Friday, August 31, 2012
for a theatre critic's birthday
An envelope came today, with an anniversary brochure from a company called Sun.Ergos (www.sunergos.com).
A rather beautiful brochure, with a beautiful card from one of the company’s two founders/performers, thanking me for a review I wrote of them in The Scotsman in 1981.
I’m quoted inside. I said: “They have the rare gift for making you look at the world with eyes wide open, as if seeing familiar things for the very first time, to celebrate its beauty without sentimentality - and register its horrors without flinching...”
The card said that they celebrated their 30th birthday as a company in 2007 and were now working on their 62nd show, “thanks in part”, they wrote, “to the graciousness of your writing about us in the 80’s.”
I suspect it's got far more to do with their talent, and their love and their courage. But it was so touching to hear from them again after all these years; and a pleasant change, too. Generally on the thankfully rare occasions someone comes up to me and says “You reviewed my show back in the 80’s”, my heart sinks, because so often I wrote something negative and wounding.
We met a family in Portugal once, on the beach: a mother and her two children. She was interested to hear I worked in theatre because as it happened her husband had tried to be a playwright but had given up, discouraged because he’d had a show on the Fringe and it had been given such a hurtful and appalling review. And they still used the reviewer’s name as a kind of bogeyman to frighten the children with. “His name was John, too”, she said. “John Clifford. Do you happen to know him?”
I said I was sorry and tried to explain I never set out to hurt anyone. It was just i had very strong feelings about theatre, then and now, and if I hated something, I just hated it. And without really being aware of their power, I had the words to express my hatred. And my love too.
I’d also started out as a reviewer because when I discovered i was a playwright I was thirty years old, unemployed, with my first child and had spent the past ten years of my life as a nurse, as a bus conductor, as a yoga teacher, and a researcher into 17th century Spanish theatre. And so knew nothing about contemporary plays; and couldn’t afford to buy tickets to see any.
I started out reviewing for the Fringe, and then dear Allen Wright, the Scotsman arts editor, kept me on and so for the next 3 or so years I was seeing sometimes two shows a week and writing 250 words on each.
Often in those days I’d be asked to review shows live: which meant seeing the play and then having to write my words in the next hour to an hour and a half, type them up and then phone or deliver them to the old Scotsman office before midnight.
It was such an amazing apprenticeship. It taught me to write forcefully, and fast. Above all, it helped me refine my taste and understand with ruthless clarity what I liked and did not.
And most of the art of writing plays is learning to write the kind of plays you yourself want to see...
I owe this to Joyce McMillan, whose birthday it is this week.
She suggested I write reviews; and she showed me the way to approach Allen Wright to get the job.
I owe her a lot. We all do. She was reviewing theatre then with clarity, passion, sensitivity, eloquence and fierce intelligence. And she is doing so still.
Out in all weathers, to all parts of the country, in buses and taxis and trains.
There are very few people, if there’s anyone, who is her equal in knowledge of our theatre, understanding of what works, and consummate professionalism.
Goodness, but she makes me cross sometimes: but that, too, is part of her job.
To keep writing, to keep reminding newspapers and everyone who cares to read that theatre matters. That it deserves to be written about with such passionate skill.
So here’s to you, Joycie. Happy Birthday....
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Rehearsing "Great Expectations"
I started to write:
“I was at the GREAT EXPECTATIONS readthrough today...”
.. but then realised “readthrough” was absolutely not an adequate word.
Readthroughs, in my experience, happen the first day of rehearsal. They’re generally a kind of necessary evil everyone puts up with.
Given the habitual mad and destructive instability of our theatre structures, often not everyone knows each other. And everyone is nervous. Some people try hard; others don’t. As if they have an uneasy feeling they shouldn’t really try too hard, not in the chronic insecurity of the moment. Unwilling to risk too much or give too much away.
I’m as shy and uncertain and nervous as the rest of them; desperate to hear how the text will work out but often too defensive and self-conscious myself to perceive it.
But today is not the first day of rehearsals. The cast have been working hard together for a week, and have had time to bond and to trust each other. Which means they are not plunging blindly and uncertainly into the text for the first time but sharing the collective understandings they’ve gained after a week of committed labour.
Which makes it wonderful to listen to.
Meanwhile I’m still buzzing from the fact I happened to sit next to someone who turns out to be Marcello Magni, co-founder of Complicite, (www.complicite.org/) a legendary figure, and I suddenly understand that it is he who is leading the company through the mysterious “physical work” I keep reading about in the Rehearsal Notes.
Which means the Company are spending about as much time exploring the physicality of their characters as they are spending exploring their words. Which is wonderful.
And then I discover that the very beautiful and elegant young man in the rehearsal is Giovanni Bedin, the creative director of the House Of Worth (www.worthparis.com) who is creating haute couture for Estella and Miss Havisham.
And then we see the set model. Robin Peoples has re-created his stunning vision of Miss Havisham’s decayed and mysterious house with its secret entrances, its old fashioned footlights and its trap doors (http://www.GreatExpectationsThePlay.com/background.php.)
I fell in love with the house, and then with Simon Slater’s music (http://www.slatermusic.com/); I wander into Annie Gosney’s costume room which is inhabited by a rather wonderful colony of hats.
And then there are the masks. Gavin Glover (http://www.potatoroom.co.uk/) has brought them over from Brussels to transform the actors when the moment comes: transform them into frightening, mysterious and beautiful shapes.
And then its time for sandwiches. Time to catch my train; only I realise I absolutely do not want to leave. The whole process fascinates and inspires and draws me in: I want to stay with it.
Friends in Brighton tell me the posters are going up already; as they undoubtedly are in Richmond, and Southampton, and Woking, and Darlington, and Malvern and Birmingham and Aylesbury and Aberdeen (http://www.GreatExpectationsThePlay.com/tour.php )
And Iunderstand I have the strongest sense that all these places will have the chance to see a truly remarkable show. I want to urge them to buy their tickets as soon as they possibly can.
I’m amazed to find myself writing this. In fact I’m generally so uncertain about my work I don’t think I have ever written so confident a sentence before.
And never, but never, after a readthrough.
Monday, August 27, 2012
All of us, shipwrecked in mad hope. But hoping anyway...
When I was a boy, I remember reading an interview with the German composer Hans Werner Henze in which he said he wanted write love letters to the future. And not letters of personal complaint.
I didn't completely understand what he was saying at the time; but I do now. Because I think he was expressing an idea that is a the heart of everything I create.
By contrast, it often seems to me most people with big reputations are expressing their fear, their hatred, their loathing and their despair.
One of the many many wonderful things about Le Théâtre du Soleil's "Les naufragés du fol espoir", which I saw last Thursday was that it so beautifully embodied so many of the things I try to express.
It shone a light, a light in a dark world; and in that sense was a beautiful act of resistance.
I was so disappointed at first. I have been wanting to see this company for years, and all they seemed to be giving me was a feeble opening, a banal retrospective structure, and then a succession of jokes about making a silent film with surtitles on an open stage. It was true, the stage management was magnificent, but I did feel short-changed.
I cannot recall now quite how or when its power crept up n me. The story was of a silent film maker making a film in an attic above a restaurant and cabaret, a film about the journey of a ship full of migrants t Australia being shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia... And while the film was being made the film-makers themselves were also being caught up in the wider madness of the events leading t the outbreak of the First World War.
Maybe it was the interlinkedness I started to get caught up in, the mad and wonderful multi-layering, the incredible virtuosity of staging and design, the passionate, gorgeous, utter commitment of the 33 strong cast, or maybe I fell in love with the passion of the film-maker trying, in the midst of endless setbacks to affirm and re-affirm the importance of what they were all doing. This is the real battle, he kept saying. The struggle for education. The struggle to create art... And in doing so the whole company created this so passionately affirmation of the power of theatre and the power of the imagination.
The beauty of it all really hit me when the ship set forth on her journey and was given her name: Le Fol Espoir. the mad hope.
I have been so struck lately by the thought and concern that's been lavished on our Olympic athletes. The investment in new training facilities. In hiring the very best coaches. In harnessing the best thinking and the best science to develop the most effective coaching. In taking care of the athletes to ensure they have encouragement and stability.
This is as it should be. The athletes still struggle against the odds, but s many now succeed. We are no longer part of a nation of amateur losers; and sporting success has all kinds of positive affects on our country's life.
There's such a shocking contrast between this and the way we treat our theatre artists. The training is patchy and under-resourced and often does more harm than good. Facilities and working conditions are generally atrocious. The opportunities to perform professionally in funded companies shrink each year. The working environment is unstable and destructive. Creative Scotland's plan to take away even the minimum level of stability enjoyed by many companies and replace it with project funding looks set to make the environment even more destructive.
When I was a boy, I remember reading an interview with the German composer Hans Werner Henze in which he said he wanted write love letters to the future. And not letters of personal complaint.
I didn't completely understand what he was saying at the time; but I do now. Because I think he was expressing an idea that is a the hear t of everything I create.
By contrast, it often seems to me most people with big reputations are expressing their fear, their hatred, their loathing and their despair.
One of the many many wonderful things about Le Théâtre du Soleil's "Les naufragés du fol espoir", which I saw last Thursday was that it so beautifully embodied so many of the things I try to express. It shone a light, a light in a dark world; and in that sense was a beautiful act of resistance.
I was so disappointed at first. I have been wanting to see this company for years, and all they seemed to be giving me was a feeble opening, a banal retrospective structure, and then a succession of jokes about making a silent film with surtitles on an open stage. It was true, the stage management was magnificent, bit I did feel short-changed.
I cannot recall now quite how or when its power crept up n me. The story was of a silent film maker making a film in an attic above a restaurant and cabaret, a film about the journey of a ship full of migrants t Australia being shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia... And while the film was being made the film-makers themselves were also being caught up in the wider madness of the events leading t the outbreak of the First World War.
Maybe it was the interlinkedness I started to get caught up in, the mad and wonderful multi-layering, the incredible virtuosity of staging and design, the passionate, gorgeous, utter commitment of the 33 strong cast, or maybe I fell in love with the passion of the film-maker trying, in the midst of endless setbacks to affirm and re-affirm the importance of what they were all doing. This is the real battle, he kept saying. The struggle for education. The struggle to create art... And in doing so the whole company created this so passionately affirmation of the power of theatre and the power of the imagination.
The beauty of it all really hit me when the ship set forth on her journey and was given her name: Le Fol Espoir. the mad hope.
I have been so struck lately by the thought and concern that's been lavished on our Olympic athletes. The investment in new training facilities. In hiring the very best coaches. In harnessing the best thinking and the best science to develop the most effective coaching. In taking care of the athletes to ensure they have encouragement and stability.
This is as it should be. The athletes still struggle against the odds, but s many now succeed. We are no longer part of a nation of amateur losers; and sporting success has all kinds of positive affects on our country's life.
There's such a shocking contrast between this and the way we treat our theatre artists. The training is patchy and under-resourced and often does more harm than good. Facilities and working conditions are generally atrocious. The opportunities to perform professionally in funded companies shrink each year. The working environment is unstable and destructive. Creative Scotland's plan to take away even the minimum level of stability enjoyed by many companies and replace it with project funding looks set to make the environment even more destructive.
Ariane Mnouchkine has been able to work with her Théâtre du Soleil since she founded it in the Sixties. The playwright who co-created this beautiful piece, Hélène Cisoux, has been able to be their resident writer since the Eighties. The play has been in their repertoire since 2010, and they have been able to refine and improve it. They work under conditions that offer the possibility of stability and working on a grand scale that we can scarcely begin to dream of.
Cisoux began working with the company in 1985, the same y ear I started to work with the Traverse. I worked consistently with them until i was forced out in the early 2000's, which I remember experiencing as an utter disaster at the time. Most of my work has opened before it was ready, and closed just as it was beginning to be right.
In black moments I think my best work is past, and I will never reach my full potential as a theatre artist: because the theatre environment is simply so destructive. And none of us can work alone.
But then complaint is useless. As I knew all along.
Les Naufragés ends with this beautiful image of two idealists paddling a canoe through stormy waters, off to build a lighthouse at the end of the world.
Paddling alone, yet with the whole company around them and supporting them.
As I write this, I am travelling down to London to be briefly at rehearsals for my GREAT EXPECTATIONS, first performed in 1988, and now again miraculously revived for a commercial tour.
The ambition, I know, is to create something of world class. Even under impossible pressures and in far less ideal conditions.
Something amazing will occur. I know.
And as dear Calderón reminds us in his "Life Is A Dream":
"The good you do is never lost.
Not even in dreams".
Monday, August 20, 2012
last performance of "Leave To remain"; first rehearsal for "Great Expectations"
It was the last day of performances of “Leave To Remain” today. I got to the church early, and sat in the graveyard to drink in the sunshine. There’s something very tender about the Edinburgh sun this time of year that always makes me want to gratefully drink up every drop.
It was also the first day of rehearsals for “Great Expectations”; and in the meantime an email came in from the producer. With a picture of the enormous creative team. It’s extraordinary. So many people!
And then the two of us went into our tiny Lady Chapel to set up the chairs.
Or began to, until a lady vicar came in to lead communion.
So we took communion, Suzanne and I, in the midst of the half set up chairs, and it felt like a very beautiful blessing.
The chairs we set up were nowhere near enough, as it turned out, for a last minute influx of what felt like hundreds, though it was probably no more than six, who suddenly appeared after the show had begun and meant we had to start from the beginning again.
“This is not a play”, we said, as always, and “We won’t be pretending to be other people”, and went into our stories of funerals and dyings and I found myself reflecting on how revolutionary this show is, in its quiet way.
It struck me as being like one of those happenings in the sixties where searching for liberation everyone fiercely broke taboos. Only instead of noisily breaking taboos against nudity and sex, we were (very gently) breaking taboos against talking about death and dying and loss.
The discussion afterwards was extraordinary - so many courageous and loving stories. People seizing the opportunity to be there openly with their grief. Without any need to hide it or manage it or conceal it or put on a brave face about it.
And maybe that’s the most valuable thing we do.
I met my daughters afterwards and we walked up Lothian Road in the sunshine. Me so proud to be with them both. And with the grandchild, waiting for the best time to be born.
Loving texts from my new partner.
New life. New life emerging.
Miraculous. Huge blessing.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Who leaves; what remains.
“They leave”, we say of the dead in “Leave To Remain”, “and they remain”.
Remain in a flower they loved that is still growing. A sudden scent carried by the wind. A scrap of fabric, or a bowl of soup.
Or a letter addressed to your dead wife.
Last week I wrote to my mother-in-law’s housing association to hand in notice for her flat, which she is leaving to go to a care home. They replied back, addressing the letter to my late partner.
Seeing this letter addressed to Dr Susan Innes struck me with the force of a physical blow. It reminded me that the most painful times soon after her death came on waking from the dreams in which she came to me so very much alive.
The dreams came because, I imagine, the enormity of her death was just too great for my subconscious mind. What hurt so much was the contrast between the pleasure of seeing her alive in the dream, and the agony of remembering she was dead when I awoke.
It's all been echoed in the experience of going to her mum's house to try to sort out what to throw out and what to keep. For some reason I'd forgotten there would be photographs. Of us on holiday. Us on the canal boat. Us on the beach.
But seeing the letter as far far worse. I couldn't read it. I was so upset I didn’t notice at first that having acted as if my dead wife was alive on page one, they then wrote as if my very much alive mother-in-law was dead on page two.
And as if the only issue involved in her death was when she would stop receiving Housing Benefit.
I could only marvel at Viewpoint Housing (motto: “We deliver excellence in care”). As I told them, they had managed to create the most crassly insensitive and incompetent letter I have ever received.
It was strange trying to get myself together to go to see her in the Care Home. Cycling along the Grassmarket past the Festival crowds, who all seemed to belong to a parallel universe. But something to do with the physical activity calmed me. Not long before, I'd been sifting through letters to do with housing benefit assessment and rent arrears. All things that meant so much at the time, but now mean next to nothing.
And this too. This too will pass.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Last Sunday i went on a peace walk. It was prganised by the Wild Goose Sangha (http://edwildgeese.wordpress.com/) and part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace (http://www.festivalofspirituality.org.uk/) and I went, not really knowing why, except maybe aware that everything that is happening in my life just now is way beyond the control of my conscious mind. And that therefore I need to connect with whatever wisdom there is beneath our awareness.
We gather in the drizzle by the basement of St. John’s Church.
The sangha follow the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh (http://edwildgeese.wordpress.com/Biography/) and two of their members remind us of his instructions for walking.
To walk without trying to walk anywhere. Walk for the pleasure of walking. Walking in the beauty of the present moment.
They remind us of one of his poems:
“I have arrived. I am home.
In the here and the now.
I am solid, I am free.
In the ultimate I dwell”
And that we can coincide our breathing with our walking with the lines of the poem.
Which I don’t, of course. My mind wanders, of course.
I am brought back by discomfort in my knees. As I often am.
Thank you knees. For reminding me.
We are taught to take our minds off unpleasant things. As if somehow they will go away. Which they don’t. of course.
I try to remember. I try to think good thoughts to my knees. Which weirdly seems to work a while.
And then my heart starts.
Thank you heart. Thank you for reminding that I’ve been on the wrong track and need to live differently.
Thank you for reminding me that I will die.
(Only not just yet. Please)
But sooner or later it will happen. And somehow I need to live in full acceptance of this.
And I son enjoy the pattern of the rain on the fallen leaves.
The sensation of walking in my companion’s footsteps. the sensation of belonging: to this moment, to this group of people, to this amazing beautiful city.
And then it’s over and I’m lying in the bath preparing for the event I’m chairing the next day.
It’s part of the Talkfest at the Traverse theatre (http://www.scottishtheatres.com/madeinscotland/talks.html) and my event is called “Home is Where the Heart Is” .
So I begin to think about home.
My three brothers were all much bigger than me and formed a very tightly linked unit with my mum and dad which I somehow felt I never belonged to.
And then at the age of eight I was sent to boarding school.
And then at the age of 12 y mother died and in a way I no longer had a home to go back to.
And then as I became aware of my secret female identity I became aware that my own body was not even my home.
In other words a disaster area. And I understand for the first time that maybe something crucial behind all my work is the need to find a home.
Usually I hate these discussion events, so I try to organise them differently when I can.
I think this one works. I know I feel a great affection towards the panel by the end:
Mark Thomas (whose very beautiful Brave Figaro! has won a Fringe First (http://www.markthomasinfo.co.uk/)
Gerry Mulgrew (who was so wonderful in my Tree of Life (which, if they had any sense, the Traverse would be doing at this Festival too) and who is directing is irreverent and joyous Tam O’Shanter at the Assembly Hall (http://www.communicadotheatre.co.uk/)
Rupert Thomson of Summerhall (http://www.summerhall.co.uk/2012/edinburgh/
and Alan Wilkins, who plugged his play in the Traverse’s Scenes from a Play I’ll never Write (http://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/dream-plays-(scenes-from-a-play-ill-never-write)/) in the loveliest way you could possibly imagine.
And then we;’re home again. Home where we mostly brought up our children, and where my partner cursed me because she wanted to die there, and could not.
The beautiful home I suddenly know I have to leave.
Today I have a rehearsal. My mother-in-law finally has a place in a care home, and we have to begin the process of clearing her old home.
I spend a while clearing her papers. There’s the case notes kept by the carers who kept her going as she struggled through intense breathlessness to hang on to the house she loved. Her suffering at that stage was intense, and her torture constant.
She told me she did her best not think about the things that disturbed her: but they simply became more intense until she had no choice.
My lovely daughter comes, with her lovely man.
Any day now, she is expecting her child.
We bask in the joy of the new life to come; and we giggle over the silliest things. As we do.
And leave her house gutted of so much of what gave it meaning, so tomorrow we can place it ready for her in her new home.
And then I’m home again. trying to prepare for Leave To Remain, which we perform at St. John’s on Monday. Which is about finding the way in all truth to leave the pain of bereavement behind: and finding a way to start a new life.
In a new present. A new home.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Leave To Remain
When we first created "Leave To Remain" we couldn't understand at first exactly what it was we had made.
We just. Did it as best we could and tried to listen to everyone's responses.
After attending the Dead Good Guides course on creating rituals http://www.deadgoodguides.com/pages/programme.html
I think I understand a bit better.
Well enough to be able to write this press release, anyway:
"Our culture is pretty bad at dealing with death.
Maybe because the dead are pretty bad at shopping.
Or maybe because in general we're not a very emotionally literate kind of society, and we tend to equate 'bravery' with dealing well with grief.
And by 'bravery' we mean not crying. Keeping a stiff upper lip. Carrying on as normal.
Hoping that if we don't acknowledge or express our grief it will somehow go away.
But it doesn't, of course. And because we've all lost someone in our lives, and not really been able to deal with the pain that it's caused us, it's as if we're all carrying around a big bag of grief. Which means we're not really able to help each other either.
I got a bit tired of people crossing over the road to avoid me after my partner died. Or me telling them I was "fine, thank you" because I didn't want to bother them. Or embarrass the both of us by bursting into tears.
Because her mum died at about the same time, my dear old friend Suzanne Dance felt the same. And because we both work in theatre and couldn't find anything there to help us either, we thought we'd try to do something about it.
We worked together and cried together to produce LEAVE TO REMAIN, which we very tentatively first performed in 2007, and have been performing on and off ever since.
We've always found it hard to describe it, because although we first performed it in a theatre it's not a play; and though it is in its way very dramatic what it really is is a ritual.
A ritual composed of all kinds of elements. We tell our bereavement stories to break the taboo that surrounds this, and encourage those present to give shape to their stories too.
We use silence and simple rituals; we perform poems by poets who have inspired us, and pieces of writing by those who have guided us. We have beautiful music that helps us listen to our hearts; and it all happens in an atmosphere that contains and comforts us.
And afterwards, those who want to can stay behind to talk about what's just happened.
Most people do.
The music comes from Harriet Davidson on the cello. It all adds up to a very special experience, especially because we're performing in the very beautiful space of St. John's Lady Chapel. We hope you'll be able to join us."
Jo Clifford, Suzanne Dance and Harriet Davidson (cello) present LEAVE TO REMAIN as part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace in St John's church, West End, Edinburgh on August 13th and 14th at 2.00 & on August 20th at 4.00. For tickets phone 0131 473 2000 or go to www.festivalofspiritualityandpeace.org.uk
WHAT THE PRESS SAID
Joyce Macmillan in THE SCOTSMAN: "there’s something intensely moving and comforting about this brief and beautiful experience.... And for those thousands of grieving people in our society who have always felt that one brief afternoon’s funeral is too short a goodbye, it opens up the possibility of something richer, and of a slow reinvention of the vital mourning rituals we have lost."
Neil Cooper in THE HERALD: "there’s no denying the emotional power of this piece. There can’t be many church services where those gathered are visibly moved to tears by a life and death experience that touches us all."
WHAT THE AUDIENCE SAID:
"This is the first time I've been able to cry for my mother. I feel so relieved to be able to."
"this is something so necessary and important"
"Open, generous, warm-hearted and emotional"
"Such a relief to be in the same room with people who have been through the same thing. And be able to talk about it afterwards"
“I just want to say thank you. Thank you for the most beautiful, spiritual and touching experience I ever experienced in a play. I cannot find words to express the beauty and sense of transcendence you conveyed in the play tonight. It felt as a gift.”
We just. Did it as best we could and tried to listen to everyone's responses.
After attending the Dead Good Guides course on creating rituals http://www.deadgoodguides.com/pages/programme.html
I think I understand a bit better.
Well enough to be able to write this press release, anyway:
"Our culture is pretty bad at dealing with death.
Maybe because the dead are pretty bad at shopping.
Or maybe because in general we're not a very emotionally literate kind of society, and we tend to equate 'bravery' with dealing well with grief.
And by 'bravery' we mean not crying. Keeping a stiff upper lip. Carrying on as normal.
Hoping that if we don't acknowledge or express our grief it will somehow go away.
But it doesn't, of course. And because we've all lost someone in our lives, and not really been able to deal with the pain that it's caused us, it's as if we're all carrying around a big bag of grief. Which means we're not really able to help each other either.
I got a bit tired of people crossing over the road to avoid me after my partner died. Or me telling them I was "fine, thank you" because I didn't want to bother them. Or embarrass the both of us by bursting into tears.
Because her mum died at about the same time, my dear old friend Suzanne Dance felt the same. And because we both work in theatre and couldn't find anything there to help us either, we thought we'd try to do something about it.
We worked together and cried together to produce LEAVE TO REMAIN, which we very tentatively first performed in 2007, and have been performing on and off ever since.
We've always found it hard to describe it, because although we first performed it in a theatre it's not a play; and though it is in its way very dramatic what it really is is a ritual.
A ritual composed of all kinds of elements. We tell our bereavement stories to break the taboo that surrounds this, and encourage those present to give shape to their stories too.
We use silence and simple rituals; we perform poems by poets who have inspired us, and pieces of writing by those who have guided us. We have beautiful music that helps us listen to our hearts; and it all happens in an atmosphere that contains and comforts us.
And afterwards, those who want to can stay behind to talk about what's just happened.
Most people do.
The music comes from Harriet Davidson on the cello. It all adds up to a very special experience, especially because we're performing in the very beautiful space of St. John's Lady Chapel. We hope you'll be able to join us."
Jo Clifford, Suzanne Dance and Harriet Davidson (cello) present LEAVE TO REMAIN as part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace in St John's church, West End, Edinburgh on August 13th and 14th at 2.00 & on August 20th at 4.00. For tickets phone 0131 473 2000 or go to www.festivalofspiritualityandpeace.org.uk
WHAT THE PRESS SAID
Joyce Macmillan in THE SCOTSMAN: "there’s something intensely moving and comforting about this brief and beautiful experience.... And for those thousands of grieving people in our society who have always felt that one brief afternoon’s funeral is too short a goodbye, it opens up the possibility of something richer, and of a slow reinvention of the vital mourning rituals we have lost."
Neil Cooper in THE HERALD: "there’s no denying the emotional power of this piece. There can’t be many church services where those gathered are visibly moved to tears by a life and death experience that touches us all."
WHAT THE AUDIENCE SAID:
"This is the first time I've been able to cry for my mother. I feel so relieved to be able to."
"this is something so necessary and important"
"Open, generous, warm-hearted and emotional"
"Such a relief to be in the same room with people who have been through the same thing. And be able to talk about it afterwards"
“I just want to say thank you. Thank you for the most beautiful, spiritual and touching experience I ever experienced in a play. I cannot find words to express the beauty and sense of transcendence you conveyed in the play tonight. It felt as a gift.”
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Rehearsing "Leave To Remain"
When we first devised LEAVE TO REMAIN I was still grieving for my partner Susie Innes, and Suzanne Dance was still grieving for her mother.
We didn’t really know what we wanted to do. Or rather in a way we did - we wanted to create something that would help us and would also help our audiences. We knew that, like us, there were many people who had suffered bereavement and had experienced difficulty in finding ways to talk about it.
This isn’t healthy, and we wanted to see what we could do about it.
We groped our way forward, stopping every now and then when one of us burst into tears.
As time went on, these were often tears that usually took us by surprise. Jumping out at us and overwhelming us when we least expected them. And even if we didn’t cry our minds often went blank with grief, and the whole business of performing left us feeling dangerously exposed.
Taking that kind of excessive emotional risk doesn’t help anybody; so we decided to perform script in hand “in case”, as the script puts it, “we get ambushed by grief”.
Susie died in 2005, and I keep thinking I’ve “got over it”, as you’re supposed to. Besides, we’ve performed this so often over so many years and I’ve started to get deeply impatient with these scripts. My hunch is that I’d perform much better without them.
But maybe it's not about "performing". As we also say:
"This isn't a play.
We're not pretending to be other people".
Today we had our (only) rehearsal in the space in which we’re performing: the Lady Chapel of St. John’s Church.
It’s a beautiful space with a strong spiritual atmosphere. But we weren’t thinking about that too much, being more preoccupied with how we were going to move, and where and when we were going to stand and sit. The usual technical things. And for some of the time, too, we were sharing the rather tiny space with an utterly charming and very gifted Irish painter who was trying to figure out where he was going to hang his paintings.
And then we got to my speech
“Susie died at the height of her powers.
She was one of the cleverest people I have ever known
And cancer destroyed her beautiful brain....”
And there I was. Ambushed by grief. I couldn’t stop crying.
I got to the end somehow and then it was Suzanne
“A few hours before my mum died
I fed her porridge and honey...”
And she, too was gone. We hugged each other helplessly a while.
Harriet, our lovely cellist, played us some music, and it was one of those occasions when you’re so glad you’re in a rehearsal.
And we got to the end, and the venue’s technical manager started to drill holes in the walls.
And I think that maybe I’ll keep my script in my hand after all.
LEAVE TO REMAIN: St John's Church, West End of Princes' St., Edinburgh. 13th and 14th August at 4pm; 20th August at 2.00. Part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace: http://www.hubtickets.co.uk/show.asp
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