Words are my thing. Hard to believe from someone who begins a journal with ‘words are my thing’, but they are. Put me in an interview and I stumble, I falter. You see, words are my thing in context. I am a playwright; I write characters that reflect real people, most of whom are incredibly inarticulate when it comes to speaking words, like I am. It is that shared inability, our common failing to say what we really mean which allows me to reflect these characters truthfully. It is how I make sense of the world. It is how I communicate. And if, like so many, words are not your thing, in any context, expression will still seep out of every pore; through body language or humour, through music, movement, or paint on a canvas. Expression is everywhere, intention however is not always so clear.
For the purpose of our first workshop I initially planned to work with artists, not actors. The very nature of acting is to communicate situations to an audience, but by simply reflecting another human being, intention is still lost in translation. Just because the actor feels it doesn’t mean the audience does, and I was interested in how possible it was for true intention to come out through expression. Actors have, however, been trained with a variety of tools to communicate effectively, and are intrinsically open to adapting to what the director (or playwright in this case) asks of them, and so I began the exploration of this piece with actors. In a variety of exercises, aimed to tease out various elements of the narrative that needed further exploration, Ellie and I watched, observing the quintessence of human life. It spills out in ways so mundane you have to really be watching to catch it. A touch. The lyrics of the song being hummed. Gestures, the way a pen is held, a furrowed brow. Usually my writing is dialogue heavy, but with this, the silences, the moments of thought told more than the words I had been trying to find. The way a paintbrush or pencil would hover over a particular spot for minutes before a single line was drawn, with it’s master suspended in feeling above it. The movement of the eyes, visually mapping out form before the page became muddied with lead. How fingertips, knuckles and nails would bend and mould to create meaning for us. With each idiosyncrasy, I began to form my own story; what I think it meant, yet knowing I would be wrong.
That is what makes art subjective. Art is not truth, it is opinion, and with that comes the flaw of art as a means to express. Expression and intention are inextricably linked, yet so far removed from one another. You cannot really communicate truthfully with art. I will make up my story and you will make up yours. That is what makes it so frustrating. And so fascinating.
