reTHiNK Possible Worlds WIP

By Christian Jensen of The Literatti

We’ve been working on the story of Possible Worlds since Fringe 2011 in March; when we performed the first part of the story, One Question, which we’d been working on since November 2010.

As soon as I found out I had won a reTHiNK Grant for Possible Worlds, I brought the seven writers together with the dance troupe and musicians and gave them what I call a ‘Skeleton Script’ – the outline of the Possible Worlds story divided into 18 short ‘scenes.’ The poets each chose or were assigned different ‘scenes’ and were sent away to write.

Every Sunday the Literatti meets with the dancers and live musicians at the Like Minds, Like Mine headquarters at Mind and Body Consultants for workshops and rehearsals. Everyone bounces off each other – with the dancers and musicians all adding their perspectives to the poetry along the way too. The dancers, from Etched Dance Productions, led by Amy Mauvan are always early and busting with new ideas for movement. Miriam (Barr) brings a car load of poets minutes later to let us all into the rehearsal space, temporarily rearranging the office space into a space for creation. And then it’s the task of lugging all the instruments and amps up the back stairs! We all love the cello, but it is damn tricky to get it past the second landing!

Today I’ve got the poets working on the final piece of the show, sharing individually written verses that get melded into a unified piece and performed together – but first it needs to edited and turned into a script. In between creating this final piece of the Maze, we each work individually with the musicians to create the base soundscape for our solo and duet performances.

I’ve been stuck with my main solo piece, wanting to develop it further. John (McNab, from Freaky Meat and The Tutts) has felt the same way and has been a great partner in finding the right music that expresses itself the clearest. With several ok but not brilliant tries, we finally nailed it. After that one brilliant moment of connected minds, we wondered what we had just done and how to do it again. This involved a re-stepping of the piece, bite by bite. Half an hour later, we nailed it again (and recorded that one).

Later, Shane (Hollands) is in the room with John and Simone Kaho, adding his sage advice to the development of Simone’s performance of her poem Half-way. The rest of us get to see the latest developments in a Miriam-and-Daniel duet, with movement from the dancers. The poets themselves get pretty excited here – this is the first time we’ve seen all the components together since rehearsals began and we can see that we are on the right track! The dance adds weight to the feeling of the poem and mirrors the movement of the poets themselves, without distracting from them; with the music I was completely sucked into the story that this piece is telling.

We end with a first run-through of the finale piece that we completed earlier in the day. A real collaborative effort, I fitted the different verses together, Miriam edited the draft and then Daniel scripted it for the seven voices that will perform it. Then we stepped it out for the dancers, who filmed the words and began thinking up their next piece of choreography. And with that we finished our rehearsal and busied off to absorb until next week.

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Christian Jensen is creative director for Auckland-based performance poetry group, The Literatti. With reTHiNK Possible Worlds, The Literatti come together with Etched Dance Productions, Renegade House, live musicians Paul Williams and John McNab and members of the public to create a collaborative, multimedia show that explores the positive value of mental unwellness. The public is invited to create their own video responses to the theme of the show ‘we are all human beings navigating the maze of life’ to help create the moving image component of the multi-media experience.

• reTHINK Possible Worlds is one of the RETHiNK Grant projects to challenge our community’s attitudes about mental illness.