It is the night before my rehearsal: Monday morning 00:10. I have sorted the PR leaflets, distributed a load via post and in person on Saturday, completed the risk assessment form. I have had so much help – I am grateful to Veronica, the events organiser of St George’s Church for helping me with the marketing side of this project.
My best news of the day is Sabina Stefanova replying to a text with ‘I am better!! :) We still on for tomoro?’. We are go.
I am going over how we will organise all the different parts to Book of Essays. Like the ball of polyester thread I am using, perhaps we will have to unravel everything to make a single line to be unwound. Certain elements stick in my head from my final rehearsal in Jan, like the moment when the room cast in darkness prevented me from reading. I want to shift my role too. I want to be part of a team, not simply a leader.
Perhaps this goes back to a time when I took part in a workshop run by a member of Forced Entertainment. We took turns in pairs to follow and to be followed. Then we could decide ourselves whether to choose and change these roles at will within a group. After the exercises, certain movements began to emerge and personalities started to present themselves. Certain tensions arose.
Maybe the way to manoeuvre beyond the role of storyteller lies in killing the storyteller.
I have ideas – the self, myself, unseeing through darkness or blindness, willing or unwilling to be led. Who is the leader leading?
