And the dogs are out!  Someone let them out – who let the dogs out? (yuuuk…yuk-yuk!) I have been watching the Flipside troupe practice skills – jumping, leaping, rolling, springing, cartwheeling – but these aren’t adequate descriptions of what these performers do…

They climb up each other – 2, 3 people high, they backward leap out of headstands, they run – side-ways – and rotate in a complete circle, mid-air, before landing in a crouch, head up, ears pricked, eyes laser-beaming to the birds… on the floor… the prey, right there… 

And the birds – they are up a tissu all the time – Sam, one bird, had little do on Thursday last week after warm-up, skills and training – and so – in her regular day clothes, she simply started working on a Chinese pole. This is the pole that has abrasive strips allowing it to be climbed by circus performers with courage, strength and ok sneakers!… I watched this young performer practice her bird skills on pole – and her jeans develop long smears of black along her inside thighs – I’m so sorry, Sam’s mum!

There is going to be so much more washing with this show.

Right now, my job is to remind these young performers of their dog-ness. We play hunt stuff – and I yell – crouch! Slink! Creep!  Hackle! (or I will on Tuesday…)

There were individual dogs in the troupe last year during the development at the Judy and my job is to re-find those dogs now. There’s a friendly dog who slung a leg over an audience member and licked a face… There’s a yappy dog, who tried to herd the audience… There’s a happy dog who bounded along the front row, licking any hand they could reach… A bossy dog – who called them all to school… A big dog named Sumo who scares people…

Rob (Dogs director) set me a challenge for the beginning of the circus rehearsal – the story in 10 pages… a scene a page.

It didn’t quite work out that way – some of my scenes had 3 pages attached…

But this is the process with circus. And these circus people, right here, are now adapting to a strong narrative – and, perhaps, more linear than they have worked before.

So, this isn’t the regular ‘blogs check-in’ with developments, really. 

I think they are going great.  I just hope they think they’re going great, as well…

I am so looking forward to getting back into the room with this ridiculously gifted bunch of young artists…

Dogs in the Schoolyard – here we come! Josh McIntosh’s amazing metal schoolyard ‘fig tree’ is up in the Flipside building and the dogs are in the house!

Arrroooooo!..

I’ve created a 10 scene version of the story – Rob Kronk (Flipside Creative Producer and DOGS director) has said come and see what we have put together so far this Thursday…

It’s a crazy and interesting process – a kind of distillation of theatrical making…

Made more extreme, and clearer, because these performers don’t really use language – so something is very clear as it grows or it’s muddy and hard to read.

You see that and you know what has to go and what is worth keeping, growing…

And then, the stuff that’s clear as it grows becomes even clearer and more nuanced when you add language in.

It’s a weird backwards process for me – a lover of words who whittles and whittles and cries over every cut until I have a sparse script.

In DOGS I don’t have a sparse script – I have maybe a few small patches of words in a sea of action and adventure that ebbs and flows around this extraordinary huge metal fig tree…

I’m an effing writer… Why did I ever think I could draw?

“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”

Salvador Dali

I can’t draw. But in the last 3 or 4 weeks I have been drawing a lot – I have had to draw.

And yes, “it is either good or bad.”

So, I have sought further inspiration from brilliant artists –

“Lose your inhibitions about drawing and just do it.”

Chris Riddell, UK Children’s Laureate

That’s him at the end…

So, I did.

And after multiple tries – it is still “either good or bad”!

But I have to do it. It has to happen because I can’t just ‘write’ this work.

(Interestingly, I came across the words of Marjane Satrapi, the graphic novelist and director: “The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.” I would say the first story-telling of any kind was with the voice but – okay – we’re talking about making marks, about telling stories when we are not personally there to say the words or make the sounds or actions…)

So, having digressed, why do I have to effing draw? Why can’t I just write this work?

Second half of last year I was working with the glorious, happy, nervous, honest, uncluttered, somewhat injured, ever-so-slightly-worried-and-wondering-but-always-marvellous Flipside Circus performance troupe. Roughly 7 – 16 years of age and completely in love with circus. And, of course, there’s been Rob Kronk (Flipside AD) as dramaturg, and Davey and Aliya and other fantastic trainers all in the mix.

We were developing the language for a concept I took to Flipside in 2017 – a pack of young dog-children in a schoolyard – the pack dynamic allowing an exploration of all of the things that mark, for good or ill, our young primary kids’ experience these days – friendship, rivalry and comparisons, self-valuing, bullying, inclusion and exclusion from the tribe – the pack.

On the floor we’ve been melding and mixing up, fooling around with circus lazzi, a bit of physical theatre, mime, some words (but not many), song, dog sounds, generally expressive sounds, the sounds of the natural world … there’s a rich substrate to draw from in the upcoming creative development at the Judith Wright Centre in May and June.

But, of course, the best use of that development will come from having a script to explore – pursue, ditch, whatever.

But this script has to be a bit like a storybook, and a bit like a storyboard, and sometimes written as if we’re speaking with 7 year-olds – and also written to convey meaning and information to theatre and circus professionals.

So, I’m faced with ‘writing’ things that aren’t generally ‘written’ – for a whole bunch of different readers who don’t usually read scripts.

“Drawing is putting a line (a)round an idea.”

Henri Matisse

Yes. Simple. Brilliant.

That gave me such hope. I loved that idea. It took the pressure off my performance and put the focus of the work back on the ideas to be conveyed.

But on a bad drawing day for me, I felt I’d failed everything – the work, the Flipsiders, my ability to speak coherently about the idea…

So I found this:

“Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see… “

Kimon Nicolaides

I had never learnt to see in this way.

And then I found:

“Drawing is the artist’s most spontaneous expression, a species of writing…”

Edgar Degas

Drawing is an artist’s basic syllabus, his/her writing. My shit. Perhaps I could try again. So I did. And it’s still not good – but it’s clearer, fuller. There actually is something about doing it for 4 weeks. You do get better. Because you keep going, keep doing.

“…it is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover, to your surprise, that you have rendered something in its true character.”

Camille Pissaro

I can’t draw. But I am starting to see differently.

Can’t wait to get it all in the space. That’s a different seeing, again.