Performing Again
Hello friends,
It’s August! What happened to summer? How are we here? Why are the crabapples already red?
Short(ish) & sweet one about developments for A Singular They!
Before that, a song for this installment of the newsletter: the algorithm recently introduced me to Polyphia, whose prog-fusion-style virtuosic guitar stylings are extremely up my street. Try “Playing God”.
On to the show!
A Singular They is finally in motion again. Development started in late 2018 and premier was planned for 2021. Ha. As the pandemic is ongoing, stage performance and touring is not an option, and the pieces are finally in place to turn this project into a film. I’ve been working on being physically ready to do this, as well as identifying sites and collaborators. A few weeks ago we set our first filming dates and the first piece is happening Wednesday. Forty-eight hours from now I’ll have one eighth of the show recorded, all being well.
We’ll be at Holden Barn again, where we did that photoshoot last fall; my videographer was also that photographer, the incredibly talented and thoughtful Andreas John. We’ll be filming the aerial fabric piece from the show, which is probably the physically hardest piece of the eight parts that make up the whole.
“Toby how are you feeling about this?”
Oh! What a question.
I’m starting to unearth some excitement, thankfully. After the initial surge of panic and stress - and a frantic push to get the set, costumes, etc all up to snuff, all the while worrying I haven’t recovered enough condition to do justice to the work - the eye-of-the-storm calm is starting to come. This is a relief, not just because vibrating with anxiety is unpleasant, but because it feels familiar again.
Preparing for a video shoot is different from preparing for a stage show - we’re only running one piece Wednesday, but we’ll be running it in bits many times over. I haven’t even rehearsed some of the show’s other pieces yet, trusting muscle memory (and video and notes as needed) to revive them when it’s the right time. I haven’t run the whole show since 2020 and part of my brain is panicking that The Show Is Not Ready… but “the whole show” is not what I’m actually preparing to do here and now. I’m not sure I feel ready, in part because of the long gap, but also because I don’t know what “ready” feels like for this medium and process. So it’s reassuring to be on my usual nerves track of frantic into “it will be what it will be, there is no longer time to make change” calm, which generally tips over to a spike of “OH NO” right before starting that ebbs as soon as I’m actually performing the work. Cross your fingers the pattern holds. (And that we have good weather and good health for Wednesday.)
It helps to have actually made it through most of the tasks I needed to get done before we can start. (A few good clean rehearsals sure didn’t hurt either.) One of them was re-dyeing my aerial fabric, ice dyeing on a nice hot sunny day. The result:
I’ve also been thinking about the literal and figurative lens offered by videography, and how to use it to further my goals for the work of honesty in effort and embodiment. Lots of thoughts about that in my most recent Patreon post, though not necessarily clear answers!
After this, there are seven more pieces to be filmed at six more sites, on dates in September and October, some of which are set and some still in flux. Please send your best thoughts for smooth sailing, confidence, and stamina, and hopefully next spring you’ll get to see the results (ok, maybe some teasers before then). Patreon is a great way to support this process and get longer behind-the-scenes posts, instagram and this newsletter will still get free updates, and if you’re local and want to be in my pool of available on-site helpers, drop me a line!
I hope you are well, staying safe, neither too wet nor too dry.
Toby