Thursday 4th October
A day all about ‘Risk’, the first project for the HND Year Ones.
We started off with Ellie giving the production team a stack of printouts of
quotes about risk, from which we were to select those quotes we thought
pertained most to the subject of risk. As with most internet search results
many of the quotes actually didn’t have anything to do with risk other than they
contained the word. So the two Alex’s and I set to the job by creating three piles
of quotes: the definite 'yeses', the 'maybes' and the definite 'nos'. Once we had gone
through all of the printouts, we went back and looked at the 'maybes' and debated
whether each was a 'yes' or a 'no'.
Once we had organised them all, the pile of pertinent quotes were placed around
the room for the performance students to peruse and then select one that spoke
the most to each individual student.
Then each member of the production team would join one of the three groups of
performers that Ellie had formed. I pretty much chose the group I would join at
random but was quite surprised to later find that all the quotes they had
selected had been ones I myself had chosen for the ‘yes’ pile and that all the
quotes had a similar theme to them:
- Eve – Decision
is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich)
- Billie – There
can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability;
there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community. (M. Scott
Peck)
- Laura – The
policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all. (Jawaharlal
Nehru)
- Matt – The
trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. (Eric Jong)
- Leon – We know
there is no such thing as freedom without the risk of failure. (Rick Perry)
- Jonathon – At
the risk of sounding hopelessly romantic, love is the key element. I really love
to play with different musicians who come from different cultural backgrounds.
(John McLaughlin)
The group sat for a while and spoke about their individual
quotes: why they had chosen them and how each quote spoke to them personally. It
became obvious pretty quickly that there was a certain theme to the quotes that
would be the central theme to the performance piece we would be making: That not taking any risk in life can
actually be the biggest risk of all. That many people when they come to the
end of their lives do not regret the things they have done in life so much as
the things they haven’t…
Through this subject we came to the theory
that people who never take any risks and always err on the side of caution do
not seem to ‘get anywhere’ in their lives and don’t fulfil their potential.
Becoming almost institutionalised in their safe (if not boring) little worlds
and how in some cases this can be harmful and even fatal.
At this point a mental image came to me and I offered it to the group: I have observed how in the cases of the more
intelligent types of animals, (including humans), when they have been caged for
long periods of time, do not seem to be able to function properly outside their
cages. That they have become institutionalised and when given the opportunity
to escape or are removed from their confinement, all they want to do is get
back in.
From this observation the group grasped upon the vision of a caged bird taking the
risk to break free of its confinement and spreading its wings and flying off
into the unknown.
From there the group decided on the purpose and theme of the performance piece:
to hopefully persuade the audience to take risks in life, that sometimes one
has to take a risk to be able to live life to the fullest and be free of the
metaphorical cage society and indeed ourselves build up around us.
From there on it was all about figuring out how we would get the message across
to the audience. What scenes and images we would use, what examples of risk
would be most pertinent to the subject matter and also be obtainable to the
target audience (In this case the 2nd years).
As the work session came to an end we decided to each speak to a variety of friends
and family over the weekend, asking them about what they thought of ‘Risk’,
what risks they may have taken or hadn’t taken in life and which of those they
may have regretted. Thus we could get a cross section of opinion on the subject
and use the most common risks in the piece.
In general it was a great work session, with lots of creativity flowing around
the group, as most of the group seem to be on similar wavelengths,
there is a good sense of comradery and eagerness to produce the best
performance possible.
