Fear Risk and a small Suitcase

Having a little kitchen-cup-of-tea freak out.

I’ve just come back from a week’s research and development with three brilliant artists and I feel totally overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong the week was brilliant. It’s incredible how much one can cram in to a week and the ideas that came from the week are really exciting. You can read about what we got up to here.

I’m having a little mini freak out because I have an internal conflict going on. This isn’t unfamiliar territory. This is standard ‘starting a new project’ territory.

I’m starting work on a project about courage, fear and taking risks. Ironically I find myself challenged by the very thing that i want to make work about.

The original idea for this project was to make a small touring show that can fit in a small suitcase.

After an amazing WalesLab week I’ve stumbled over and exploded in to, some really exciting possibilities for a totally different sort of show.

By the end of the week we were excitedly talking about creating an installation piece using pallets, tyres, rope, tubing and what ever we can salvage from local companies, to create, or rather facilitate young people in creating their own kingdom of dens, walkaways, slides, forests, whatever their imagination leads them to build. Within that creation time and play we weave a narrative about taking risks and finding ones courage. This can be something that grows over a few days or a week. Each performance building on, adapting or destroying what came before.

This show definitely doesn’t fit in a small suitcase.

I have an internal conflict between the desire to keep it super simple for myself and the desire to really go for it and see what this collaboration can create. What we are now talking about is really exciting and rich. The work involved in making this happen, whatever this is, seems unattainable, overwhelming and mystifying.

The kitchen floor is paced and another cup of tea brewed.

It’s the scale that breaks me out in a cold sweat. The bigger the scale the bigger the potential to totally fuck it up. With a solo show its only myself to let down. Says a lot about how I think things are going to go!

Building a team, looking after that team, nurturing a creative process that’s organic and open and gives space for ideas to breath and grow. Creating a process that doesn’t crush people’s creative input through inexperience is a lot of responsibility. What if I am only capable of managing a small suitcase.

Simon Coates gave me some great advice, ‘be confident in your confusion’ I love this and carried this with me through the WalesLab week. Does the same apply to inexperience? Can I be confident in my inexperience and ask others to be confident in my inexperience, to take a risk on me, the project?

It all comes back to Fear. This is all fear talking. I really care about the themes we are exploring and I can’t make a show about taking risk without taking a few risks along the way!

In my original short storytelling of ‘Paper Bag Girl’ she is given a book on how to find her confidence with 3 simple rules.

breath deeply.

take one step at a time

face fear head on.

Seems like good advice.