I’m just back from a UK tour of my latest live work, Be Like Water. As I’ve mentioned before it has been the most demanding project I have ever worked on. Reflections on this are ongoing but below are initial ones that I’m finding useful to write down, both to clear my head a bit, and to start to confront or give shape to some of the possibilities for the next step:
- We had a 2 month gap between the premiere and this national tour – because of this we needed to find a different momentum and excitement to the one provided by the premiere. I have to admit, because of the physically demanding and precarious nature of the tech-heavy set-up, I wasn’t short of anxiety. I was worried about how this would affect my creative and performance energy.
- Once things got underway I was reminded why I do actually enjoy touring live work – as the touring team got to know each other better, the piece became more fluid and we were able to make changes to it in a satisfyingly collaborative way that felt like an extension of what the piece is about. Audience response everywhere has been incredibly positive. Some of this touching feedback really does make the graft worthwhile. I know art is important but as we all know, sometimes this is hidden under admin and fighting for money/support- its great to strongly feel it’s benefits sometimes.
- I think the reason this project has felt like so much hard work is because of the numbers of people involved. We got management and producer support very late into the process so the stress of managing a team of 10 logistically/financially was initially on my shoulders with support from Eva Martinez.
- I’m thinking now about the different shapes the support model for my practice could take. It might be an ongoing obvious thing to say but I want to change the weighting between being an artist and a business, spending more time researching and making work. The challenge I suppose is that it isn’t always easy to identify what it is that you need. I am starting to get there. More to follow…