Theatre on repeat. A bizarre thing. When you shoot something for film, the act of repetition is a given. You do it, do it differently, shoot it differently, move on.
Theatre/Performance/Whatever I'm calling it today is the art of creating something for a live act, and exchange between creator and whatever witnesses is near enough to see/hear it. This manufactured live act becomes subject to repetition on a daily basis, eight shows a week.
What happens when you take a theatrical moment and repeat it over and over for an audience of one, straight down the barrel of the camera?
Interesting to observe today. The ephemeral nature of live work, a bitch for continuity. 'Do it the same again' is the very thing we avoid in theatre, albeit subconsciously. There is no 'same again'.
The art of filmmaking provides the other source of great creativity- idleness. There is that great moment in filming that is not unlike the tech rehearsal- the performer is onstage, in costume, under lights. Sitting around waiting for the next setup, some of the best jokes of the process emerge. The kind of humour that audiences don't get to experience; in-jokes, light-hearted abstractions of their characters put in absurd situations. A conversation three days ago about obese people buying two plane tickets finds itself returning when an actor in a fat suit tries to sit in the seating bank. A brief glance at an amusing cover on a community newspaper gives birth to a new character that, once given a funny voice, provides entertainment to outlast any change of lighting state.
It's so often that at this point you realise you have just watched a group of performers turn into a company. A little family that will break apart at some stage in the future, but for now is all the tribe we need.
I must be getting sentimental, tomorrow is the last day and we've all but accomplished everything we set out to do.
That means that tomorrow we will go out of our way to fuck it all up. If we can ruin it all with completely different ways of doing absolutely everything, and it all survives and strengthens, then we've done our job.
x nic
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