The Pineapple Effect

'a bite of pineapple changes the taste of the next thing you eat'
Karen Christopher

On 16th and 17th April this year I participated in Karen Christopher's Arts Admin weekender workshop titled 'Something from Nothing'. Karen Christopher is a performance deviser based in London and was a member of the long running Chicago based performance group Goat Island. I was interested to find out about the work of Karen Christopher because I participated in a couple of workshops by Goat Island and found their approaches to making work inspiring when I was studying contemporary theatre. They visited Dartington College of Arts a couple of years ago to perform The Lastmaker and accompanied this with a workshop.

One delightful recollection from the workshop was being given a cut out piece of newspaper with a picture of Dracula's jaw, and finding the person who had Dracula's eyes. Prior to this, I came across the group in Scarborough whilst doing my BA. I recall being surprised when they suggested that a performance takes 7 years to make. I often think about the slowness and freedom of taking seven years to make something and whether I would feel empty or satisfied when that process is over?

Karen Christopher's workshop was also centred on aspects of Time. One of the initial exercises involved standing in a circle and taking ten minutes to raise your right arm out, up and round to pat the shoulder of the person in front. It was physically uncomfortable but also somewhat meditative, geared in concentration and an ultra clued up sense of time management. I wanted to touch the person just at the moment when the alarm beeped. Of course, some participants had a far more sassy approach and waited for 9 and a half minutes, bringing their arm up in the last 30 seconds. This quirky differentiation tickled us, and led to a discussion about individual approaches, work methods and the application of rules in creative production.

It was not all about slowness, in contrast there were some impossibly fast-paced collaborative tasks, which were exhilarating once you’d got over the panic. These provided another way of tapping into creativity by having to make spontaneous and radical decisions against a clock count-down. They were as intended ‘crisp actions towards making without initially engaging too much thought’.

‘Never say no to someone’s ideas. Always say yes. Always try something out’ Karen Christopher

Collaboration began to happen with the introduction of small, white, triangular, paper shapes. These fitted together much like the Dracula picture and soon partners and trios were being made. Smaller combinations of people within a larger collaboration kicked off a multi-layered process of accessing, sharing and stealing each other’s work. We reflected on something and then manipulated it, building up layers upon layers of material and pushing our notions of creativity.

We were making our own work and choosing the ‘miraculous moments’ of other group’s works. I stole Kirsty’s ‘pa pa pa pa pom a pom a pom a dom a dom’ line of singing as I felt this bit was both miraculous and also kind of momentous.

I had not received the email about bringing in a personal object to work with, and so I had to pull something out of the rucksack. I was staying at a friend’s flat in Elephant Castle and I had her key on me which was attached to a small wooden elephant with the carved lettering FRANNY. I used this. Because it was quite small I showed it to people one by one. I also tried to prop it up on the floor and it kept falling, so I repeated this action until it finally stood up. FRANNY seemed to take off quite well and somebody even claimed that they ‘love Franny’ which pleased me because I love Franny too but nobody else there knew who she was.

On the second day, we talked about the importance of sequence and how to decide what to say first when you give someone an instruction. I loved Karen Christopher’s false starts. She starts to say something and suddenly stops mid-way, claiming ‘no perhaps I should say this later’ which has an effect of toying with us a little bit!

This happened a few times and I found it quite funny. It seemed as if she was acutely aware of what was to come next and you could almost see her thought processes working out how to give us the best possible sequencing of events/ dialogue! When making a performance, I spend time re-working the structure for that exact same reason. I think ‘No this can’t come now! Because it will ruin the brilliant surprise later on!’ or ‘this will bit will change how the audience takes on the next bit’. Karen allegorises sequencing in this way as tasting pineapple because it ‘changes the taste of the next thing’.

The order of things puts pressure on the content and how an audience reads that information. Attention to rhythm and patterned structures can create suspension which in turn causes pressure to build up. Karen Christopher talked about having an awareness of musical structures when putting together material to perform. The art of composition is both performance making and musicality.

Goat Island used musical canons in quite complicated ways, performing a physical sequence that is offset with an echoe. Karen played us two pieces of music which highlight her claim that ‘patterns are very consoling’ and are also ‘very human’. (Madame presse died today at 90 by Morton Feldman)

‘I can’t believe I put the walk on the day of the London marathon’
Karen Christopher

We went for a 90 minute walk through brick lane and did not talk to each other at all during that time. We were looking for things, noticing the unnoticeable. I spotted some Doubles and then started looking for more. There was a family of picture frames, twin extractor fans, somebody’s pin striped trouser legs, double yellow lines, and a repeated pattern of club shapes on a bright red window shutter. Here is a photo I took walking past a window close to the toynbee studios. Two red flowers doubling up to frame a water sprayer in a rather threatening pose.

This walk enabled me to take on board what had happened throughout the workshop as well as collect new material - without too much pressure to do either. By not talking to each other, I was able to focus on what I wanted to look for, but I was equally open to being distracted by the things I noticed. I could quite easily get lost but still feel on track. It is something I have adopted since - getting out of the studio, walking, and arriving back with a heightened sense of alertness and observation.

For me, the workshop’s activities all threw up similar ideas, frustrations and agendas that I experience in creating performance work. It was very useful to explore these in a collaborative way with people that I had not worked with before. It was also useful to set these tasks against a continually changing pace of production. It varied from against the clock, high-powered pressure to a leisurely walk and time for reflection. It made me feel like being dipped in hot water and then cold water, feeling the pain of each but also the relief from one to the other. It was valuable to witness the different material being produced from these changing paces and changing working methods.

Although panning across two days, the workshop was intended to be a ‘swift journey through the first steps of ideas and realisation’ and it certainly managed to produce ‘something from nothing’ in fact, an eclectic array of ideas and the beginnings of performance works. I felt privileged to be working with such a sense of doing and not to be tied up with the sense of responsibility I get trapped in with my own work; we were encouraged to ‘switch off the inner critic’ and this felt good.