'Door'

A journey

Through the door

Along the floor

There’s a theatre making exercise I learnt and performed early in my career, one that I’ve adapted numerous times for teaching. In this exercise, we theatricalise and perform the imagined journey of the creation of an as-yet incomplete piece of theatre, a course full of obstacles. It's the Hero’s Journey; giving meaning and providing resolution to otherwise disparate experiences. At the time, after an intense immersion in the art of circus, I relished the physicality of this endeavour and, clearly an entry into a journey of triumph over obstacle, I found it wonderfully optimistic. Years later, I wonder about the application of the obstacle-ridden Hero's journey, to life and to art.

There’s another theatre game I play with young people. It’s a warm-up: “Imagine you come across a door. A door you’ve never been through. It’s an interesting door. A door that piques your imagination. See its size, its colour. What do you think and feel as you approach this door? Do you have a sense of what's behind it?  If you wanted to, how would you enter? Now look at your feet. What are you standing on? How does it affect the way you feel and move? Take a step. Walk through the door. Where are you?”

In the most common variation of this warm-up game, I present a world of instructions that must be executed in their opposite. The door however, can lead wherever you choose. That’s the pleasure. That’s the opportunity. 

These workshops and games were the seeds for Door. I sat down to write and a door was in my way. A door was my way in. The repetition of the main movement of the piece is the creation and maintenance of a world and, in the action, there’s something found. It’s something lost.

I have my ideas about the world of this piece, where we are and what we’re moving through. What are yours?

I wrote and recorded Door in early 2021. This is that first version.

This song is no longer available for listening.  

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