Week four arrived, but without many of the voices that had dominated the previous week’ rehearsal sessions. As I felt that in previous weeks our group had become distracted and lacking focus, I took this air gap as my opportunity to try and steer the group towards decisions about what our piece would actually look like. Our first session was in the Stevenson Hall, the space which would also act as our performance venue. This was an amazing opportunity as, by just being in the room, we could start to imagine and work through different ideas and suggestions, getting used to the venue’s quirks and challenges. We opened this session with a discussion – again – though this time focused on how we had contemplated on the artistic responses of the previous week. From this, we started to see themes appearing – ideas like fighting against a larger power, and how – united – the people can win against societal oppression. This linked back to the statement we had devised earlier, with the concept that we should be assisting those who cannot exercise their Human Rights to be able to do so.
One member of the group – Mindaugas – had the idea of opening with a piano playing a loud melody. We would then have another instrument play an opposing tune, but be drowned out by the piano. Slowly, however, more instruments would join the opposing melody, drowning out the piano and demonstrating how people together can conquer any oppressing force. This seemed like a brilliant idea, and it was decided that this would make a good ending for the piece. There was resistance to this within the group initially, however, with a concern that it may appear too abstract and the audience may not see the meaning in it. I noted that audiences are often smarter than people first assume them to be, and that – as we’d concluded we didn’t want to literally stage the article – abstract ideas like these would be unavoidable. This proved to satisfy those with misgivings and we proceeded.
Just as we were rattling through creative concepts with ideas of how we would split the piece up, it became apparent that a roadblock in our way was the fact that some people were still unclear as to what the article was and what we were aiming to do with it. Seeing this to be the massive issue that it was, I suggested tab we use our last ten minutes to walk around and become familiar with the space before breaking and reading the article again before the second half of the session. Following coffee, we resumed on the AGOS couches. It was there where we decided that the easiest, and fastest, way to proceed would be to split into groups, look at ways people are prevented from exercising Human Rights, think of how these ideas could be staged, and then pitch it back to the group. This way, we could split the work of the piece in three, practically tripling the amount of time we were spending working on it.
My group took education as a topic, looking to examine people’s inability to access high-quality education and why this may be. I suggested that an interesting way to stage this may be through dance, with a performer using blocks to build a tower to reach an item suspended in the air – in this case, a good education. The path to these blocks could be made challenging with things like wind hazards that they must struggle through. Then, when the tower is built, another performer would enter, walk up a ladder, and take the item for themselves. This would show the struggle and obstacles some people go through to access good education and the ease with which it is given to others. The group liked this idea, with one comment that the blocks should have pictures or words on them to make clear what the performer was striving for. With this contribution, we pitched this idea to the rest of the group. However, it became apparent that due to the task not being understood by all, the other groups had been unable to come up with performance ideas. With time running out, we ended the session without a clear concept and without an idea of what we wanted to achieve for the following week – a position I was disappointed to find us in.
What had also become apparent this week was that, despite my best efforts, I still have a way to go in honing my management style. To have other members of the group speak to me like I was a teacher due to the way I tried to steer conversation makes me feel uncomfortable, and has shown the need for me to continue to work on moving away from a more dictatorial management style to one that is more applicable to the collaborative process.