"Are things getting better, or are they getting worse?"

So as soon as I started rehearsing, the script changed completely. Moving away from the view of the self, it focuses entirely on the existential view of time. Is something/ nothing happening? What is the future? Can we get there? Are we living it? Funnily enough, as soon as I got into the rehearsal room, the notion of "no music" went out the window. I tried a little for atmospherics; to get me in the mood, and I noticed it changed the way I spoke and moved. Music, I think, is my choreographer. It dictates my mood and movements.

Added to that, I originally took in a script with lots of ideas bungled together in one piece (which you could say is typical Allan), but when I started speaking the lines, I kept the three that felt most genuine, which were the "nothing happened" lines. From there it just extended into a whole 10 minute piece on nothing/ something, concepts of time and freefalling into the future.

In a huge contrast to my last piece, this piece is very slow moving and intense. In a sense it has been a real trial, but I asked a musician friend of mine about stillnes and he said, "I find intensity of intention can work well to keep the energy going when things are slow - in music, I was taught to keep an internal sense of the music being continually in motion", so with this in mind, I have to remember that the performance is constantly in motion, whether I am still within it or not. In fact, stillness and silence does more to create tension.

I realised the "nothing is happening" is direct inspiration from Deborah Levy's "The B File". Also, the tone of the piece reminds me of Camus and Sartre. Half "The Nausea" and half "The Myth of Sisyphus"... To ask at the end "Are things getting better, or are they getting worse? Can I start all over again?" questions whether we can truly know the future, and if we can't or if we did, would we choose to carry on? And should we?

As this piece describes time, I have tried to incorporate an element of 'liveness' into it. When I walked into the rehearsal room on the second occasion, there were chairs arranged all over the stage. I experimented in using them and it seemed to add a dynamic to the tension as well as serving as a useful prop to interact with as it could so easily have turned into 10 minutes of me talking. This adds to the dimension of the time factor, as objects exist in time and by the end of the piece I have affected the layout of the stage and determined the 'future' of the objects lying around there. Though clunky and cliched, they seem apt and simple. I don't want to complicate my thinking by trying to replace the chairs with more interesting objects or situations. The piece may very easily and quickly become cluttered and over complicated. I am very much bearing in mind Helen's advice with "less is more". I have one thought, one aim and one subject and I want them to come together in a streamline.