Filming: Finished!
Hello dear hearts,
Let’s have “Mercy” by Pilot Speed as our soundtrack this time, because oh goodness, “I’m so tired / I’m so wired / and it’s not enough to pray for mercy / I’ve tried”.
In this newsletter: filming, mostly. Also some writing stuff at the end. But the world sneaks in.
About that:
If you are in the US and haven't voted yet, please do. We’re in a vote-to-survive situation and it’s scary. If you're feeling undecided, icky, or hesitant about it, have a look at this video from NDN Collective (& others) on voting like a radical. It gets to the heart of quite a few things - systems, resistance, community, justice, past and present - and honestly I find it very comforting. Particularly if voting strategically makes you feel complicit, take a look.
I also recommend this newsletter issue by Leah for its thoughts on this moment and being alive (particularly the section about it while having a history of/ongoing SI; resources for same at bottom; content notes embedded in the link).
For me as someone who is overwhelmed by the world, and afraid, and heading into the annual seasonal bodymind struggle of winter, but who also is doing multiple important and fulfilling creative projects right now, everything is - I don’t even know. The dissonance is immense. There are days I feel proud of my work and impact and days I feel profoundly depressed and sometimes they’re the same day. I don’t know how to tell you about my art achievements in this atmosphere but I don’t want to wait either. I don’t think waiting will make it easier.
And I do have things to tell you!
Anyway, the Art
We finished filming! We finished filming. The performing part of A Singular They is over. I made it. We did it.
It doesn’t quite feel real. (And honestly with the world doing all the things it’s doing, it feels less real as time passes, not more so. Maybe once I start editing, it’ll sink in.) I started work on this show midway through 2018: over six years ago. It went on hiatus and I did not have regular access to rehearsal or training space for several years - nearly three years, though not wholly contiguous - mid-pandemic. I was able to resume a regular studio schedule seven months ago, and we started filming two and a half months ago.
I am amazed I made it. I wasn’t sure that my body would hold up, and there were last-minute kerfuffles in filming sites and availability and logistics because of course there were, and half the pieces had only had one rehearsal since the last WIP run in 2020, and somehow it still worked out. I’m bruised and fatigued but: I made it. Big thanks to videographer Andreas John and to my on-site helpers Nicole and Violet and Hanna as well as all the sites and so many others (I need to make my full thanks list!).
We filmed four pieces in October: one on a stool in the black box space at Spotlight VT; one outdoors with my sparkly cape at the waterfront in Burlington, and the Frame structure there; one on the ladders, in a freight elevator in Brattleboro; and last, the double slings piece, at Synergy in Jericho. I’ve very much enjoyed putting each piece in a specific site, for all the logistical stress that it adds to the process. I like the visual/lighting/texture/etc aesthetic flavor they add to the choreography, a richness, a depth. I also like the non-visual parts, the social or personal resonance of each site, which may or may not be apparent to a viewer. Spotlight’s theater was where I premiered my first ever solo work, ten years ago, for example. Other places have people involved who matter to me, or evoke places or place-archetypes that have shaped me.
Filming in the elevator especially adds a lot of flavor to its piece. It frames it beautifully, it’s just the right size for the ladder tableau, but also, it’s a freight elevator, beat up, a bit dirty - fortunately not as stinky as a lot of the ones I’ve been in. As a wheelchair user in particular, you often get routed to the freight elevator, in some weird back entryway. The choreography has no visible mobility aids in use or conventional disability signaling in it but its crip soul is very present, climbing inaccessible structures inside the back-door access feature, while also being held and raised in its enclosure.
The piece on the stool also does not make my disability visible in conventional ways, but its choreography draws from chronic pain, and its effort and precarity feel more authentically crip-and-chronic-illness than plenty of other “more visible”/”more legible” work I have made. I’m really proud of it.
I will be gathering more thoughts about visiblity/invisibility/legibility, and the spaces, and no doubt more things, as I head into editing the footage and creating the first-person description, which is this winter’s task. (A little will go here; more rambling versions on Patreon. Tons of photos over there, too.)
I’m taking a breather before I dive into that phase of the work. I am trying to arrange myself a restful November to recover, but gestures at politics we’ll see how that plays out. I will at least try.
Writing
I have been writing and revising (creative work, no deadline) and playing, in an effort to rest and refuel. My online writers’ group runs monthly flash contests (no stakes, don’t even need a fully-finished draft most months) and those have been a really nice way to keep feeling new creative sparks. I also had a play with a prompt generator maker and put together a folktale prompter that makes a reasonably authentic folktale/wonder tale/myth premise more often than not, though of course it does make some nonsense. (The site promotes some “AI” tools, which I explicitly do not endorse. I did not use any in the creation of this prompter; everything in it, the mad-libs-style blanks and the available words to fill them and the logic by which they’re selected, is written from scratch by me.) It was nice just to play. We need more play: creativity with no productivity, no worrying about an outcome.
The call for poets is still open! All month! (You can forward the previous call-only edition of the newsletter to anyone you think might be interested! Or send a direct link to the call! Or share on instagram!) I am so excited to try stewarding a different style of anthology, one that comes from and builds more community. We need that, too.
In Conclusion
It’s hard to think about the future right now, and goodness knows I have a complicated relationship with hope (and despair, though I don’t think they’re exact opposites, either), but I’ll do my best to still be here, existing, making, being as thoughtful and deliberate as I can be. Art is resistance, existence is resistance. It’s hard for me to think of my work as liberatory - I have had so much conditioning to the contrary, that it’s frivolous, trivial, distracting, selfish - but I hope, yes actually hope despite the complicated feelings, that it is providing a spark for someone, somewhere.
Take care of each other. Wear a mask when you go to the polls. Take care of yourself as things unfold this week; check in on each other, be safe, keep safe.
Love,
Toby