Laverne

Creativity Room

2010-11-05T02:34:00.000-07:00

I just googled myself and found that this blog is the second result and has had 9 recent visits! So, in case you are interested in what I'm doing and thinking about now, best to visit

http://creativityroom.org

http://www.creativetransformation.co.nz

Thanks for your interest

Lucette

waves of enthusiasm

2009-04-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

We've just had another Operate Theatre Forum and it was a great opportunity to connect with theatre people and make some cool plans together. I've also had some time during the holidays to reconnect with what I want for this year and I'm planning the following:

1. to start a zine for theatre in Christchurch. Here is my call for contributions:I'm starting a zine for theatre in chch.
My philosophy for the zine is to really build community and make it a space for sharing and inspiring, rather than analysing and advertising. So I'd really like people to contribute things that they
feel passionate about
can enthuse about
feel inspired by
feel will inspire others
want to give or share
want to invite others to (to hang out, to contribute, to collaborate, to talk, to train etc)

Over time, I'd love to be able to include a statement of philosophy or purpose from each of the major companies in Christchurch, something of a manifesto or an answer to the question "what makes you passionate about what you are doing?"

You could also ask yourself what you would want to read if you picked up a zine on theatre. There are so many things that could be included, maybe there is something you really want to write an opinion piece about, or a cool theatre exercise you have recently used for the first time or invented, an experience you've had or a show or film you've seen, music you've heard etc I just want to be sure that if anyone wants to write about what is wrong with theatre in this city, they are also proposing some awesome solutions, ideas and ways forward for us!

I'd also like the zine to be interesting to look at, so if you felt like presenting your piece in an interesting way (handwritten for example), or including illustrations (or nice drawings of set or costume designs for a show of yours) etc., that would be lovely.

2. To start devising a piece in Lyttelton, ideally in the Harbour Light. A promenade piece, lots of images and great costumes, you know, my kind of stuff, poetic, surprising, liberating, beautiful.

3. To apply for a residency at the Arts Centre with Sally Ann McIntyre. She would have a residency, write a piece for theatre, then I would follow up with a residency to direct it. I don't have much idea about the content or theme for this, and am kind of interested in taking a very open approach and letting her write whatever she will.

2009

2009-04-06T23:16:00.000-07:00

Well, 2009 was all set to be a theatre-focused year, but at the moment it is looking a bit more like gentle development with one or two exciting bigger items (especially Love You Approximately, which will be performed in Spain in about a month).
Upcoming:
+ a "Making Theatre and Physical Performance" course at CPIT. I'm so looking forward to teaching this year, as I missed it last year and had an awesome time with my weekend workshop in Site-Specific Theatre back in January.
+ Gentle ongoing planning work for "Angel" with Olli Ricken.
+ Making clothes and other handcrafts for Pocket, a new shop opening in Lyttelton May 2nd.
+ Some theatre training with Blackbird Theatre Company, particularly learning the Viewpoints approach.

2009

2009-01-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

I've decided to have a theatre-heavy year in 2009. Aside from continued work on "Love You Approximately," I'm planning to work with Olli Ricken on a clown show, "Angel," devise a new show (working title "9pm") for performance at the Christchurch Art Gallery, and hopefully in Wellington as well, and direct a play written by Sally McIntyre. At the moment I'm about to start work on 4 Spanish costumes for the Lyttelton Street Party on 22 February and have ideas for another short short film.

Mia Verlaine ... Lights! Camera! Action!

2009-01-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

We've just finished our week's work filming the New Zealand elements of Love You Approximately for the Spanish/Catalan version, which will be performed in Girona in May. It was very satisfying to see the whole script come together and feel how the story unfolds and have a real sense of what we've created so far. I had to feed in all of Pere's lines, so I really feel in there with the characters, and have started feeling sad about not going to Spain to see the show premiere there...

Love You Approximately

2008-06-23T17:37:00.001-07:00

This week and last week have finally seen us launch into devising rehearsals for the clinic's new project "Love You Approximately". This piece is about a long-distance relationship, and all the devising, rehearsing and some of the performance will take place using distance technology - chat, email, skype (video conferencing), and maybe some phone calls and letters.

the clinic's website and our blog (loveyouapproximately.wordpress.com) should soon have up to date information, and then be regularly updated about this project as it develops. Friends are also welcome to become friends with the two characters, Imogen and Pere, on facebook, and have input into the development of their story this way.

My role in the process is co-director and writer. Juieanne is the overall director, and it is her idea and project, coming out of her experience of living distant from her family and friends, and also drawing on both our experiences of long-distance relationships, the wonderful creativity of communication that they can foster, and the fantasy that builds up of the relationship over time.

So far we are pretty impressed with the progress we have been able to make having rehearsals on skype. Although it is weird for me, with a phyiscal theatre background, it is also pretty exciting.

Red days

2008-04-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

This day I had had a dream that my recent ex had murdered my dog!

Kissing the lipless that bleed all the sweetness away

2008-04-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

I have been very inspired by the book I am reading at the moment, Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections." Feeling that my life has lacked discipline for some time and wanting to put more of my heart and soul into creative work (that is also spiritual and therapeutic - sort of impossible to separate these things), I have begun a routine of making a tableau in the morning and doing some writing about it, sort of as if it were a dream. I have also been having some pretty interesting dreams! Here are images from my first two tableaux:

Jung says "Therefore I twice went over all the details of my entire life, with particular attention to childhood memories; for I thought there might be something in my past which I could not see and which might possibly be the cause of the disturbance. But this retrospection led to nothing but a fresh acknowledgment of my own ignorance. Therupon I said to myself, 'Since I know nothing at all, I shall simply do whatever occurs to me.' Thus I consciously submitted myself to the impulses of the unconscious.
"The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood memory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I distinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles ... To my astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. 'Aha,' I said to myself, 'there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?' [exactly the question I have been asking myself] For as a grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance from the present back to my eleventh year. Yet if I wanted to re-establish contact with that period, I had no choice but to return to it and take up once more that child's life with the childish games. This moment was a turning point in my fate ... In the course of this activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the fantasies whose presence in myself I dimly felt.
"Naturally, I thought about the significance of what I was doing, and asked myself, 'Now, really, waht are you about? You are building a small town, and doing it as if it were a rite!' I had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my own myth."

More sneak peeks

2008-03-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Today I started taking photos to begin putting the film together. I need to get my eyebrows shaped before I can continue with any shots of my face. Stasa has promised to bring me a hat when she arrives from London, so waiting for that also means there are certain parts I can't do (again, anything involving my head!). I am still searching for a car, have a lead but it is not happening fast...

scary exciting!

2008-03-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am about to start shooting for my new film, "A Sunday Drive" (working title), which is exciting. Pictured is the dress I have made for it and the least racy/offensive of my preliminary trying out of the shots for what may be either a masturbation or sex scene...

I'm still looking for a 1950s car of some sort for the film, and a participant (male) for the sex scene, but I'm feeling confident that those things will either fall into place or turn out to be unnecessary...

egg him

2008-03-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

keine schönheit ohne gefahr

2008-02-11T23:14:00.000-08:00

'cos it sucks it sucks it sucks it sucks
& I will I will I will I will
forget my dreams and tell my heart and soul to SHUT UP!

or I put them on a ship & sail away with them,
out of harm's way, out of danger, out of the frying pan,
leaving reality out of the question.

all over the sea our footprints leave us wet
& clothes stick to our thighs
& we talk in other languages,
saying all the things we can't say
because of fear,
doubt,
more fear
& a bit more fear.

the list goes on & on,
too big to shove inside a bottle & fling out to sea
& still I ask “who am I communicating this to?”
hiding again in stupid, stupid houses with no ears & no blankets

if life is danger, will we ever find a way
through the field of thorns?
will we forget how to bleed profusely
from the souls of our feet?

I want me & I want me to be enough for me
& I want to stop wanting you & I want to stop wanting you to want me.
maybe I could write you away with a million words,
but you are so easy to scare, who live in fear,
a little anemone, curling out of existence at the smallest brush with danger
or beauty.

I sit in the moon & watch
my guts twist with the confusion of it all.
I try to escape into steaming pots of hot chocolate
but there it is also too thick & hot for me.

so here I am again,
on the hill in the howling wind,
uncomfortable & alive,
alive & uncomfortable,
praying for an ending,
for the rain to come & clean my soul
& still wanting not to want
your hand in mine.

The Boats Ritual II

2008-01-30T15:42:00.000-08:00

Some photos from the Ritual of Ending / Boats Ritual ...

as it happened, the tide was coming in, and most of the plain coloured small boats ended up on the shore. I took this as a sign and brought four of them home again.

The Boats Ritual

2008-01-29T15:16:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, the 31st of January, I am planning another ritual to say goodbye to a relationship I've been finding it hard to let go of. I have written a poem and am making a lot of paper boats which I will float away on the tide. Here is the poem:

The Poem for the Ending

lost the lines of your tattoo on my brain

lost the water of your eyes in flight

everything is one foot
on the green
of that path beneath the trees
beside the sea,
when the last of the tiny shells on your back
has rubbed off on your lonely white sheets

the moon tells us false tales to hide
the nude histories
making us shameful
or boastful
or just silent

silent floating in salt water that isn't made out of your tears

but my knees and hips, spine
dance
my whole body into sexy oblivion
feet contacting a dirt floor
space outer limits of no brain activity -
getting high

and swings make kisses arise from deep down
down and determined to fail
for no reason but your
belief in the inevitability of failure

groping in darkness wanting to be fucked

some sometime, some somewhere
will it all become clear
like riding a bike in
a dream of tree-lined Leipzig roads
where your house is a red tent
amongst a block of concrete rubble?

it's departure time for the in too hot
and cold for me so I step out and
leave it all for a red-gold cliff

I fall and I will catch myself

The Rings Ritual

2008-01-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

I am getting very excited about performing rituals. It is something that is very helpful for me at the moment, to process things in my life, but I'm also really keen to bring it into my teaching work. It is a fantastic cross-over between life and art, using art and creativity to encourage internal changes...

The first one, which I performed last Friday, was inspired by Sera Beak's "The Red Book". She describes a short ceremony in which she married herself, making vows to honour and protect herself and so on. I realised that perhaps wearing rings from my old relationships (for 12 years!) was not giving a good message to the universe/god/myself and constructed a ritual to bury the rings and bought myself a new ring which has come to symbolise my ONENESS (I much prefer thinking of myself as ONE than as "single").

Here is the place I did it, with the ring box and also a box of ashes of "links" between other people and things I associated with them or wanted from them (eg: "Joel - Love") which I had burnt a week earlier in another small ritual.

Here are the ashes and the three rings - two old and one new.

And here is the 'grave' ...

Miracle

2008-01-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

My first Danielle Steel poem...

“Miracle” page 109

sailing the exotic night
imagine
things coming easily
like a pilot in a night sky

“What was that for?”
she said.
the hotel in the late afternoon,
the purposes he intended her for,
bed linens, flatware, crystal and china

she kissed him just
in time to catch a plane to Paris,
a night flight to San Francisco

an hour at Charles de Gaulle
and all her most pressing questions
were answered by
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

---

I've uploaded "The Forgotten Tuesday" to youtube now, too.

Danielle

2008-01-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

I am starting to get a bit more serious about planning a new photography/film project using Danielle Steel as my inspiration.

I just started reading her book "Miracle" and it is impossible! I can't believe such terrible story-telling can be so horrendously popular!

But I am fascinated by the cult of personality/the brand that she has created of herself, especially with these over the top glamorous author photos that appear on the backs of her books. They are fabulous.

The project will give me a chance to do some sewing/costuming, and, of course, to be fabulous too!

As well as dressing up like her, I'm also hoping to pull some poems together using her words

Other news ... I will be appearing at the Christchurch Art Gallery during the William Morris exhibition (beginning late March) as Morris' wife, Jane (Janey), sitting in the gallery hand-sewing the famous blue silk dress in which she was painted and photographed by Rosetti.

the clinic's new project, "Love You Approximately" is slowly coming into shape. Auditions will be held soon in Spain and then we may be able to start devising!!

2007-07-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

My current project is this little creature we have nicknamed "Little Bear," as she often looks and acts like a circus bear. Her name is Jandal and her father is a West Highland White Terrier, her mother a Labradoodle.

I am also going to be spending some time in a miniature house during the Arts Festival. See http://www.wherearethefinethings.blogspot.com/ for information about it.

Other than that, I am starting my training for a new job soon - Network Library Assistant, travelling around the libraries in Christchurch helping people find and issue books.

The Mythology of Soup

2007-06-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Mythology of Soup plays at 42 Winchester St throughout the Lyttelton Winter Festival:

Saturday 23 June
Sunday 24 June
Thursday 28 June
Friday 29 June
Saturday 30 June
Sunday 1 July

at 7pm.

For $15 a ticket, you will be treated to:
A bowl of soup (on the menu at this stage are pea soup and Louisiana gumbo) with bread
Live music by The Ancient Now, with Dayna Sanerivi
Two films - The Forgotten Tuesday and Flight Patterns

The Forgotten Tuesday is a very short (3 minute) film that explores the performance of gender identity and is set in the house at 42 Winchester St. You can read a review of it on this blog.

Flight Patterns is the edited footage from the performance by the same name that I directed during the Lyttelton Summer Festival. This performance concerned love and romance and took place all around the house. Like the performance, the film has no linear narrative, but rather a logic of rhythm and image that holds it together around the exploration of various understandings and misunderstandings of what love it, how to get it, and what we do to avoid it.

Read along with me ...

2007-05-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

We had a great Feast of New Theatre Forum over the weekend (despite the news of no CNZ funding for the next Feast - and therefore no job for me for the next 6 months).

Gary Henderson was the guest speaker, and his talk on playwrighting, creating stories and how to read your own drafts has helped a lot with clarifying the story of the astronaut piece we are working on.

Things that I am reading at the moment (or recently) which are also influencing the development of the piece are Thomas Moore's "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life" and (well, I'm not reading it right now, but rather remembering my previous reading of it) Mikhail Bakhtin's work on the carnival and carnivalesque.

Other (good) news ... the clinic did get CNZ funding for its upcoming show "Love You Approximately," a multimedia piece that Julieanne is directing and I am writing about a long-distance relationship between a NZ woman and a Spanish man.

I love my blog.

Editing the film

2007-05-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some stills from the footage taken by Roger Bays of the film - what a fantastic job he did! A few teething problems with the video upload at the moment (it is playing everything in double time!), but I think the process is going to be great!

The Development of a Recipe

2007-05-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right, we are working on a performance about an astronaut who returns from space after 35 years and grapples with his readjustment to life on earth.

This story will play out around the house, but unlike Flight Patterns, the audience will stay put in the lounge with a bowl of warm soup, watching most of the story unfold on film via live-feed from the other rooms of the house.

We plan to open not on 23 June as was originally scheduled, but around a month later, to give plenty of time to the devising process.

In the meantime, we are planning to offer an evening of film, music and soup (don't want to disappoint on that one!) on June 23, 24, 28, 29, 30 and July 1. An audience of around 20 will hear music from Dayna Sanerivi and her band The Ancient New and watch the films "The Forgotten Tuesday" and "Flight Patterns," shot by Roger Bays and edited by Lucette Hindin. We also hope to show a trailer for the astronaut piece. This is a great opportunity for those who missed out on the exhibition and\or the live "Flight Patterns"!

The Forgotten Tuesday - Review by Creon Upton

2007-05-14T00:39:00.000-07:00

If anyone cares to notice, Lucette Hindin, founding member of performance group, the clinic, and now working under the umbrella of Laverne Laverne, “an ad hoc theatre and arts collective,” is making a small but not insignificant splash in the creative world of Christchurch. Her current show, “The Forgotten Tuesday,” on at the Lyttelton Art Gallery until 20 May, features a series of photos of the artist performing an array of female characters—characters informed by popular media, constructed history, the street, the mall, the home, and the amalgam of these that we gesture towards in our imaginative representations of self. These images have also been put onto DVD, accompanied by a funky dance tune (“wir sind,” by me and you). The photos are displayed on the walls while the DVD plays on an old TV in the centre of the space.
In keeping with Hindin’s seeming near-obsession with the homely, a comfortable lounge chair is set up in front of the TV, along with a tray holding cup of tea and a nibbled Belgian biscuit.
I really enjoyed my first experience of Hindin’s work, her play “Flight Patterns,” which she put on in a dilapidated (and condemned) old villa in Lyttelton, where she lives and where the pictures for this show were also taken. She’s adventurous, playful, theatrical, ironic, loves an over-the-top gesture, and she has something to share. This latter is the important thing. I could just as easily hate something described as adventurous, playful etc, but that would almost certainly be because it was self-involved.
I don’t think Hindin is. She seems quite genuinely desirous of including us in her fun-and-games world, something that is desperately lacking in a lot of what we find at the “conceptual” end of art production. “Wank,” in that context, is not an arbitrary term of abuse.
Hindin’s jokes are not arcane, esoteric or overly studied—they’re just good, and I like that.
A case in point: one of the scenes in “Flight Patterns,” a conceptually tight but narratively loose study of the roles we seek out and give ourselves to in our relationships, involved the three cast members attempting to emulate the performances of Robert Palmer and his dancing girls in the video for “Addicted to Love.” Milton Charles was heroic in his absurd lip-synching, while Allison Hall and Eve Barlow, in their little black dresses, cut precise figures of ridiculous pathos as they constantly flicked their eyes towards the screen in their efforts to “get it right.” Genuinely, but thoughtfully, funny stuff.
This self-conscious performance of the weirdness of our insecurities and fantasies is also manifest in “The Forgotten Tuesday.” As Hindin puts it, “I hope for my work to give spectators an experience of contemplation, liberation and inspiration. I do this by sharing experiences that often remain hidden, in a way that is both serious and light.” Okay, does that sound self-aggrandising? Even a little patronising? Maybe it is, but just maybe there’s nothing wrong with a performer actually thinking about what her performance might mean for an audience. Why she might actually do it. And there’s that word again—sharing. There’s an honesty about Hindin’s various masks, the characters she becomes on her forgotten Tuesdays; and there’s humour at her own expense, as well as a refreshingly carnivalesque kind of joy in the absurd—an embracing of the way the semiotics of our own cultures grow so wildly out of our control.
But I think that’s also why Hindin likes to bring things back to the ordinary, to the kitchen, to the lounge, to the corporeality of the body beneath the layers of fabric, make-up and artifice. At the end of any given Tuesday there’s no doubt that each of Hindin’s alter-egos, from super-hero Laverne to goth-girl Alice, wants nothing more than a cup of tea and a lie down.
This domestication of possibilities will also be an important feature of the next Laverne Laverne show, “The Mythology of Soup,” again staged in the Lyttelton villa (which has received a brief stay of execution). An important, and challenging, challenge that Hindin has set herself is communication with her audiences in a way that is safe and unthreatening. These are not conceived as “feedback” sessions, or opportunities to lecture, flatter or exhort. Rather, the idea seems to be to give everyone something warming to eat or drink, to give us a chance to get to know each other, to have a bit of a chat. Now, that’s nice.
In “The Mythology of Soup,” then, we can look forward to watching a film being made and played in real time, while we’re enjoying homemade soup and bread (winter is here), as well as taking in some live music and other performances. The film itself, though, leaps stratospherically out of this comfortable Lyttelton lounge and revolves around the story of an astronaut returning home after thirty-five years, attempting to reconstruct an affinity with domestic life on earth.
This performance will begin on 23 June. Bookings: soup@theclinic.co.nz or 03 328 8266.

The Forgotten Tusday

2007-04-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Come and check out my exhibition, "The Forgotten Tuesday" at the Lyttelton Art Gallery, 20 Oxford St Lyttelton.

Opening 2nd May at 5:30pm

Running until 20th May

Gallery hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 10:30 - 5:30

The exhibition consists of a very short film and a large number of small photographs. If you have enjoyed any of my past work with the clinic or Laverne-Laverne, I'm sure you will love this too!

Review by Rene Lerch

2007-03-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

“Flight Patterns”, directed by Lucette Hindin

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Why does love never quite seem to travel like that? When it comes to love, we often find additional point forces appearing in the vicinity, that tend to deflect, obstruct, or otherwise make complicated the pattern that love creates. These additional point forces need not be as concrete and external as a rival lover or a jealous friend – they can be as abstract and internal as the residue of an unhappy affair of the past, or an ideal of romantic love that one unconsciously harbors and that keeps deflecting the reality of the love that is present.
Flight Patterns, devised and set in the private house of director Lucette Hindin, explores some of the patterns that love makes, and it does this with ease, direction and quirkiness. In the opening scene, which is set in the garden that surrounds the house, we see two characters, a male and a female, sitting on a bed, and we hear the sound of chirping birds. The male character, played by Milton Charles, wears an 18th century white wig, red scarf, high collar shirt, and exquisite make-up. We see him reading the personals in the local paper with dreamy eyes. The female character, played by Eve Barlow, sits next to him with long dark hair and a stunning red dress, we see her eating lamingtons and drinking tea with an expression of boredom and slight annoyance.
A third character appears from under the bedcovers, played by Allison Hall. She wears a voluminous blond wig and, like the male character, appears with dreamy eyes and a copy of the local newspaper. While the woman in red keeps to her lamingtons and tea, sitting as she is in between the other two characters, they begin to read out loud to each other personal advertisements of the local paper, tasting each one as one would taste the moist sweetness of an exotic and promising fruit.
Eventually, the woman in red throws the lamingtons that are left on her plate over her left shoulder and announces her departure from the scene. While she leaves and walks away, the other two keep holding each others gaze with gleaming eyes.

Next, the audience is led into the house, where the action for the second scene splits up into different rooms – a phenomenon that extends to some of the other scenes as well. The audience is free to walk around as the action unfolds, thereby being able to determine their own experience to a much larger degree than is possible in conventional theater settings where the audience is locally immobilized by being placed in a chair for the entire duration of the show. In the conventional theater space, all of the action is visible to all of the audience at all times.
Flight Patterns departs from this concept. The way in which the action is physically set, is reminiscent of Japanese garden design. In a Japanese garden, only a part of any object is ever made visible – the whole is never exposed. It is common, for example, to have a meandering waterfall come in and out of the line of vision of someone walking a path. Each new view allows the waterfall to be temporarily glimpsed from a different perspective. The whole, however, is prevented from ever being known completely.
For the second scene, I chose to join some of the audience in a room, in which Milton could be found lying on a bed in missionary position, resting on his elbows, reading out loud dialogues from Pinter's playscript “The Lover” while moving his lower body copulatively. I could hear the voices of Eve and Allison from the hallway without, however, being able to understand their words, nor to see their actions.
At some point, Milton stops his movements, puts the book aside and picks up the phone. Shortly after he has dialed the number, we can hear the phone ring in the hallway, and Eve’s voice as she answers. Milton asks to speak to someone called ‘Sasha’, but is told that she doesn’t want to speak to him. When Eve accepts his request to be able to leave a message for Sasha, Milton begins to speak a long love poem, dripping with old leather-and-rose kind of romance, which we can hear Eve repeating, line by line, in an increasingly annoyed and bored tone of voice. Eventually we hear a noise from the hallway that suggests that Eve had picked up a marker and had started drawing on the wall. When Milton is finished the two end the phone conversation and that is the end of that scene.
Members of the audience who came and expected to see a cogent narrative spanning the entire length of the play, would have been disappointed. Rather, Flight Patterns presents itself as a cluster of scenes, each of which forms a cogent whole and is at the same time a more or less autonomous part of the larger structure that makes up the entire show.
Neither the names of the characters nor their costumes or language remain constant across all of the scenes. Structurally, Flight Patterns bears greater resemblance to a large organic protein, whose inner bonds are flexible and shifting, than to a simple sequence of recurring molecules. Internally, the structure of the whole is held together by the three actors and the characters they each play. The nature of the characters that each one plays remains within certain bounds throughout the show. This is a feature that brings stability and orientation to the structure as a whole.
Milton’s and Allison’s characters all tend towards a kind of honesty that is naïve at times and insightful at others. These are characters, who allow themselves to swim and be swirled around in the currents of love amidst the quirky ordinariness of their day-to-day world. These characters experience the sweetness and gleam of love when they entertain love's seemingly endless possibilities in savoring the personals of the local paper. They experience the heights of sexual pleasure - in what must be one of the funniest scenes of the show - while discussing a missing entry in their day-to-day accounts book. They experience the gravitational force of romantic poetry, and the harshness of unrequited affection.
There is a moment of great honesty when Milton is following Allison’s request to play a submissive dog but then suddenly stops playing. When Allison asks, in a sad tone of voice: “Don’t you like it?”, Milton says: “I do like it. I’ve just had enough now. Can we not go to the movies instead? Wouldn't that make you happy?”, and Allison replies, with one of the most honest and saddest expressions I’ve ever seen: “This is what makes me happy.”
The characters that Eve plays, on the other hand, always seem to emphasize the effect of those extra force points that tend to appear in the continuum of love, preventing any kind of simple pattern from emerging. Her characters find themselves in between love – as in the opening scene, where she finds herself sandwiched in between Milton and Allison, who exchange dreamy looks and personal profiles dripping with sweet promise – or outside of love – while Milton and Allison are having sex in scene two, Eve is in another room playing tennis with herself – or otherwise excluded from love.
One of the strengths of Flight Patterns lies in its refusal to extend our knowledge of the history of each character beyond that which we see in each scene. We see the characters that Eve plays in their seeming inability to catch even a corner of the shifting pattern that love makes all around her. We see how various internal point forces seem so insistently to deflect, obstruct, and complicate, how the characters always seem to operate from behind a thin but impenetrable sheet of boredom, annoyance, and loneliness.
What we don’t see, however, is how these characters came to be in that place. We don’t know whether we see characters that have once been in a place of dreamy eyes and poetry – or have yet to go there. We don’t know whether what we see is the result of a past that looked like the present of Milton’s and Allison’s characters, or whether what we see is the result of a future that has not yet arrived for any of Eve's characters.
In one of the scenes later in the show, we see Eve in front of a wall of shelved shoes. Allison plays a therapist, who is asking Eve to choose a pair of shoes that she thinks “men would feel drawn to.” After first pointing to a pair that resembled the ones Allison was wearing, she pointed to three or four different pairs, stuttering with a mixture of insecurity and assertiveness “I have many sides ... you see ... I have ... a mysterious personality”. Allison looks at her and says “Men are drawn to decisive women”.
Flight Patterns is a funny piece. It is an entertaining piece. It is sexy and sensual. In one of its most light-hearted scenes, we see even Eve’s character break out momentarily from her bleak gloom and buried longing and join the other two for a dance to Robert Palmer’s video of “Addicted to Love”.
The experience of the show is at its best when both the actors and the audience are least self-conscious. The immediacy and intimacy of the experience is then striking as the audience and the actors are almost always only feet away from one another in spaces that are no larger than ordinary rooms. A high point of intimacy was reached in a scene where the audience was crowded in the bathroom of the house – sitting on the floor, on the toilet seat, on the edge of the bathtub - surrounding Eve, who was sitting in the bathtub, dressed as a Russian woman with white fur and ear muffs, reading out messages in broken English from potential lovers from the display of an opened laptop. It is ironic that the intimacy that evades Eve’s characters within the narratives of the show, is here so effortlessly achieved between her and the audience.
Irony is one of the tools that allow us to see ourselves. And allowing us to see ourselves is one of the most precious things theatre can offer us. If we can believe the reports that are coming in from the frontiers of cognitive science, then about 95 percent of our thought is unconscious. Moreover, the 95 percent below the surface of our conscious awareness contain most of the concepts, desires, ideals, beliefs, and metaphors with which we conceptualize and judge our experience. Being able to catch glimpses of ourselves and the patterns we make in love and relationships is to be able to catch glimpses of those 95 percent. It is something to be grateful for. How cool if this can be as fun as watching Flight Patterns.

“Flight Patterns”, directed by Lucette Hindin, 42 Wincester St, Lyttleton, Actors/Devisers: Allison Hall, Eve Barlow, Milton Charles.

Reviewed by Rene Lerch
Christchurch, March 2007

A Manifesto

2007-03-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

The reason I do what I do – create/devise theatre, teach devising, offer low budget performances in intimate settings, including food and time for conversations – is to share with people the lovely experience I have of living my life in a playful and creative manner.
I want to encourage people from all walks of life to embrace their inner child, to enjoy their creativity and to find creative solutions to the events and situations in their lives.

I want to offer people an experience that is not so distant from them – not a professional cast of highly trained actors in a professional theatre setting performing a play written by an expert from another country. In my little theatre events, I wish the audience to feel that the inspiration has come from people just like them, that they too can go home and put their ideas, dreams, thoughts and feelings onto paper, canvas, into their bodies, their gardens, their cooking, their 'boring' jobs and so on.

I want to inspire people who are already on a creative path by showing them that it is in fact easy to create and to share the fruits of your creation and to do it in a playful manner, with people you enjoy having around. All it takes is persistence – not a huge grant, not a huge qualification – just persistence (a bit of loyalty to your original impulse/idea) and a bit of organisation, trust, and openness.

I am also attracted to a view of life-as-carnival, to glamorous fun, to performing the most fabulous sides of ourselves and celebrating one another in all our specificity, idiosyncrasy, our fantasies and the hidden sides we wish we could share with the world. I hope that the parties and soireés connected with Laverne-Laverne will allow people to have fun and meet one another in this atmosphere of carnival, dream, play and liberation.

What is liberation, in this context? I found myself discussing the play with someone who hadn't seen it on Saturday at our (lovely) party. I told him that it was not really an experimental piece, that in fact it didn't challenge the audience, break the 4th wall, have the intention to shock or use extremely adventurous form or political content, and that I had in fact wanted the piece to be enjoyable, amusing, safe and liberating for the audience.

He asked me if political theatre always had to be scary for an audience.

And of course, it doesn't. It made me think about some of the best theatre I've seen, that has touched and inspired me deeply - this experience of liberation, which is actually a sort of transcendance, being suddenly lifted above some old pattern of belief or some old habit of behaviour, to be able to see it for what it is and let go of it; or to reach a new ability to accept some part of oneself (or another, or the world) that is flawed or that society sees as incorrect, imperfect or ugly.

If the art I make can do that, I will be very happy and excited.

So often, 'scary', challenging art, that has the intention to make the audience go home and (intellectually) review and critique their lives, beliefs or behaviours, actually has the outcome of making the audience defensive, angry, and closed-down. I want the audience to feel that they are awakening to a new understanding, and the challenge to them is really to become more aware, more playful and more accepting - the very things I wish for in my life.

New Plans

2007-03-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

The success of FLIGHT PATTERNS - with a total audience in excess of 120, fantastic feedback and good times - has brought me to the planning of an ongoing culture of performance, art, dressing up, food and fun in Lyttelton.

I am planning to raise funds to create two performance/soirees in a new house venue in Lyttelton through 2007. Here, we would invite the audience for a short (20 - 45 minute) performance, including dinner or supper, and an opportunity to share their own work, hear live music, and socialise in a creative environment.

Each performance/soiree would run weekly for 6 weeks, and we are hoping to coincide one of the pieces with the Lyttelton winter festival, perhaps offering a succession of evenings (Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun) at that time.

We also have plans to publish a zine, and I will start working on editing the film version of FLIGHT PATTERNS, hoping to have that also completed by the time of the winter festival.

February 22nd is opening night

2007-01-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

Season almost sold out

Possible extended performances

Mon 12 and Tues 13 March

All tickets $10.00
ph. 3288 266
e. FP@theclinic.co.nz

About style

2006-11-17T14:41:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking recently about styles of theatre and performance. Especially producing the Feast of New Theatre, I have been watching 6 groups go through rehearsal processes (with the goal of developing the playwright's script) and presentations and the work they have been doing to craft believable and interesting stories and characters.

I have been thinking about the term "theatre installation" and what it suggests - the way in visual arts you go to a gallery and see a body of work usually by one artist or one group working together, yet the pieces of art there don't concern the same characters moving through a linear narrative. Often the works are linked by a broad theme, question or message and aren't meant to be viewed in any particular order or to influence one another very strongly.

This is what I would like to be possible in the theatre as well - a performance that brings many things to light and asks many related questions but not always by showing what happens to one group of people over a certain period of time.

This is obvious to many practitioners of theatre internationally, but in the Christchurch theatre community I really feel a strong predeliction for narrative structure as the only way to express whatever is to be expressed.

Above, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Velvet Goldmine, an inspiration for a costume I hope to make for the show...

Flight Patterns

2006-11-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Today I am thinking up a title, so I can make an ad for the Feast of New Theatre programme. Over the past week and a half, we have co written a poem for use in the play (I have decided to refer to it as a "theatre installation" in publicity materials), and the idea of "flight patterns" came up.

I have been wondering how much the show that is evolving from our time together is really about love, or whether some other ideas are coming through more strongly.

"Flight patterns" seems to capture something about the way we skirt around love, how we look for it, ask for it, try to understand it. I also like the idea of flight, of fleeing, in situations where we are hurt or feel old hurts coming to the surface, or are simply afraid of showing ourselves to another person, or of commitment.

The piece seems to be more about desire, which is interesting when I think about Tweedie's byline to "In the Name of Love" - "a study of human desire" or something. I think all along what has been interesting to me is not so much what love is like, what love is, but rather what we mistake for love, the things we get wrapped up in, the romance, the passion, the idea and expectation of love that can be so different from the reality.

Julieanne: suddenly your launch/birthday present becomes so relevant!

Melbourne Arts Festival

2006-10-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've just got back from the Melbourne Arts Festival, where I saw
Ros Warby's "Monumental"
La Clique (great circus on very small stage)
Peter Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Journey" (3 films)
Robert Wilson's "I La Galigo"
Romeo Castellucci's "La Tragedia Endogonidia"

The photo is me at the entrance to the National Gallery of Victoria, standing next to a wall of water.

The performance that inspired me the most was "Monumental," a solo dance piece which had a wonderful precision and life to it (using Deborah Hay's "Chreography as Perception" technique) and a wonderful absence of showing off.

The other very useful thing has been the program notes to "La Tragedia Endogonidia" - which as a show was striking, sometimes disturbing, and overall a little devoid of integration and meaning. But some things in the program notes really helped me - especially to see my tendency to stand back too far, to let the actors do all the creating and to do very little shaping and crafting myself. I feel now much more excited about devising, sharing creativity and also being bossy.

I have also been reading "Hardcore from the Heart," a book about Annie Sprinkle, who I've always admired a lot. I think Christchurch could REALLY do with a dose of Sprinkle. I think this will feed into courage for my photographs. Exhibition in May!

Saucers

2006-10-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

I have been wondering about ways to enhance the audience's experience of this site - the old colour scheme, carpets, the oldness of everything, cracking and peeling paint, the see saw ... and, having had a sudden inspiration for the whole progression of scenes throughout the house yesterday afternoon after a big pot of oolong tea at Mouse Love Rice, I thought of an intermission involving serving food/drink to the audience. Since it will have to be such a small number anyway, it will be easy to cook for them. Here are the saucers I bought today to serve them. Our oven is broken - even more than before, as the interior pane of glass fell out on Saturday night when Milton was trying to make lemon slice - so I am trying to invent something delicious that will be easy to make even if the heat is uneven.

Laverne Ladies

2006-09-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have been making an application to exhibit my photographs (which I've been calling "Laverne Ladies" for the meantime) at the Lyttelton Art Gallery next May. I was very happy this afternoon to come up with this purpose statement about all my creative/artistic work:

I hope for my work to give spectators an experience of contemplation, liberation and inspiration. I do this by sharing experiences that often remain hidden, in a way that is both serious and light.

I hope this will apply to the performance work as well.

Personals

2006-09-23T17:35:00.000-07:00

We have only had two rehearsals, so I am pretty impressed with the amount of material generated. Eve has shared some ideas, including a half-waking dream she had of a woman who was insanely bored with a succession of cardboard cut-out men that was paraded past her. This has started an idea for an opening scene, incorporating the personals column as a text, which I quite like. I imagine it taking place around a table in the garden with a lot of flowers at dusk.
I'm very happy with my actors' ability to improvise text. Next week we will work on excerpts from romance films and choreographies involving a double bed. FUN!

falling in love (with this house)

2006-09-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

As Stasa suggested in her blessing, there are many new things offered by this house, as a living space and a creative space. The photography is one of the exciting things in the creative space. The garden is exciting both for creating and for growing vegetables!
The oven doesn't work properly, the taps drip, the washing machine makes puddles and there's no electricity in our bedroom...

The first photo is one of me after a photo shoot, pinning my hair back and finding I look surprisingly like my mother at my age.

We have had one rehearsal and are just getting into the vibe of how to work together.

I have had a grant of $1,080.00 from the Christchurch Community Arts Council. Nice!

And The Best Dressed Award Goes To...

2006-09-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

... Mark Hollis (seen here with the beautiful Kate Hindin-Nikau).

Blessings

2006-09-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

The project has been beautifully launched! This is a photo of the blessings on the wall with the 20 red roses on the mantelpiece.

This is the blessing I received from Stasa Dailianis:

Beautiful, strong Lulu.....

On your 30th birthday, as doors swing quietly shut behind you and new corridors stretch ahead of you, I send you these blessings from afar.

May the house of your life be decorated with many and various colours
may you find surprises in the cupboards, boxes containing treasures on the tops of wardrobes
joys and delights never even hoped for
waiting under pillows, revealing themselves as you turn in your sleep.

May you understand that like a dream this house is infact not as solid as it seems;
may you paint the walls and then laugh at the colour,
rip up the carpet and fill a room with sand (lie down in your bikini and draw pictures of islands and castles)
run through the rooms and corridors shouting at the top of your lungs (I can see the holes in the floorboards!)
the wooden planks under your feet slipping softly off the edge of the porch
the walls falling away as you run, trembling, dissolving...
the sink falling past and dissapearing
the wallpaper peeling and spirling down
as you float out into the garden, full of light, not stained by any darkness
(perhaps
now
sensed
lurking in one or two shoe boxes under the bed?)

May you gently open the windows of your heart to all those who pass by;
your lover,
sister,
friends,
teachers,
bus drivers,
strangers who walk past on their way to the fish and chip shop,
birds who nest in your rafters
mice who nibble your flour bags in the kitchen cupboards when you are sleeping and dreaming

dream darling lucette, for you are truely blessed

all my love
stas

Chocolate

2006-08-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

It is THE BIG DAY!

My 30th Birthday and the day of the official launch.
And I've eaten too much chocolate. If you ever get the chance, buy chocolates from Chocolate Fellmann in Geraldine

This past week I have had books out on hair and makeup for the stage. There is so much we don't get taught by our mothers these days! As I have been looking quite a bit at photography of drag queens recently, I realise how impoverished us 'real' girls are - and I've had short short hair for more than half of my life.

Now I am investing in hair pins and hair nets and am going to see what I can achieve!

I think I am sorted with my three actors (finally) - two women and a man. And so we will start rehearsing as soon as I have moved into the house. My house has sold, so the move is happening next week! I am liking the house more and more - it is much sunnier than my old house, even though it is a dive. And the soil is great. We are doing a lot of seed-raising.

I have rented "Now, Voyager," an on-board romance starring Bette Davis, but haven't watched it yet. Something tells me it is going to be interesting.

My sister gave me a large bunch of red roses for my birthday! The first time in my life. Mmmm

The Launch and Birthday Party

2006-08-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Here is the invitation to the Laverne Launch and Romance Party! I am trying to decide what exactly to do at the party - I have some paint and was thinking about letting people do some decorating/scenography.
I have found another cool book, "Emotion and Relation," a photography book with work by Mark Morrisroe and Nan Goldin and three others. Some great images in there, one of which inspired the invitation design.

True Love of the Future (1979)

2006-08-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

The photo is Milton on the way down from a hand-stand against the wall in the bedroom I think I will use for the bedroom in the piece.

I have finally finished "In the Name of Love" and found out what Tweedie thought about True Love (back in 1979 when she wrote the book) . . .

The goal of all humans living in modern society is to know themselves, to understand themselves, to have a clear picture of their identity, confidence to act from that place and awareness of their needs, talents and direction in life.

The problem with old fashioned love (love that is really passion and romance but not love as she understands it), is that we are using it to soothe our troubled egos, to patch up our unstable identities. We play roles (father husband to daughter wife or nanny wife to naughty boy husband etc.) to gain approval from the lover, but in so doing we miss the opportunity to have them accureately reflect us, so we continue to be confused about who we are.

The lovers of the future will be totally honest with one another - about their faults and failures as well as their talents and lovable qualities. They will not be dependent on one another for lies that make them feel temporarily OK. They will truthfully reflect the reality of the loved-one back to them, and each will have the strength to face the truth about themselves.

I like it, especially as I can see how important this sort of relationship is for building identity and confidence, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-love.

In the Name of Love

2006-08-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read "In the Name of Love: A Study of Sexual Desire" by Jill Tweedie, I really recommend it. Here's what I wrote this morning in response to her chapter on the psyche of love:

I have the tendency to make my relationship the centre of my life, the most important thing, the priority, the thing I always choose first, the thing I'd always rather be doing. (Tweedie says that women are brought up with the mother as an example of a woman with no identity, living through and/or for a man (the husband-father). Even though my mother rebelled in word and later in action, everything she did was in reaction, in relation to my father. She had no identity outside first loving, second serving, and third blaming him.)

But I want to be successful and fulfilled in my work. I want, sometimes or in part, to be identified with my work, to BE an artist. I want an identity of my own.

So I choose men who don't demand much, who are blank canvasses, who don't dominate me.
So I can still put energy into my work and art and other people in my life.
And I perceive those men as needing me, so I don't feel like I'm the needy (dependent) one in the relationship.

But there is a basic internal conflict between my habitual psychological behaviour (tweedie) – to attach to, cling to and seek happiness from men – and my conscious desire – to be independent, passionate about my work, and to have my own identity and a) know it and what it is, b) trust it, c) express it, d) be confident.

As Tweedie suggests, I find it difficult to have a stable identity when there isn't a man around to ... serve? (as in to mother and counsel) or to prove myself to (in the initial stages of the relationship)?

And I think this contradiction is inherited part and parcel from my mother, who talked feminist and was a kind of matriarch in a home populated mainly by women, but still saw life as service (to husband but more to children) and defined herself almost entirely in relation to my father, finding it hard to make or keep friends, hobbies or career because they weren't what was really important in life.

Hotere's Song Cycle

2006-08-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

This may be too small to see well, but I have always loved the use of Manhire's beautiful words on this piece (created as the backdrop for a touring performance), and am somewhat inspired to use words on the walls of the house in this way.

In Love

2006-08-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

Another piece of writing from my mornings. The photo is of the carpet in the lounge, which I am trying to match a wall paint colour for. Soon these old carpets will all be gone. I've loved so many carpets in flats I've lived in, especially that one you used to see quite a lot with large red flowers on it.

Being my body, I walk through the world acting large,
never finding a possibility for the petite, the diminutive.
Being my body, I take up space
and fling myself over the world
to lie in slumber like the giant of lake Wakatipu,
my every breath causing waves on your shores.

And you?
You the shore I lovingly lap,
you the golden sands I worship,
you, being your body, walk through the world on stilts,
touching the heavenly things
and bringing them down with a stoop of your long back,
a stretch of your long fingers.

If you would lie down with me,
like Rangi and Papa in the very beginning,
I would be wrapped up,
tied up in you,
as I am, hopelessly entangled,
loving you with my watery sighs and tears,
wishing you to bring the sunshine of your face closer to me,
imagining the ecosystem we would inhabit together,
the most beautiful paradise imagined.

Writing

2006-08-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have begun writing daily, and am working on a script. Still looking for that second male actor, and have begun moving into the house, though there have been no offers on my place yet.

I like the house more and more and have ordered a test pot for a colour for the lounge.

This is a moment in the cycle of love that I am interested in portraying:

I watch out the window.
When I cry, my tears scratch their way down my face.
They are acid to me,
and my bones are chalk.
My arms and legs ache to be free of me,
they draw disease to them,
they starve themselves.
If only she were here, I would be whole again.

Up the Garden Path

2006-07-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

The side of the house, and the seesaw! A definite area for some action, though I don't know if the seesaw would support anyone's weight...

Up the hallway

2006-07-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

The hallway. The house is very simple, a box divided into boxes coming off the central hallway. At the end of the hallway, the lounge, kitchen and laundry.

I find myself quite excited now about moving in. We have the keys in 10 days, but need to leave the furniture at the old house while until it sells.

Blue Room

2006-07-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Here is the Blue Room. This is my favourite of the 3 square bedrooms, so I think we will sleep in here and not use it for devising. I love the way it has been painted. Of course, if you could see it close-up, you'd see that all the paint is totally cracked.

The Kitchen

2006-07-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

Another photo, this is of the kitchen. Probably my favourite room in the house, an definitely the sunniest.

Photos of the House!!!

2006-07-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

Here are the photos I have taken this morning (a lovely sunny day) with my beautiful new digital camera. I'm very impressed with it. A Canon A530. If only it was as easy to upload the photos to this blog as it is to take them! I've tried three times now and they don't seem to upload!

Things are moving along in a relaxed way. I have been reading a lot of books, and have been thinking about beginning to write some poetry, and have one lead on a third male actor.

I have talked today to Patrick Duffy about doing some designs for the set (by which I mean painting the walls) - something along the lines of Ralph Hotere's "Song Cycle", which incorporates words and was made as a backdrop for a touring poetry performance.

I am halfway through a fantastic book by Jill Tweedie called "In the Name of Love, A History of Sexual Desire". I've also enjoyed Angela Carter's book "Love," and William Nicholson's "The Trial of True Love" - a great read.

Obsessive Love

2006-07-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I have many books out of the library and the theme of the week seems to be obsessive love (which seems to be the same thing as "love at first sight"). I am at the same time both enlightened and confused... enlightened about events in my own life and behaviours I have acquired and confused about, well, what to do about it. And what application does it all have to the development of the piece?

I have been obsessed once in my life, and it was an extraordinary experience. Very very painful. This is the thought that is following me today: very often, the higher and more intense the passion, the more pain and confusion, the more 'wrong-ness' of the love affair. But at the same time I am not quite ready to allow that falling passionately in love is a terrible idea, bad for your health and ultimately destructive of everything good in your life.

I have also been on the receiving end of an obsession. This was not so painful for me, but certainly uncomfortable.

Is it really true that most occurrences of "falling in love" are unreciprocated? Is it everybody's experience that life is full of triangles, love missing its target? How often do two people fall in love with one another? I think this has happened to me once in my life, despite many loving relationships and many, many experiences of falling in love. And is my conception that I can expect at some point in my life to be fallen in love with by the person I am in love with and have an amazing soul connection and long-lasting relationship just a cultural construct, a myth that most people in western society have been brought up with and choose to believe?

Intimacy

2006-07-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

I have two actors, a man and a woman. I'm looking for another man. The piece is to be an exploration of intimate relationships. The dream seemed to point the way. Looking at what happens in our reality, our fantasy, our anxiety, around love and relationships. I think this is totally appropriate to working in a house too.

We move into the house on the 1st August, at least we will start paying and have the keys from then. We can start rehearsing then too. I only hope my house sells quickly! It is very cold at the moment, so I think we will continue living here until the house sells.

I have bought a digital camera, so there will be photos to post soon.

I have written some text and plan to work with a mixture of my visions for scenes or part of scenes, maybe some scripts (Pinter's "The Lover" for example), and some very open exercises to see what comes from the actors.

The dream I had last night.

2006-07-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was in bed with James. I was aware that I hadn't seen him for a long time. He was quite skinny, and I felt his back and bottom with my hand.
Then I wondered what had happened to Milton. I went out to look for him and found him asleep in a very uncomfortable position on the stairs. I invited him to come back to bed with me. I felt sorry for him, apologetic, and guilty, like I wanted or needed to make it up to him because it was his rightful place (in my bed) and I had let someone usurp him. But he wasn't angry (or didn't show it). Then, when he came back to the bedroom, James was very angry. He and a male friend of his who was suddenly also there acted like I'd misled them, making them believe they were welcome in my bed and could slip back into a relationship with me and have it exactly how they wanted it.
James had by now become quite fat and sick-looking. I felt unjustly accused and just wanted to get rid of these 2 demanding men who were encroaching on my personal space and my life.

Searching for the house 1: 42 Winchester St. Lyttelton

2006-07-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

Have just been to see this house. It has 4 bedrooms and a seesaw in the garden!! It is between two churches on Winchester St. right where the bus stops.

It is very old and completely falling down. The owner has bought it to knock it down and build 2 2-storey townhouses there. He plans to do this "in a year or two."

The good things about this house:

big rooms
weird factor (or "character")
garden/yard (small)
in Lyttelton
near bus stop
cheap (they're asking $235/week but I think it could definitely be less)
we could do anything we want to it - paint, pull up carpets, whatever

The bad things abut this house:

only available for a limited period
very hard to heat and cold and miserable in winter

I can imagine having a plan to test this whole project out on this house and then find out

a) whether I really want to own the house that becomes Laverne Laverne

b) whether this is really want I want to do

c) if Lyttelton is the right place

I would take the house from September 1st (the date I have in mind to begin the whole Laverne project), for $200/week, until May next year (with a guarantee that he won't ask us to leave before then). I would make one or two pieces in the house, not amass too much stuff (further costumes, wardrobes, lights etc.).

It is very attractive because of the sieze and price (and the fact that we can do what we want), but I think I will take a look around at some others.

The New Laverne Project - Christchurch City New Zealand

2006-07-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

Laverne is a new art space project, to be located in a house in Christchurch city or port of Lyttelton.

The goals of the project are to make art - primarily performance to begin with - without the need for public funding or ticket sales. Information about performances will be disseminated by email and through this blog.

For more information, contact Laverne at oilnutcrusher@yahoo.co.nz