In November 2024, we shared a 15-minute set of extracts from Skywater, Facewater, Underwater Waltz at the event Entanglements: Studies in falling, flowing, following, which was presented by the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
This event gently entangled a number of collaborative projects. In addition to our excerpts from Skywater, David Overend and Matthew Whiteside shared their collaboration with the Waterways Collective; Rhubaba Choir presented work developed for an entangled collaboration with Marie-Chantal Hamrock and Noah Tomson; and award-winning poet, playwright and performer Hannah Lavery responded creatively to the event’s theme and contents. Additional presentations grew out of two workshops one led by Karen Christopher and the other by Rhubaba Choir.
The event (including a 15-minute conversation with the audience) was live streamed, and can be watched in full here.
What’s the point?
If you are interested in post-show conversations that start with the question “What’s the point?” then the end of the video found at the above link might be of interest to you. Here are a few thoughts about that I had myself:
A group of people sit onstage to enact a post-show conversation with the audience. We represent disparate elements in a show under the heading: Entanglements: Studies in falling, flowing, following. This was part of a series with an overarching theme: Learning Curves.
A few introductory niceties are spoken and a question to the assembled performers is tossed into the air and some answers are given but swiftly it is time to open up to the audience and we are asking for more light on them. A comment from the audience arrives in the form of a question: “What’s the point?” After a brief response from the people on stage, the questioner provides a further clarification: “I thought I would learn something tonight . . . ”
Now, back in my hotel room, I’m thinking our brains are formed to be capable of synthesis but we need practice to be good at it. This evening’s event contained a collection of different elements without culminating in a big conclusive statement. This provided an opportunity for a group of humans to practice a potential capacity for synthesis which, if used and refined over time, becomes second nature. We learn to see multiple possibilities in a single sign or element or moment. We can relax in the realisation of multiple options and the fellow traveling of simultaneous truths. We are still free to choose and to make our own reality — there are laws of course, and there are ways deemed correct and incorrect — but there are also different ways of being that glide alongside ours. They do not invalidate others’ distinct views or practices. Our ability to accept those other ways and to understand that they have a place in the world releases a truer picture of the possibilities available in our own lives. Yet doing the collation yourself sometimes devolves into a sense that there is no cohesion to be found here. Sometimes this leads to disappointment or bewilderment. Sometimes it just takes time for the sense of an order or collection of seeming unrelated elements to straighten up and fly right. If it is only a thought experiment it is still rewarding. It aids in being open to other minds and ways and contradictory truths.
The audience member asking for the point was speaking from the point of view of having seen the entire collection of parts performed in a particular order on that occasion. But I imagine this person might have made a similar comment about the performance fragment I was part of presenting (along with the other two people with whom I’ve made this work). Speaking only from the point of view of the work that I and my co-makers presented (as opposed to the event as a whole) I can say in order to make this work we had to look around until we were swimming in a sea of questions. Then we required a spine. Once we found a spine we began to see the piece take shape. We had to find the performance in order to make the performance. At which point a tip of the iceberg revealed itself to us.
For us now it is impossible to give only one answer to “What is the point?” called out from the other side of the lights. Even so we do need to acknowledge our own job of communication, of facilitating thought, of making good on the promise of a journey.
In the event that evening there were multiple sections, multiple journeys and perhaps they don’t align. Synthesis in this case is placed even more than usual on the individual viewer. How should they see these bits related? How should they draw out the relationships between separate elements? How do I unsee the connections I know to be there long enough to pave a way to clarity for those not familiar with the minds of the makers and the organisers of these plans and these chronologies? How do I understand the sense a day makes? More questions than answers, but in addition there are multiple answers for each of them. The water I’m swimming in is filled with life born in both visible and invisible bodies, carried by currents influenced by colour and temperature, hungry for food and oxygen and light.
In answer to the question “what is the point?” I can say yes, that is a sadly reductive query, but also that it points to an opportunity to focus on the practice of synthesis. The delivery of a string of statements each requiring inquiring minds to investigate is offered to be synthesised as a whole, as a chain of events, but also now as a loose confederation, released from the pressure of time, floating in the mind untethered. The options have increased again, the permutations have multiplied possible cause and effect conclusions. All the viewer — or the soaker in this performance fluid — has to hold onto is their own associations and set of principles. Yes, it is a lonely place. And yes, there is a lot of company there. Continuing the conversation is the only option — otherwise the rest is failure.
So thanks for asking what the point is even though the response you got was that your question is unanswerable or complicated or the wrong question. I think we heard you and I’m glad you asked.
The conversation can be heard in full (~15 minutes from the end) at the link to the recording of the live stream of the event (see above).
