In Absentia

Today is our last day on the development…

Tonight we share our movement for the last time…being brave to bare our souls and reach towards those who have been forgotten…

Last week we rode the ups and downs of process…leaving ideas behind that didn’t work…but acknowledging their part in providing us with choice…

Yesterday was the first time we shared our findings with an audience…always daunting but satisfying to find out that you made people feel something…that you made people aware of something that has somehow become entwined to your own life experience…

Last weekend I jigged around my bedroom…I found joy…

On Monday the rules of the factory became warped…we all rose to a challenge…we all found a new voice to deliver the warped rules…we laughed hard and were again reminded of the power of humour to dissipate darkness…

The week before last I first discovered the reality of the female factories and the lives of those held within…

Today I know that I will never forget these women…

(Image Credit: Female Factory 3rd class penitentiary. SAG: J.K.S Houison collection ref:SAG6404) 

http://www.parragirls.org.au/female-factory.php 

It’s hard not to become swept up  by one particular phrase  or moment in this project .For some reason I have forgotten the women totally this week….  Must go back and remember what the movement means before it ends……

“The Girl Became a Bird” Jan Dunning image

Last weekend, I experienced a frightening encounter with a woman who seemed to have stepped straight out of the Female Factory. I was packing up after teaching, when a homeless woman wandered into the room. She had nothing on but a thin t-shirt and trackies, her arms fixed firmly around her bony body as she shuffled slowly into the warmth…gasping at even this small effort.

Bang…immediately I found that I was placed in the position of the ‘civilised woman’ looking at a fellow woman who had fallen through the cracks in society.

Would I simply walk away from the situation and call someone else in to deal with her?

Would I chase her out of the room?

Was there someone I could go and fetch who could take her somewhere warm to feed and comfort her?

I’d already left the room to work out what I could do after she had ignored my feeble ‘I’m sorry, but I have to lock up here’. By the time I’d figured there wasn’t anyone I could fetch to help, I was back in the room and confronted by a heartrending image. The woman had clutched tightly to her chest a baby doll, chosen from a crate full of children’s toys in the room.  

It was clear that all she was looking for was some little comfort to help her get through the harsh coldness of the day. I felt horrified that it was going to have to be me who would be taking this small token away from her – as the toy was someone else’s property and not mine to give. As she came closer towards me, I quietly said ‘I think that doll belongs here…’ and looking into her eyes was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Held within was defiance marred by despair and dejection. I’ll admit now that I was petrified that she was going to attack me. But she didn’t. She slowly made her way back to the crate…put the doll back…spent some time fingering the other items in the room…then to my intense relief, she left.

Mission accomplished…I could lock up.

But after the past two weeks spent on this project, there was no way that I could leave her like that. I had to do something. The question was what? There were no shelters that I knew of in the area, and even if there were, there was something in her demeanour which warned me that she didn’t want to be touched or forced to go anywhere.

All I had to give was a picnic rug that I had in my car. I quickly caught up to her on the street, and tentatively asked if she would like to have it. As she turned to look at me, I took a chance and placed the rug around her shoulders…which she immediately pulled around her as she took off as fast as she could, mumbling ‘thank you m’am, thank you m’am, thank you m’am…’

Thinking about this whole incident now, I’m still wondering if there was anything else I should have done? I’m still wondering if I would have been as compelled to help if I hadn’t been on this project…and that makes me disgusted with myself.

The thing is, for the past two weeks, I’ve been appalled by the lack of interest from the ‘civilised’ people of the day to really be proactive about addressing the living standards of the Female Factories and treatment of the inmates. But the question is…what do you do? When society in general has the shared attitude that out of sight is out of mind, that those who are down are down out of their own doing, what can you do as an individual that would make any kind of significant difference?

This is why art and performance is so important. As a performer, I will stand in defiance of society’s generalisations and hope to change people’s attitudes for the better.

information… and more information… and more layering… and more to think about…

more to feel… more to explore…. more to find….

three weeks? i could do this for years! ….

its amazing how in-depth and informative this process is…

we are being asked to think in a way we have not before… search and explore in a way we have not before….

biggest challenge to date? the list! … learning the names of the woman… and layering that onto movement…

that is my homework task of the weekend!

burns ann

burns ann

burns eliza

burns elizabeth… and so on………. i want to be able to see these women when i say there names…. and seperate them ….

into individuals…

Today in rehearsals we attempted to clean some movement . We found ourselves going back over steps , counts, arms,and shapes . At times I must admit I felt like the one falling off the ladder….but my job is to clarify the steps by going back over them as many times as it takes for my body and mind .

If I don’t go back I cant go forward …if we don’t try it again  it won’t grow…if we don’t talk about it it won’t change…….

Relating this back to Miss Kay’s previous post …if we didn’t do this project we would not  have learnt about these women ……they would have just been another name on the list …but we now know of them and they are not forgotten…. they are living . So let’s go back

Might just be the fact that its been raining for about three days solid.

Feel the effects of no light.

feel for my poor little possums, my little dog, my cats…. all kidnapped into submission by the rain.

So cold too.

Must have been cold in the factory in winter. We have doona’s and electric blankets…even my cats have an electric blanket (ok so they are completely spoilt).. But not in the 1800′s. Not at the factory.

Today the ladies left me. Must have been the rain. I felt like this picture. Like something magic had been in the room but had disappeared.

I had a moment when I thought – will anyone really care about this? what was i thinking?… i should be making work about something today, not about a bunch of people long gone.

I tell you it’s the rain. It has soaked into my thoughts and dampened my spirits. Maybe because today was about pushing through mechanics of movement and counts and post lunch fuzz brain …I totally blame that damn jig. There’s evil in dem moves…

  How to make three people into thousands…?

Had a go at that today.

Layered one task with another then played with some   unexpected music, then bamboozled the gals completely by adding the roll call list on top…. oh I am soooo mean.

I really like what unravelled. It has a sense of work, of numbers, of incessant labour without being too ‘heavy’.

So yes another productive day!

would be so nice to do this all the time. We achieve so much and it is gratifying to see the rewards of the youMove experience express itself so finely in Imo, Anna+Ange. Love that we can laugh and cry and scream in all the space of a day and still come out with smiles on our faces and a real sense of accomplishment.

On the more functional side – we now have 2 showings. We are in the studio for both. Had to let go of the wall and being on site – realised that I’m not superwoman, and that there is only one of me, and that I can’t be in the process as well as be production manager….as well we have only been working for 3 weeks so I really want to focus on the why’s and how’s, as opposed to wrangling petrol generators and hiring sound systems… god knows I probably would have blown something up.

Still not letting go of the jig. Don’t know if the girls have found the joy in it yet…:)

Today, we looked for joy in a jig. I now wonder if the women of the Female Factories would have looked for the hope and inspiration to soldier on by singing the songs from their country…

This beautiful poem by Frances Browne illustrates the power of Irish songs. She was born in 1816, blinded from infancy after suffering the smallpox. Yet such was her strength and eagerness to learn, that she found unique ways to educate herself and eventually became a prolific writer and poet.

Frances Browne was a vibrant, strong and intelligent Irish woman…and I can’t help but believe that many of the women in the Female Factories would have shared her spirited attitude to life. Please follow this link to The Baldwin Project to learn more about her…I am feeling inspired and lifted after reading her story -  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=browne&book=chair&story=_preface - I especially love this quote from the website - “Thus it has been, and thus it shall be; so long as the world shall last, circumstance shall not conquer a strong and beautiful spirit.”

Songs Of Our Land, by Frances Browne

Songs of our land, ye are with us for ever,
The power and the splendor of thrones pass away;
But yours is the might of some far flowing river,
Through Summer’s bright roses or Autumn’s decay.
Ye treasure each voice of the swift passing ages,
And truth which time writeth on leaves or on sand;
Ye bring us the thoughts of poets and sages,
And keep them among us, old songs of our land.

The bards may go down to the place of their slumbers,
The lyre of the charmer be hushed in the grave,
But far in the future the power of their numbers
Shall kindle the hearts of our faithful and brave.
It will waken an echo in souls deep and lonely,
Like voices of reeds by the summer breeze fanned;
It will call up a spirit of freedom, when only
Her breathings are heard in the songs of our land.

For they keep a record of those, the true-hearted,
Who fell with the cause they had vowed to maintain;
They show us bright shadows of glory departed,
Of love that grew cold and the hope that was vain.
The page may be lost and the pen long forsaken,
And weeds may grow wild o’er the brave heart and hand;
But ye are still left when all else hath been taken,
Like streams in the desert, sweet songs of our land.

Songs of our land, ye have followed the stranger,
With power over ocean and desert afar,
Ye have gone with our wanderers through distance and danger,
And gladdened their path like a home-guiding star.
With the breath of our mountain in summers long vanished,
And visions that passed like a wave from the sand,
With hope for their country and joy from her banished,
Ye come to us ever, sweet songs of our land.

The spring time may come with the song of our glory,
To bid the green heart of the forest rejoice,
But the pine of the mountain though blasted and hoary,
And the rock in the desert, can send forth a voice.
It was thus in their triumph for deep desolations,
While ocean waves roll or the mountains shall stand,
Still hearts that are bravest and best of the nations,
Shall glory and live in the songs of our land.

well its all terrific …I am loving being in the studio with this work, with these women of today and the women of the past..but the admin that piles up outside the door while I’m being ‘creative’ is overwhelming.

It kinda makes me a little bit sad to tell you the honest truth. It makes me think that I can only be one of two things – an administrator or a creator – but for this organisation to survive I have to be both..or for me to survive i have to be both. God knows if I got buried in paperwork I would end up imploding.

Anyhow its not a fun, cheery, inspirational post. Bit of whinge really.

I wish that I had an office load of clones. (yikes! I can hear you all scream – one of you is quite enough thanks!) Ahh the things I would get done…

so today in the studio I pushed through a jig!! yep I forced the creative muses to kick up their heels and find some joy in this stuff… gotta find the reason why it was that these women didn’t just give up…hey might not have been a jig that saved them, but it was worth a shot…and it is my heritage after all. I had it on my head that they may have just ‘lost it’ on some ocassions and that our equivalent of head banging at a rave, may well of been kicking up ya boots in a jig. I love watching the guys push through hard work. The jury’s still out on the jig.

Anyways… sometimes this thing seems awfully lonely.

We read out the list today of all the names that passed through the factory – not all of them – there were thousands… but a few… trying to find a way to ‘theatricalise’ a roll call… so many ‘smiths’ so many ‘marys’…found a few ‘armstrong’s…

we whispered the list – name upon name upon name upon name…..

The hands gently and carefully, yet particularly and methodically cast over it……

like something that hasn’t been before….

like some sensation that hasn’t been before

i still remember the feel of my grandmother’s lace dress….

special

delicate

precious