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In the grieving process ordinary moments, when they signify the person who was lost, become highly significant: making a particular kind of sandwich, hearing a word, or handling an object can transport those experiencing grief to another place entirely. It’s no longer an ordinary moment, it’s a deep connection to the lost person, or feelings about them.
The workshops will introduce performance as a way to work with bereavement. We will explore elevating the private moments of grief, found in ordinary things, to the level of performance or ritual, a process that can change, enhance or stabilize the way we feel, or perhaps just operate as a place for contemplation.
Some of the material we will work with during the workshop will be:
-Objects things that belonged to the person who has died, or that remind of that person. How to make decisions about what objects to gather. How to work with them, change them and invest in their continuity or the residue they leave behind when we work with them.
-Activities that connect us to someone who is deceased. Reminders of the person or a relationship with them, domestic chores, work related activities, hobbies or other activities. Physical movements, maybe quirks they had.
-Body Practices that enable us to experience ourselves beyond the familiar as a way to mark or honor the significance of a loss, or change our sense of ourselves. Stillness, bringing the body into contact with materials, domestic, artistic and industrial, perhaps that have a particular significance with the person who has died.
-Writing or text, like a list of significant dates, a last letter received, an address, an expression of feeling.
-Movement Practices, or ‘active images’ like working with a specific memory, feeling, or question, or something more physical like focusing on the breath.
-Structures of performance that emerge through arranging, juxtaposing, some or all of these elements (and possibly elements not mentioned here) in relation to each other. Creating performances that like weddings or funerals, mark a transition in your life.
-Audiences as a support to the development of the process. Do you want one or not, and how to work with them if you do. They can be selected, informed in a specific way. The relationship of the audience to the work can be structured so that they become invested in the work in a specific way. |
