The Galapagos Project

Following our recent seminar I have been giving the notion of reduction a lot of thought. I was vocally questioning of Doug’s insistence to find a single core idea at this stage mainly due to the way that I work dictates that exploration unearths the thrust of what my theatre maybe ‘about’. I always try to avoid imposing a particular single purpose or meaning to the work, I find that the best work is chanced upon, that it emerges unexpectedly from setting up the right circumstances in which it may occur.

If anything my theatre has been concerned with trying to define itself, questioning the conventions and conditioning that is brought to a theatrical event, pushing the notion of character, jarring expectation and most importantly creating a heightened bizarre and ambiguous world in which the audience can inhabit and be pushed around in.

However I confess I was wrong to think this as an absolute. Contrary to Doug’s assertion that students are told to try anything I have always been taught to reduce, focus and find a nucleus for the work that can serve as the motor. I totally agree with this. As a director you are always trying to locate that ‘geustus’ that can saturate every moment, movement, and object that acts at a kind of metaphysical glue that transcends every aspect of the play and will hopefully spill over to the audience. I admit I was wrong to question this yesterday, It is exactly what at this stage we all need to be doing, just because you reduce does not mean within that reduction you can not discover the moments and dynamics that are chanced upon. It is what I intend to do, and indeed have been doing over this term. I have been working very hard on trying to define my theatre, my objects, and my approach. I would like to share my current process and hope to continue an idea of reduction.

My new work is presented under the title ‘ The Galapagos Project’ which will contain a series of street performances as preparation for, and promotion of, a full-length performance piece called The Galapagos Man, which will be presented as my final work. The Galapagos Man is a twisted tale set in an undisclosed near future in London. In the traditions of Pop Sci-fi Graphic Novels and Orwellian style distopia it takes on the theme of the victimisation of the individual (the sense of self - who am I?) by the state (imposed systems) and the unrelenting flux of national and global culture. With this notion at its centre it is also a meditation on the fate of human evolution. In an age of scientific discovery reaching stratospheric advancement and technological achievement (I think mainly of genetics) how will Darwin’s theory react to so much meddling by man? The planet is already reacting violently to human interference. The story will be told about a tragic anti-hero at the centre of a Government cover up from the perspective of two Inspectors who are sent to untangle the trail and ultimately end the life story of The Galapagos Man.

Over the past weeks I have been working on a text to find a shape to how the performance might work and also I have been making prototypes of objects that might be used using construction techniques that I have never worked with before. I am hoping to start practically working with both the text and objects as soon as possible,

Although I have chosen not to take part in the TBW show as I have being feeling fine art saturated and strongly feel that my work does not exist in a gallery, I will be scratching the various ‘shifts’ that occur within the play, bringing in some actors to work with, maybe even setting up some open rehearsals so anyone can come and contribute to the process.