pretending to direct teenagers

Another day at Kingston Arts centre. Morning of logistics. Organising dates, delegating jobs, laptops, diaries and money talk. The four of us on the theatre floor making phone calls, making lists, making dates. Making a show.

We planned our session pretending we were directing a show of teenagers. “Well we really want to work on that scene, so maybe we should give them a score and see what they come up with.” “They’ll need a break after that because it’s pretty hard work” and “we definitely need to play a game at the start to get them warmed up”

Christy made up ‘superhero tiggy’ and lead us in the Anni Davey make-a-routine exercise. Did school of fish ‘against the wind’ Lots of cute, funny moments that we captured on camera.

As four o’clock came round it started to get hard. When we finally sat, three of us across Nona’s bench seat, we talked about how we are like the teenagers. We need to do a proper warm up and connect, we need to ease our way into things. It’s hard to direct something from the outside and ease your way in. Starting to set up a process for the three of us to work together and realizing all over again that we have never done this before.

Drove through the suburbs looking for the right kind of chin-up bar for Christy to spin around. Playground after playground has been safety-ed into oblivion. It made us all sad that the world is so scared that there is less fun in it. After checking several we gave up and headed back to Luke’s dads. Erin had made spinach and ricotta lasagna with potato gems. Christy edited the day’s footage while Luke made phone calls and I whispered ‘you see, I told you work was only done til after dinner.’ Christy raised her eyebrows and smiled. It’s a race every day and there’s always something to do.