A very different experience from the last week as we had 13 people turn up. Some new faces including the girls from Breathe, whose work we’d seen in Edinburgh this year and are also part of the Encounters season at mac.
We showed a short section for each piece of jewellery. The aim was to test how many of the senses people could process simultaniously, so I picked some impros with fewer and some with many. Each one included being dressed in the jewellery, but as there were quite a few people (as many as we’ll get through in 2 hours of performance) they did only one each.
Then we went downstairs for a chat over coffee. The biggest find was that touch is such a strong sensation on its own it wants to be the sole focus. People really couldn’t focus on anything else when the jewellery was being put on them, or at least wanted to be allowed to experience only that sensation.
Another interesting thing we did was elevating the people who wore the head piece by making them stand on a step stool. This seemed to give the wearer greater importance – Abi felt like a Queen. The head piece in particular has an upwards feel to it – many of the narratives that have come out of it include flying. Interestingly the arms piece is very earthy and ground level, perhaps the neck is a middle ground piece – we’ll see.
Thanks to Dan too for bringing up the question of comedy, and whether there was a place for it in Treasured – that made us think! Is Treasured taking itself too seriously? Have we been blocking comedy, or will it crop up later in the process? Is Treasured simply not funny?