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The beginning

The Beginning instances my ongoing performative exploration of how dramaturgy, writing and performance coalesce. I considered how text, devising, personal experience, collaboration and interpretation weave together to create texture. The project explored two main ideas: how previous experience trespasses into our present; and how the dialogism of collaboration obscures the stability of a text. Working with performers Nicki Hobday and Ollie Smith, each of whom has previously performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we explored mnemonic traces brought to performance from elsewhere and ‘elsewhen’, working with relived experiences as ‘play-texts’ and using the recollection of past performances as a dramaturgical tool. Here I deconstructed the acts of both ‘writing’ and ‘playing’ text to ask how we perform writing and how writing performs. Having previously promised never to perform again, I stepped outside my work and into its margins, both physically and metaphorically (sitting in the wings; being an ‘outside eye’). Writing a script for myself to perform, I then passed it to be rewritten for Ollie, and again for Nicki, such that it became composed of a shared handwriting. Giving ‘my’ material to others, I did not perform, other than as technician and prompt. This was an attempt to discover an ‘autographology’, where autobiography meets the study of handwriting. My research is informed by parallel experiences as dramaturg for Zoi Dimitiou, Hetain Patel and Reckless Sleepers. I have presented associated research in the paper ‘Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre: Reflections on the role of the dramaturg in contemporary performance’ (2012), and published thoughts on my work with Reckless Sleepers in ‘Thinking inside the box: An internal dramaturgy at work in Reckless Sleepers’ Schrödinger’ (2013). Various iterations of The Beginning toured the UK in 2012-13. A British Council showcase can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOEJVxc-qBg and a blog of the process at makingthebeginning.tumblr.com.