Once I had actually managed to locate our allocated rehearsal area for this week, it struck me A – how limited our space would be for the first half of the session – and B – the number of people who were missing from the group. The decision was taken, therefore, to use this half primarily for discussion, saving anything requiring movement with the hope of finding more space for after the break. Due to a lack of communication on exactly what our aim for this week had been – though I had tried my best to outline it previously – we ended up getting into the same situation as the previous week, with certain loud voices steering the direction of conversation. To combat this, I proposed splitting off into smaller groups for discussion, with the hope that this would allow more voices and inputs to be shared.
In preparation for this week I had looked at articles six and seven, examining their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement. After sharing this idea with my group, however, it became apparent that some felt it may feel cliched, a sentiment I can sympathise with. From these discussions and the feedback session which followed – once I’d alerted everyone to our the limited amount of time we had left – an idea began to arise of examining the Declaration as a whole, and why it existed, rather than a single article. This grouping off and regrouping way of working had reaped positive results, with more people joining the conversation than had participated previously. This idea was quashed, however, by our tutor who drew our attention to the outline in the brief and the specification of focusing on one article in particular. Though I may not have agreed with this sentiment, and undue limitation, a consensus was reached that we should pick as sweeping an article as possible to give us maximum artistic freedom in our response. With this in mind, we selected to work from Article 2:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Following the break, we resumed with some more games, a component of the session now less about introductions and more about just becoming comfortable working with each other in such a close capacity. After these concluded, it was proposed that we do an exercise based on the concept of where each of us within the group stood on a wide range of social issues. Ewan led this exercise, asking questions like whether we felt fully authoritarian or anarchic, or equal or individual. I found this quite a jarring experience, as it let me examine exactly what my own beliefs and prejudices were in a way I’d never thought to before. It also reminded me of a privilege based experiment conducted by Buzzfeed, which I suggested we carry out among ourselves the following week, an idea which received a positive response. Taking our objective from the briefing pack, I made sure that everyone was clear on what had to be achieved before next week. I also took charge of noting down who would take the three production-based roles within the group, with Rosie and myself taking charge of Health and Safety, as it was where we best felt we could contribute in regards to facilitating the final performance.