Our next step was to create more text to work with and see what senses we could distinguish within these scripts. Here is one I wrote based on a location that the box could be considered within:
You are walking along a long strip of white sand, palm trees to your left and an endless sea of blue water to your right. The water is glistening from the sun’s rays and the reflections of the heavens emerge on the top of the water. Birds are flying overhead, swooping down and circling the people on the beach.You smell the salt of the sea and feel the warm wind brushing through your hair and drying the droplets of water on your skin. The sand beneath your feet feels nice at first almost as if it is giving your feet the cuddle they deserve after this long walk along the coast. Gradually you walk nearer to the water and you reach the cold, wet sand that has been challenged by the waves, your feet begin to sink and each step becomes more of an effort for you. You are slowly but surely sinking into the sand, becoming part of the landscape itself. Kids runs around laughing and screaming, too preoccupied by the sandcastle competition on the far side of the beach. Everyone around you doesn’t seem to notice your state of sheer panic. The waves are beginning to rise around you, the cold water engulfing your legs, waist and at last your torso. You try to scream for help but no words seem to come out, not the right time to be suffering from a state of speechlessness. It is as if you are invisible to everyone around you, from another life. You can see them, why else would you be flailing your arm in panic above the water. The water is rising relentlessly taking you as a victim. There is no way they haven’t seen you, unless they are part of a conspiracy where the target is you and only you. But what have you done to deserve this. The water submerges up to your nose now, the task of breathing is becoming rapidly difficult, you’re inhaling water and you are helpless. All you can taste is the salt. All you can see is the darkness of the water around you. You look up the sunlight seems so far above you, surely you can’t have travelled this far already. Desperately trying to kick to the surface your legs feel numb you have no control over your muscles. Trapped in your own body screaming for help.
We wanted to think of the box as an entity of performance; something that can transport itself to link with another thing or stay in the forefront of the mind as a constant reminder of the location and situation of the mind. The performer should begin to think of the box as an object and boundary they have imagined themselves. It can be shaped through their own personalities, cultural positioning and their understanding of the voices they are interpreting continuously. From watching About Silence by Prototype Theatre it drew my attention to what is not being said at the time. The lines were often close together or existed either side of long silences, this added to the meaning and the context of what was being said. Tim Etchells states ” The kind of silence that has everything in it” (1999, p.108), this reinstates the above thought for me and suggests the unknown and the subtle are illuminated through performance. Speaking to Andrew Westerside, one of the performers in Prototype Theatre, he claimed that the borrowing of language was key to the understanding and framework of the piece. If we are to go ahead with the identification of text through Twitter and overheard conversations then we too will be engaging with restored behaviour and changing the masks of our ever-changing identities.
The box could be anywhere…
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