PLAYDATE #2 : Verse-Jumping

Archival Videos of the performances from this Play Date can be found at the bottom of this blogpost

In this playdate, I invited Ali Mazrin and Daisy Zhao, both performers and theatre-makers, to explore the artful process of translating authentic and intimate experiences into a performance/experience for an audience of one. The playdate began with a little fieldtrip to places I’m not particularly familiar with, the nail salon and a hair wash parlor. Daisy and I went to get a pretty standard express pedicure while Ali and I got our hair wash, which, to our surprise, also came with a gentle facial, a face massage of sorts and an upper body massage (more on this unexpected add ons later. The goal was to experience an intimate service together, one that crosses into our personal everyday boundaries and respond to the experience with a 15 minute performance.

Before I dive deeper into what we did, I would to hold space for some of my thoughts at this juncture of my exploration. Get my nails done, wash my hair and then create a performance, this was as much structure as I gave myself for this playdate, and I was honestly a bit nervous that this would come out to be a trivial use of my time and resources. Already, with the first part of this exploration, it feels silly and almost wasteful to get these services done in the name of artistic exploration? I am plagued by the need to use my resources to explore “meaningfully”, that all artistic endeavours should work towards some sort of social impact, or be politically engaged, and maybe I do believe that, but it definitely felt like it was holding me back from exploring my creative practice authentically. This is about the playdate, but also about how I’m looking at my residency and practice as a whole. I feel like I need validate myself that what I’m doing matters and worth funding, and the only way to do that is to have some sort socially engaged practice. I truly believe I do want and have had a socially engaged practice, but what might be holding me back is having to make it look or sound a certain way. I dont feel like its enough for me to know my practice matters to the people I’m doing this for, for the people I am trying to “move” or “impact”, that I have to make it look and sound and feel like im socially engaged. But what does even mean, I cant even properly put into words what that looks like. At this point, I started to discover an insecurity of mine, that I’m scared that I don’t come off as a “serious artist”. But the more I try to be a “serious artist”, the further away I am from my authentic practice, that I know is rooted in fucking around and finding out, in play for the sake of play, and eventually finding the heart and connection within playing and messing around. Anyways, I’m rambling. Just jumping ahead a bit, this playdate showed me that I enjoy creating with very little structure to begin with, and finding it’s heart and soul from excavating and responding to seemingly trivial activities. I hate having to know what I’m working towards before I work towards it. I just read my artist in residency write up for the announcement and I feel like it reeks of the aforementioned insecurity and inauthenticity to the kind of artist I actually am. (wow raw, but whatever ah, im feeling insecure about writing this insecurity but whatever ah ahh)

Anyways, I pushed myself through, trusting that I will discover something worthwhile when we get into the creation process.

Pedicure with Daisy

At 4pm on a weekday, Daisy and I ventured into lucky plaza to get an express pedicure. There wasnt a particular shop that we had in mind, so after walking around a few rounds, we settled on this shop that had bright pink cushion thrones that was placed on almost a stage or a platform, higher than everything else in the shop. That’s where we sat, and the staff sat comfortably at our feet, which honestly made me cringe in awkwardness. I’ve only ever gotten one pedicure in my life, but what made me feel even more uncomfortable was how high up Daisy and I were, seated in our pink “thrones”. Daisy share similar sentiments, and as we went through the procedures of a pedicure for the next 30 mins, we chatted about the experience in real-time, often giggling about the fact that our feet were out, that we were so far away from the ground, about the sensations of the various apparatus being used on our feet. We eventually started talking about the last time somebody had been at our feet to clip our toenails or take care of it in any way, and we both concluded that it was a long time ago, and it was most probably our mums. This became the jumping off point when we went into the creation process.

We spoke of the experience and how it reminded us of our mums. I spoke of the muslim adage “Heaven is at the soles of our mother’s feet”, how I remember the last time my mum was at my feet was probably the first day of primary school where she put on my socks for me, and how recently, I had to help her put on her socks for her because she couldnt bend forward. Daisy spoke about how her mum would cut her toenails for her, how she’s been meaning to reconnect with her mum who’s back at home in another country. We spoke too about wondering what our mother’s do when theyre home alone, and we’re away. We spoke of how it’s rare to have had our feet been paid attention to, almost insecure about it too. In a way, it’s also a very personal access point into who a person is. On this thread, we slowly created a performance that would create an opportunity for the audience member to reflect on their relationship with their main caregiver growing up that was decided based upon who took care of their feet growing up. Daisy would assume a pseudo mother figure, recieving the audience at the door, helping them take off their shoes and bringing them in, quickly bringing their feet on her lap as though it was routine. Daisy would make observations about their feet, and her eyes do not leave the audience’s feet throughout the performance. She’d ask questions about their day and then slowly transitioning into questions about their feet, then about their caregivers and then prompting reflections about their relationship with their caregivers. At the end of the performance, Daisy turns the audience member, gently place their feet back down and says “if you need to go just go, don’t worry about me”. You can view the two passes of this performance below. We made some adjustments after the first pass with Ali, omitting a part of the performance where Daisy wouldve put socks on the audience member, just because it got in the way.

We kept it simple and gave room for Daisy to skillfully respond to the truth of the moment, but we knew the goal, to create an opportunity to reflect about our caregivers. We decided that the interaction between Daisy and the audience member would be through the feet, observations, gentle pats and slight pressure created the interaction vocabulary, the sequence was up to Daisy to respond to in the moment.

This work closely resembles Adrian Howell’s Foot Washing for the Sole (link), the artist reference for this playdate. In a tribute article to Howell, writer Andy Field describes his experience of Howell’s performance as “a moment of such straightforward and uncharged physicality that it became almost revelatory; a realisation of how few moments of physical intimacy aren't shaped or distorted by sexual politics, by intentions and longings, real or imagined, that we are able to share. Foot Washing for the Sole made me realise that a performance could be a way of thinking by doing – ideas of clarity and power could be woven out of gestures and bodies, and from the relationship between artist and audience member.”

I have never had the privilege of experiencing Adrian Howell’s work or any work of this nature. However, I share the same sentiments as Andy Field. Within 15 mins, Daisy and her audience member, who, to mention, weren’t familiar with each other before the performance, shared a tender, quiet moment of vulnerability and connection, providing a meaningful pause in their lives to reflect on their relationship with a very important person, a reflection that is overdue and overlooked for reasons we blame our hectic lives for.

What was a pleasant surprise was how the performance resonated to Fafa (project manager) and I as non-participating observers. This was accidental as we initially crafted the performance to be a one on one experience, however for the purposes of this playdate, Fafa and I observed the performance. It was moving to see Ali and Pearlyn’s honest reflections, the pauses in between their thoughts and the way they interacted and responded to Daisy both physically and verbally. It was simply arresting watching two people get acquainted with each other through a gentle series of touches, responses and breathing through the palpable awkwardness that eventually relented, only for the performance to end with an almost heartbreaking and poignant prompt, “if you need to go, just go, dont worry about me”.

Hair Wash with Ali

This is a funny one. Well, when i say funny, i mean full of surprises. Which set the foundation of the work we eventually created. On another weekday evening, Ali and I headed into Far East Plaza and got a walk in appointment at a hair wash salon. Prior to this, I hadnt even known that a hair wash salon, a salon that solely exists for hair washing, existed. I thought people could only get having read through what the service entailed. After filling in a particulars form and such, we were brought to the back of the shop. It was tightly packed with 5 hair washing beds, I’m not sure what theyre called, that were fully equipped with mood lighting and full rim water spout and a basin for youre hair. The first instruction, “take off your shirt”. Which caught Ali and I by surprise, we didnt know we had to take off our shirts for a hair wash service. They got us to lie down on the bed, shirts and shoes off, and proceeded to cover us up with a towel, and placed hot packs on our solar plexis, and tied one on the bottom of each foot. 5 mins into this experience, and non of our expectations were right. And then it started, not with the hair, no, but with our faces and upper body. In this 60 minute service, it felt like the first 25 minutes were just a mini facial that consisted of cleansers, lotions, moisturizers, and a slew of jade and glass apparatus, like a gua sha thingy, or a glass bulb that was cold and filled with water, we were treated to a sensory buffet on our faces, all while the water was gently trikling right by our heads. There was also an upper body massage that eventually led us to the hair wash, that also came with a head massage. The most surprising of the experience, a wet towel over our eyes, which was then soaked further with water coming out of a 180 degree faucet over heads aimed at the towel. When it all came to an end, Ali and I sat up and our first words were along the lines of “woah, what was that” and “that was so good” and “im so relaxed”.

When we spoke about it, the first 20 mins was full of surprises, as relaxing as it, I was tense waiting and anticipating for the next sensation to arrive on my face, head or body. But eventually, I surrendered to the experience and so did Ali, and it was a treat. Ali spoke of regretting not having his phone on silent, and whenevery a notification went off, he was wondering what it was. But soon the notifications stop, and he felt relieved that, even if he wanted to, he couldnt immediately take a look at what it was a reply. We eventually settled on creating a performance experience around the idea of surrendering and letting go of expectations. What we created was a performance whereby Ali invites the audience member to lay down infront of him. While lying down, Ali asks for permission hold or touch the participant in specific manners such as, “may i hold your head”, “may i place two fingers on each of your temple”, “may I sit closer to you”, every action or movement was preceded with Ali seeking permission first, immediately followed by the action. Slowly, as the performance progresses, Ali asks for permission, but instead of the action following right after, it is witheld, and may or may not happen later in the experience, subverting the expectations of the audience member. Ali is also equipped with a bowl of warm water and a towel. In some moments, Ali lets the water trickle down right by the participant’s ear, and the final action is placing wet warm towel over their eyes before removing it to end their experience.

This is interspliced with intentionally crafted questions and prompts that leads the audience member in reflecting upon their worries and expectations, questions such as

“When was the last time you’ve been taken care of?”

“What’s on your mind right now?”

“What is something you have right now, that you cant live without?”

“Now imagine heaven, what does it look like”

“If you could remove 1 thing from your life to make you feel happy. What would that be?”

“What do you do to relax?”

Daisy’s experience of this performance was not observed by Fafa and I, but you could listen to Daisy’s reflections in the Play Date Chats blogpost.

Closing thoughts

This playdate primarily gave us the opportunity to look at translating life into performance in a different way. If in a conventional verbatim theatre process, as I understand it, we begin by transcribing audio recordings into text and begin adapting that into performance, this playdate directed our focus towards essences of how we recieve and experience the world around us, through our senses and streams of consciousness rather than the event itself. What we were trying to communicate through what we’ve created was not the literal event of getting our pedicure or hair washed, but how those experiences manifested in our inner worlds, a portal to our subconscious and how we relate to the world around us. A bit like how in everything everywhere all at once, for the characters to jump through different parallel universes, aka verse-jumping, they have to perform something ridiculous like getting paper cuts between their fingers or stapling themselves before getting launched into the desired universe. Us getting our nails done or hair washed verse-jumped us into a space of reflection, the performance we created and where we meet our audience.

A big challenge with creating any performance is building authenticity, even more so with verbatim theatre where real stories and and real people are at the centre of process and product. The question has always been, how do i portray or represent the narrator’s story truthfully, the fear of not doing them justice can be helpful as much as it can be crippling. With Verse-Jumping however, what’s being translated is not the person and their life story per se, but the theatre-maker’s experience of interacting with that person and hearing their stories. This is not unique though, a degree of this do exist in “conventional” (using this word loosely to describe processes that stage interview transcripts that have been dramaturgically arranged) verbatim processes, it happens naturally even without paying attention to it. What I am curious about is centering or front loading the verbatim creation process with verse-jumping, focusing on the essences rather than the literal events or characters, while still paying homage to the narrators that have lent their story.

At what point does it start to depart from verbatim theatre… I do have the instinct right now to move away from framing my residency exploration as a verbatim theatre exploration, but as an intentional theatre making exploration that is collaborative with community members, what’s this called, devising, eh no, collaborative theatre making, ehhhh idk. Again, not anything new, but new to me. Companies like drama box and the work that artswok facilitates falls in this category too, but I have to figure out what it means for me and what it looks like for my specific practice. Okay, I’m beginning to ramble.

One final thing I want to say about my playdate, the most beautiful moment was watching Pearlyn, Ali and Daisy interact with the performers as participants, and lowering their guard, letting us peek into their honest and vulnerable reflections, so we, the “audience” can have ours. There’s something there, but I don’t know what it is.