Ventures/ and Adventures

A final contrubtuion to the blog, tracking progress backwards. Departure. My
mind wanders to Bruce Chatwin, whose travel writing often turns to
nomadicism. Chatwin finds salve and strength is walking, the pedestrian
advantage. From Buddha to Luke Sywalker, the biped tourist learns
differently from those rooted, home-tied. For me, the work we are doing with
DaPoPo, exploring expressive means, poetry, actor-audience relationships,
and uses of space, is put into new perspective when seen by those I worked,
sang, drank and played with in Berlin before my school-trek to Canada.
Walking, a shift in gaze.
There is a continuum. At the risk of living on
borrowed phrases, I quote from Max Frisch (one of my theatrical role
models): "with time, one has a biography". Travel. Yes, your life moves
forward, but takes shape backwards. Whence we arrive, ultimately, at the
'Po-Po', or 'bum'. Anatomical queer, the 'after': perhaps something to do
with our forward-tilted mythologies. Starting point, sitting pad, lost when
we stand to walk. To cite another influential quote from my childhood
infatuation with Musicals, a Sondheim lyric: "Stop worrying where you're
going,/ Move on./ If you can tell where you're going,/ You've gone./ You've
got to move on." Walking, exploring, moving forward: this is how we live. As
theatre artists especially, perhaps.
Step by step, gesture by gesture, word
by word and venue by venue we learn, exploring possibilities, stumbling
towards the meaning of the play, with time. Always leaving behind, always
gaining. Another terrifying page covered in characters, another chapter
penned. Arrival. Back where we began, but changed; looking back, changing
the way we see the beginning. But also the 'Po-Po'.