Friday, 23rd of December
A theatre experience


Two weeks ago, me and Georgia went on a little theatre experience Grace had prepared to us in a park in Toulouse.I was really excited about this, Grace wasn't allowed to give to much away, so she only told us that only girls could do this, it had to be in a park in Toulouse in the evening, and said that this was going to be an experience to us. I'm not going to tell you what my and Georgia's first instinct impressions were but I think you'll figure it out because it's quite obvious, but then I knew this was her IP work she had to  do and just needed some help. So I thought at first that we were going to be involved in a little piece, that we were maybe going to be involved in some kind of invisible theatre, and of course I would have loved been doing that.

We had to do this experience one by one and Grace gave us out some headphones and a folder. At that moment I realized we were not going to do a little performance I thought we were. I went first and Grace was right next to me. She gave me the instructions very formally without giggling or saying them too fast. I thought that this gave her a very professional first impression. I had some french music from the 20th century I would say with violins and someone singing in the background. At that point, Grace gave me a picture of a lady who lived during the 20th century. She told me to look carefully at her, to look at her eyes, the way she was dressed, the way she smiled, her skin tone, her hair.... so I could have a big picture of her in my head.

We went for a walk around the park and then sat down on the bench. The music changed constantly and Grace gave me a scarf I had to smell and put on me. I then felt like this character, I could see what she was seeing, perhaps not what she felt but I knew her emotions, I just couldn't live them.
At the end of the experience, we went on a little bench where Grace told me her husband died, and that chocked me a little bit, I wasn't expecting a sudden death on this journey. She then told me :" When you feel ready to leave this trip, take off your headphones and give me back your folder." Somehow, I needed some time to leave this little journey, it wasn't something I could just leave like audience members do in a normal theatre and when the show is over. This was something I had to decide whereas it was over or not, I though it was quite difficult to end it my self, but I loved it because it was very different from other theatre endings were the light goes back on, people start moving, curtains are closed...

Grace then told me that this was a performance and I got really surprised that these kind of performances existed and in that case an audience member has to be very open-minded to go on these kind of performances.

I thought this experience was very interesting, especially doing it by your self. You get different point of views and a different opinion if you watch a performance alone or surrounded with other people. If Georgia would have done this with me, my reflections would have been different to these I just wrote above. But I really enjoyed discovering a different theatre practice that might be useful and help me with my own IP or other performances we might do.