Programme notes for Intimate History
Here's a copy of what's hopefully going into the Lichfield Programme, quite nice to focus my thoughts again on why the hell i do it...
The world’s moved pretty quickly over the last 100 years. You can do things your ancestors never even dreamed of. Fly to exotic destinations for the price of a meal; pay for a beer with a microchip embedded in your hand; discover just about anything you want to with the click of a computer mouse. It can be exciting, confusing exhilarating and infuriating all at once – a world of possibility moving so quickly it’s outdated before you even got to hear about it.
An ex gave me Theodore Zeldin’s ‘Intimate History of Humanity’. In the book, many individuals are interviewed about the emotions that define their everyday lives. We’re presented with snapshots of strangers, whose stories can often sound disarmingly like our own. Zeldin examines these portraits and compares them to the emotional behaviour of our ancestors. By doing so he reassures us that even though modern life can seem like a maze, it’s one that’s been negotiated hundreds of times before. It got me thinking - maybe all the new forms of communication that are available to us now, instead of helping us find our way, often end up confusing us.
You’re put on hold for half an hour by a well meaning robot, you’ve keyed in the wrong PIN, the battery on your mobile is flat and you can’t even remember your lovers phone number when all you want to do is call and say sorry. Despite all this advancement love breaks down and the world can still be a lonely place.
I wanted to make a performance where I would sing a song to one audience member at a time. I thought the intimacy of the singing voice would be magnified by that experience; just 2 people in a room, sharing a story. The book and its studies seemed like the perfect starting place.
When you come to ‘Intimate History’ you are asked to choose a show from a menu of six titles. Each one is a mini saga inspired by different themes touched on in the book. Your show might make you laugh, it might make you feel a bit sick, it might break your heart but before you know it you are back in the foyer with a vivid memory of your own intimate history.