The tap runs, the suds form, and I immerse my hands into warm water. The view from the window is the same but different, the trampoline, the patchy grass, the four hens who nourish it, the colour of the sky ever changing. For the warmth, the water and a place to call home, I am grateful. I embody this gratitude somewhere. I often forget it, as I flit between several states of emotion and thought often in minutes, sometimes in days. I doubt I am alone in this….

As a theatre maker and researcher, I am exhausted. I am confused about my medium, and I think personally I am grieving different types of losses and coping with stresses I cannot name brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic and that perhaps I always harboured. A lot of us got on with things as best as we could, but maybe it is time now to stop, to take stock to reflect. My confusion at what path my theatre practice may take is a consistent presence and my faith in theatre has taken many knocks over the years. However I return to one word over and over again, and that is care. Through making art and artistic work, and processes I feel that is an effort at care, an effort at understanding this confusing and volatile world, still suffering from age old problems like war, greed and crisies of health, home environment and identity. Thinking about care is hard, giving care is hard, feeling alone in care giving is also hard, feeling that no one really cares about anything is defeating, overwhelming and exhausting. But care continues to happen, it happens in pockets, in gestures, in expressions, in huge action, in community, in collectivity, in saying NO, and in saying YES. Theatre and performance is way for me to care, to care about creativity, to care about myself, and to share with others. It is a way to represent, present, mess up, fail, suceed, talk, shout, cry, laugh, dream, imagine, connect, connect, connect and care.

Here is a poem I wrote to accompany a video which is a series of images and short films as part of a blog for the final Mellon School of Theatre Performance and Research, at Harvard University.

We Care

When we speak out, we care

When we listen, try to listen, really listen, we care

When we move through a space,

Place our body on stage,

Dance for, with and within, we care

When we work with words,

Make poems, raps and stories,

Oh Stories, please share stories

We Care

When Words fail us,

and we search through our senses

make beats, sounds, noise

We care

When we try to understand

What it is to be here, to be seen, to be heard, to be FELT,

We care

When we try to present, to represent, to make, to remake

We care

When we come from the edge

Look to the edge

Say F*&k the edge,

Negotiate boundaries and borders,

Paint over walls,

We care

When we feel pain, hold pain, acknowledge pain

Wonder how to cope with pain

We care

When we ask, try to ask, really ask,

We care

When we dream, oh dreams, please dream

feel dandelions in our eyes,

Taste grit in our nose,

blood and metal in our mouths

feel the sky in our chests

and the sea in our hearts

We care.

When we are lost and try to find a way,

Make paths, weave threads, groups, communities

We care

We are poets and players, dreamers and makers

We are artists and dancers, students and teachers

We are uncertain, we are tired

We are often overwhelmed

We sometimes lose faith, lose trust,

Lose Love.

Yet, we gather. We grapple

We talk it out, feel it out

dance it out, write it out,

read it out, play it out,

sing it out, move it out,

We gather. We are here.

We care