we have been given 5 minutes to make up a scene for a fictional christmas show. There are 3 of us and we sketch out a very rough framework to improvise within. It is a quiz, there are points to be won, it will be judged on the length of the journey, the popularity of the song, the surprise of the twist and the wildness of the animal.
Ah yes, I realise later, wildness is perhaps a dangerous thing to encourage me towards, being as I mostly let my inhibitions fall away when I play, I have strong tendencies towards wildness already, so if I’m given further permission then it’s possible that I’ll really just let the boundaries dissolve.
So it is that I enter the room with my two scene mates, I have my top off, I am playing as a grotesque homunculus, I lumber towards the audience beset with unnaturally strong hunger. I profess that I would like to eat them, I get uncomfortably close. Things have already gone slightly off the rails.
Then I approach the table where the food is still laid out. The chain of thought play out in less than a second: Wildness is breaking the rules, playing with food is breaking the rules, what way can I break the food rules most fully? I will rub bolognese over myself, that is the wildest thing I can do.
So I reach my hand into the pot, emerging with a fistful of still warm, juicy, tomatoey, beans and meat, I turn and take a bite, I think I hear people howl, I watch them recoil, I climb on to another table and smear the rest of the fistful across my chest, back and hair. Gobbits of mince tumble down me, catching in the turn ups of my trousers, bouncing across the floor.
I climb down and reunite with my scene mates who have been on their own journeys, We conclude the performance with a moment of unnerving synchronicity and walk out of the room.
Immediately a wave of shame crashes over me. I went too far, I broke the rules without sufficient justification, I disrespected the work of the person who made the food, I am a bad person who can’t be trusted to behave.
Also I’m the current Interval janitor, I look at the carpeted floor, where I am horrified to see oily red stains trailing in my wake. I put my head into my hands and more mince falls to the floor.
So now to repair. I get a cloth and clean my body and clothes, I pick up the biggest chunks from the floor and get out the Henry to vacuum up the rest, I change the bag on the Henry.
Then I make my second mistake: I don’t immediately apologise to the person who made the bolognese. I’m too caught up in self loathing, I spiral internally for the rest of the evening, until I compose a long message to them taking responsibility for my actions and apologising for what I see as my disrespectful behaviour. The next day I get in early and scrub the carpet clean.
Turns out they weren’t that bothered, I had ruined my evening with excessive recrimination rather than taking the risk of being held to account.
In subsequent conversations with other members of the collective the generally expressed opinion has been that this was all basically fine. This is a very performance art influenced crowd, so this might not even have been the weirdest thing they saw in December. I highly recommend that you consider the wider artistic context of your Christmas party before enacting any non-standard food interactions.
So what do I take from this?
I want to give my on stage editor a little more jurisdiction and power when I’m given encouragement to play up my tendencies.
I’m interested to see how I can play with restraint, stillness and simplicity. What joy can be found exploring modes that don’t arrive so naturally.
It is very reasonable to check in with the audience from the midst of an improvisation, to find or be denied permission, to see where our joint limits are today.
If I do tread down the ”better to ask forgiveness than permission” route I better be prepared to inhabit the courage to admit my mistake and have that conversation promptly.
I want to accept that having freedom means that I can make mistakes, it opens me up to transgress my own ethics and even cause harm to others.
I am promising myself that I’ll make use of that freedom in service of art that feels meaningful.