Absent Water - A documentation
Eileen Dillon
The following article documents my process in developing a site-specific performance. It also comments on the conflicting starting points of sensory response to environment and intention to create narrative.
As an associate director with Wrights & Sites (August/September 1998) I worked for four weeks (half days) with four performers and a visual artist to create a site-specific performance.
I expected that my chosen site, Exeter's medieval bridge, would inspire the familiar starting points of narratives and issues. The 12th Century bridge has a rich history. For 500 years it served as the main route into the Southwest, straddling the then very treacherous River Exe. In 1778 it was replaced (the river by this time had changed its course) and was subsequently buried under streets and buildings. It was rediscovered in 1968 during excavations for Exeter city's ring road. Today the bridge stands on an island surrounded on all sides by traffic. Despite its historical and architectural significance it is virtually unvisited.
I began my preparations for Absent Water by looking for the bridge's 'stories'. However, when I first stood alone under the arches of the bridge it was not narrative or issue that inspired me but atmosphere evoked through the senses of sound, smell, sight and touch. I had the feeling at the bridge of being surrounded by the modern world and yet not being quite part of it. The bridge is hidden from the road by steep grassy banks and despite the traffic drone, it is possible to hear the sound of bird song... Visually, texturally and aurally the bridge is a place of contradictions. Rounded medieval arches are juxtaposed with the ruins of an angular church tower, old blankets and beer cans with lavender and buttercups, broken glass with feathers, damp brick with sun dried red stone.
I began the rehearsal process with two intentions. On the one hand I wanted to create narratives (known territory) and communicate something of the bridge's history, on the other I wanted to develop a performance style that could embrace our sensory explorations of the bridge. This dual intention was evident in the choice of exercises that I set the performers.
Tried and tested exercises informed by previous devising work, e.g. storytelling exercises adapted from Keith Johnstone's Improvisation and the Theatre generated an abundance of narratives. The ghost of a scuttling old woman pushed people into the absent water. A 12th Century priest danced daily along the bridge and a willow tree mourned the absence of water and subsequent loss of its reflection.
Sensory exercises inspired by Miranda Tufnell's and Chris Crickmay's Body, Space, Image heightened our awareness of visual, textural and aural contrasts at the site. Our explorations identified a diversity of atmospheres. A lavender bush became a place of comfort, a dank graffiti-ridden arch a place of threat. Different areas invited different activities. One end of the bridge invited the actors to charge along its length (interestingly in the same direction that William of Orange once marched an army across it) and one of the bridge's promontories invited another to peer down as if looking down from a cliff into water.
It became clear observing the performers that there was a difference between the movement that was generated when illustrating a story or an idea and the movement that was genuinely borne out of sensory response to environment. Movement that is borne out of sensory response to environment draws an audience's attention as much to the environment as to the performer. During movement sessions I often observed architectural features of the site reflected in a performer's body shape and on occasion an unexpected movement, like an outstretched arm emerging in slow motion from a bush, surprised me into looking at a feature of the site that I hadn't seen before.
In contrast, movement generated by narrative exercises or thematic conceptualisations draws the audience's eye to the performer. At best the audience makes a conceptual link between performance and site. At worst the site becomes nothing more than a backdrop for the performance.
The dual intention to develop our sensory discoveries on the one hand and to communicate narratives and themes on the other is similar to the 'opposing impulses' that Cathy Turner describes in her essay Framing the Site. On the one hand there is the desire to enable the audience to look at the site with fresh eyes and on the other there is the desire to present 'a reading' of the site, to interpret it and in some way give it meaning.
During the rehearsal process for Absent Water these two impulses were never reconciled. We found no meeting place between the intention to develop our sensory work and the intention to present something of the bridge's rich history. The decision to satisfy the latter by including notes in the programme came as a liberation. We could now develop the sensory work without reservation. (My only regret is not reaching this decision earlier in the work.)
Our final objectives for Absent Water were identified as follows:
Having identified our objectives, we chose the following structure to realise them:
Group Movement Pieces
I took familiar movement exercises designed to create relationship between actors and applied them to the site. The following exercise was integral to the generation of both group movement sections.
On an out breath an actor moves; at the end of the breath s/he freezes. A second actor takes up the position of the first actor and on his/her out breath moves to the end of his/her breath. This exercise continues with actors jumping in and out of the circle transforming each others' movements until there is no hesitation and the actor's movement spontaneously evolves from the position s/he is given. I followed this exercise by asking actors, working individually, to locate four places on site that they felt drawn to. At each place they were to be still until they were ready to repeat the above exercise but this time actor number 1 was replaced by the site itself. The actors therefore found movements in response to the shape of and atmosphere at their chosen location. I asked them to create a score of four movements, one for each location. When this was done I asked the first actor to show us one of their movements at the location where it was generated. I then asked a second actor, using our initial exercise to create a movement in response to the first actor's movement, but this time the actor must also add the element of space. i.e. the actor had to place herself in the site in a spatial relationship to the first actor. The third actor then had to enter the site and place herself in a spatial relationship with the other two and so on. We continued this exercise until we worked our way through all sixteen movements. In this way we generated a score of movements that were directly borne out of the site and at all times the actors were spatially aware of each other in relation to the site.
The bridge was a very different place at different times of the day. During the day people walked their dogs or ate packed lunches. At night homeless people set up makeshift homes. Subsequently the work generated at night was different to the work generated during the day.
The performance was timed so that the first movement piece would happen whilst it was still light and the second piece would happen during the dark. The timing of the performance was very important. (The changing light in the transition from day to night was one of the features at the bridge that I found most impressive).
Installation work
This middle section was our invitation to the audience to get up and explore the bridge for themselves. Performers and objects were placed around the site for them to discover. This section of work allowed the performers and the visual artist their individual responses to the bridge. One performer wanted to show something of the life on the bridge today. She lit a fire and created a home for herself. Another wanted to show a safe haven that she had found in a lavender bush. She became a sleeping fairy framed by purple lights. A broken arch reminded another performer of the recent bombing of the Mostar medieval bridge. He became a scholar buried under a pile of stones. The visual artist, responding to materials found at the site, notably broken glass, created hangings of fibreglass. Also inspired by the willow tree story, he and his assistant hung Polaroid images of water from the branches of a willow tree that stood on dry land.
Absent Water ran for three nights. Unfortunately audiences were very small. (It rained or threatened to rain on all three nights). Without reviews or response from a cross section of audience, it has not been easy to measure its impact. However on the basis of feedback from friends and a letter I subsequently received from an audience member Absent Water succeeded in its intention to allow the audience to experience the site in a new way.
I've lived in Exeter since 1963 and have not visited this site... within minutes the movement... wove a delicate and fragile atmosphere in which... the site came alive...1