Hybrid Residency Feedback

I started this experience without having any expectations, not because I underestimated the project
but to try to be as open as possible to exchange with others. I was really excited about collaborating
with artists from other countries and curious to find out what we would create. I wondered how we
would address the issue of climate change, how we would have used the zoom platform to create a
live performance.

From the beginning I appreciated the sense of community that the organization tried to create. On
first week’s Monday we had the first meeting with all artists from all the countries involved in the
project. After, each trio had its own first meeting and subsequently each residence group had its
own. I appreciated this kind of organization, because we started by knowing everyone. In fact, the
organizer, at the beginning of the first meeting, asked all the residences to introduce themselves.
She asked also to do it the way each residence preferred. Taking the time to introduce ourselves
immediately created a feeling of sharing that accompanied us throughout the experience. It
established from the beginning the centrality of creating a group and made me feel together with
others in this creative process.

I spent the first week online alone, because I didn’t have the chance to reach out physically my
group. For the first week in my trio (Belgium- Italy- Ireland) we decided to work together those
who would go to Ireland and those who would go to Italy. On the first day we had a talk together
about the main residency themes and then the mentors, Michael McCabe, Fabio Banfo and Marco
Maccieri, asked us to prepare for the day after an artistic presentation of ourselves linked to the
materials of the residency: Antigone, UNICEF data, organic materials. At first this request put me
in difficulty due to the little time available to prepare my presentation but the next day after having
seen all works I thought it was an excellent idea. By presenting themselves using the materials,
everyone gave something of themselves to others and at the same time gave the group the first ideas for the work of the following days. It was a true, honest and proactive exchange.

I introduced myself with a short extract from Anouilh’s Antigone, the Antigone’s words in the last
dialogue with Creon, because for me those words represent what I think and how I would have liked
to deal with the topic of climate change. I worked on those words from the first to the last residency
day, starting alone and then going on in different places, with different people, this was exiting and
nourished my artistic background. On the third day, before continuing with the work on the materials, we felt the need to work on the group with some physical listening exercises. Michael McCabe proposed us to do the mirror exercise without a defined leader, in pairs. I was alone so I tried to do it remotely with Francesco, with the screen in the middle. It was so difficult and at the same time so beautiful because even if there were the screen and we were in two different cities we found a sort of connection.

In the day after as a group we tried to use and explore this kind of way to work with the screen in the middle, it gave us also ideas about the use of different cameras at the same time for zoom final performance.

From the third to the last online week day, we worked on materials divided into three groups, trying to collect ideas for the final performance. Every day every group did a short presentation and thanks to this every day we understood better how to use zoom platform at the best: we practiced different way to use the camera (talking in camera, only hands in camera, only mouth or eyes, moving the camera around the people), we tried to make compositions by using more than one camera at the same time (mirror exercise; four different cameras for four different hands with two cameras upside-down; in one camera an organic material and in another one actors; in one camera Antigone and in another one the chorus); we solved different audio problems, understanding that it was very difficult work with two open microphone at the same time; and we understood the importance of the image that we put in camera.

The three groups were composed by people with different destinations for the second week, for examples I worked with Robert and Sophia, that I met the week after in Reggio Emilia, but I worked also with Silas, Joni-Beth, Ruth, Amelie, Laura and Michael McCabe, that the next week went in Dublin. This way to work improved the sense of group in our Trio, gave us the possibility to present a more contaminated and organic performance and to work more with more artists creating an even greater exchange.

At the end of the first week, I was really excited to travel to Reggio Emilia, meet my group and start
to work in presence. I think that the week in distance was useful to understand how to live perform
on zoom, to start to know each other and the materials but at the end of the week I felt the need to
be with my group.

In Reggio Emilia we started the week with a listening training, a long exercise that Fabio Banfo
proposed us. It was a mix of the mirror exercise, contact improvisation and work on space; It started
with Fabio as a leader who guided us, and after all the group must go together with a continuous
leader alternation, without using words. It was a good way to start, to know each other and above all
to connect with each other.

After that we decided what we wanted to save from the work of the previous week, according to what we wanted to communicate with our performance, and we spent the second week working and improving that. There wasn’t a method or a roadmap clear definition, there was an attitude of every member of the group to say “yes” to other proposals, then an attitude to try them and feel if they worked or not, and then try it again. The three performance blocks that made up the final performance were tried in dozens of different ways: on the advice of the mentors, because of the necessity of one of the artists or even just because of the curiosity to experiment.

For me it was not so easy do not have the control of the process and at the same time do not identify who had it. However, in SD-Factory, the place where we worked, there was a paint in which there was written down “Trust the process”. I saw it at the end of the first day and I took it as a mantra, because I think that in this kind of work experience is the only thing you have to do, during the second week I tried to learn it by doing.

At the end of the third day of the second week we had our piece of the final performance and we did a rehearsal with all the trio, then with the mentors help we tried to find a way to link better the three performances in one organic performance. Thanks to this method at the beginning of the fourth day we were ready to adjust the last few things and then to do the final rehearsal with our trio and then the technical rehearsal with all the trios. In my opinion it was a good idea to have a technical rehearsal because each trio was able to try what they need. We decided to try the transitions between one block and another, to make sure we wouldn’t have any problems with the camera, audio and timing.

Last day we decided to arrive early, we prepared everything and we had a long and strong warm-up.
Marco and Fabio helped us a lot from a technical point of view during the performance, with the
cameras and microphones, giving us the possibility to use different cameras in different ways in a
zoom live performance.

It was a beautiful experience, in which I tried to do my best to work and be creative in a group. Maybe because in the first week I was alone at my home, I choose to present my self the first day with a monologue. As I said before I worked on this monologue from the first to the last day. The first day I choose the part of the text trying to answer to the question that we asked each other in the group “What is happiness for you?”, I cut the dialogue between Antigone and Creon, and I tried to enter in the words.

The second day I socialized my work with the group, the third, the fourth and the five day I worked on it with Michael: I cut again trying to make it stronger, according to what others group’s members felt during the performance, I tried to use camera in different ways, I tried in English and in Italian, I tried with Michael singing the “Old Triangle”, I tried with movements of Joni-Beth, Silas, Ruth, Laura and Amelie, and I tried it with their words in German. I tried identifying Robert as Creon, I tried as an epiphany, I tried as I was crazy, I tried laughing, crying, singing. Then I went to Reggio Emilia and I tried with Robert as a nonsense dialogue between Antigone and Creon, showing the impossibility of communication.

Then after 9 days and lots of different comments, suggestions, helps, languages and rehearsal Antigone became a sort of Greta Thunberg, which has within her little pieces of each of the rehearsal and of each of the people who were part of her journey. And it was no longer a monologue, perhaps it never had been. Just as on this “non-monologue” everyone worked on what was their own idea, on the ideas initially of others and to create new ones, the monologue was just an example. And everyone was the protagonist, the ensemble, the director, the technician, the spectator, depending on the moment. For me it was a truly formative and important experience. I loved working with my group and this magnificent trio. I loved work with all these different sensibilities, souls, artists.

By Dafne Tinti (ETFI)