Endings and Beginnings

Writing this from stifling London. The bright lights and loud noises are startling and it is bizarre seeing more people than sheep in a day. The final night at Old Chapel Farm began with me ringing the old church bell to call the merrymakers inside. From here we began to tell our story and lead around 70 people over the site for an evening of poetry, shadow puppetry, instillation and original music amongst other things. There were definitely some hairy moments; particularly being upstaged by a pooing dove in the barn on my part and there was a particular issue with timing in general - apparently 70 people don't move that quickly as a whole. BUT, there were also moments of pure joy and amazement; the full moon rising over the far hillside just as everyone left the chapel after the final chapter was particularly magical.
After the performance itself was over, the evening rolled on in true festive fashion. Kevin pit roasted a lamb which was apparently delicious, the musicians played on into the early hours (Cornelius the mandolin player even got on his bike and cycled home at 5am!) and Gary told some of his traditional stories by firelight. Bella and I fell asleep in a field at one point and I apparently fell off the bench after a bit too much whiskey. There was singing round the campfire, led by the beautiful Orla (who also wrote a song especially for the show) and I ate the best sweet potato of my life (and there have been some good-uns). Bella and I even managed to run a workshop the next morning despite the horrific hang-over beasts that were smashing around inside our heads. We even fitted in a trip to the swimming hole with the other women WWOOFers before the journey home.
I think the real highlight of the whole evening was getting the chance to meet the local community and hear what they had to say about what we'd done and hear their stories in return for ours. There is such a wealth of story there and I cant wait to return to find out more. The story we created was born out of the location and the reasons for celebrating the time of year. I for one have a desire to create a piece of work that finds story from the inside out of the community. This trial residency seems to have lifted some threads which are ready to be teased out and drawn together into a richer, more complex and more human piece of work. All thoughts are to the future now... I think we've started something rather exciting.

Moon Magic

We have just stumbled our way thorough a 'walk through' with Kevin Fran and the WWOOFers . It was quite exposing but there were definitely moments of magic. And moments of total farce. Its amazing how quickly things can come together after a fist run and some feedback. We've already re-jigged the sticky moments to work better. One good thing is that the story seemed to come across well and that's the point really.

We had a wonderful moment of collective compromise in the pond earlier. Shane and I were trying to submerge our giant balloon moon under a rock-anchored tarpaulin so that it could magically be pulled free by the man fishing for the moon and rise up to the surface to every one's amazement. This was harder than we anticipated... whilst I stood on the pontoon in my underwear looking into the murky leach filled depths of the pond below, contemplating how little I wanted to dive in and sink the balloon moon (Shane had already stated he could not go in because he 'is recovering from the flu'), who should walk by but Chris the valiant WWOOFer. He dived in with aplomb on our behalf but proceeded to loose both the tarp and the bricks to weigh it down almost immediately in the 6foot depth of water. His struggle ended in failure, apparently it's quite hard to pull a balloon down under so much water, let alone cover it with a tarp and bricks. We came up with a much better way of the moon appearing which involves Shane drop kicking it out into the pond whilst everyone is looking the other way at the Gypsy puppeteers. No swimming required.

Bella and I went down to the stream for a sunset dip last night, slightly pissed on honeysuckle wine. We walked home up the valley through a tunnel of trees, found a glowworm to guide our way and watched the moonlight illuminate the valley around us. Sickening isn't it? It is a privilege to be making work in such an incredibly romantic place with such inspiring people, but hopefully we are paying for it in sweat and stress as zero hour approaches. We ticked off lots on the mega list today which feels good. Perhaps we should burn the beast when we are done, though that amount of paper may be better used mulching the onions

Lists

Today began with a mother of all lists. There are cross references for locations, props, costume and people involved at various stages (video to follow). When something is covered, it gets circled. Simple. We are crunching on through and some lovely moments have been devised.
I personally had some fun developing the character of the flighty moon who tells her side of the story from a cage in the dove barn. I think I found it easier once I identified the aspects of her that are in me; not being a natural performer I think she has turned out alot like Kirsty As The Moon who enjoys the falling in love more than the earth-bound reality. I also get to reference this Florence song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPLrqKrnYts which makes me happy. I countered this dramaturgical genius with some very shonky dancing with Gary under the Rhododendron tree, but hopefully people will be looking at the beautiful setting and Gary's perfect poise more than my two left feet at that point.

Shane has cooked dinner with Abraham tonight. Abraham has never cooked before but has the most amazing smiley face we have ever seen. He is volunteering here on the farm as a WWOOFER (volunteer through an organisation called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) along with Pauline from France, Yvonne from Switzerland, Alex from the US and Rachael and Chris from the UK. Its an amazingly varied bunch and they are all up for helping with the performance (we didn't really give them a choice about that). Chris will even be mummified and re-born as the Sun at the end of the piece. What a joy to have such a smashingly enthusiastic bunch of people to work with! Fran and Kevin had about 100 WWOOFers come trough the farm last year and they are vital to the running of the place and loads of other similar projects over the world.

Allegra visited last night and this morning and gave us some of her ever brilliant advice. It was invaluable to have an outside opinion from someone who is familiar with performance practice. She also had a few inspirational pep talks up her sleeve (as ever) which I would be lost without. Thanks for that.

Off to drink a bit more honeysuckle wine and to tackle how the blind man will fish the moon out of the pond. We have a giant white baloon and a digereedoo to hand to acomplish the task....