Team Effort: A Room With a Hue

The whole reason for moving to the Southside Studios was to find a place to work more effectively (more effectively meaning ‘not in my bed’) yet this week I have moved into another part of the building to work even more effectively. This act of taking the body out of a familiar space to help the focus is great in theory but not so great when you literally run out of places to go. Before this year is out I will have to physically move to another country to maintain my effectiveness.

But what is effectiveness anyway? It’s all crap. Can’t I just wait for inspiration to hit me? I really shouldn’t be comparing my artistic output to my output when I had a structured job in FE. The whole point in leaving there was to help me find out where I should be and how I want to continue as a writer and theatre maker.

Cue Gilly cracking the whip (see previous blog) even though I asked her to. So I have been resident in a pentagon shaped light box with infrared heaters and some artwork on the walls. There are worse places to be really. The light is incredible. And here I have been working on some new stuff as part of my Team Effort development. Throughout the year I plan to create a new body of spoken word/poetry and work on not being afraid to call myself a spoken word/poet. I have actually surprised myself in working up a body of pieces throughout this week, which are undoubtedly poems. Who’d have thought it?

I started out thinking about drink and pubs. I want to explore this city, and our generation’s relationship to alcohol. With that however come ideas of families, my relationship with my father, nostalgia, country and western songs, football, religion and masculinity. So far so O’Connor, but the interesting thing here is that I’m approaching these through poetry not performance. In fact I have no idea if or how this development will become something performative or stageable. At the moment they are words on a page and it’s got me thinking about performance. There are definitely some pieces I have created this week which are to be read aloud. But there are some I think that deserve to be read. Maybe reread a few times, which is never something that I thought possible with my work, given that the main characteristics are rapid fire delivery, rhythm and sound.

Some of the Team are invited to have a look next week to give feedback, and I’ll post part two of this blog then if they anything good to say.