Deeper in the Dark

Jennie and I met a couple of days ago to discuss the existing material from the original scratch performance and try to focus our angle of approach for the research and development period. It transpired that there were three areas within which we wanted to operate: the contrast between darkness and silliness and its progression through the piece, the imaginative experience of a listener encountering the song’s rhythms and lyrics (once again, we chant, NOT the story of the song), and the use of the continuing, monotonous and hypnotic riff that underscores O’Malley’s Bar. By ring-fencing our efforts slightly earlier, we hope to be able to play and experiment limitlessly but always retain our focus on the key artistic aims of the final performance draft.

With this in mind, we gave ourselves license to muse on images and ideas that had come to us since the Dark Side’s first outing. I liked the idea of a moment where the performers are watched by the audience whilst they are plugged in to personal stereos, listening to a music track and responding however they wished. Watching intimate moments on stage always holds fascination for me. The meticulous act of somebody shaving with a cut-throat razor once held me in awe when placed unexpectedly in a performance with nothing else going on: we forget to look in detail with fascination at everyday acts, and the theatre is a fantastic place to expose them.

The darkest, most disturbing and unsettling places we can take an audience will result from taking them on a journey in their imaginations, not from anything we could illustrate on stage. We began to talk about individuals and events in current or past culture that carry a weighty significance; the Dunblane massacre, the Columbine shootings, Ian Huntley, Myra Hindley, the recent murder of five prostitutes just outside Ipswich. These names and events have resonance for us all, and when juxtaposed with the black humour of Nick Cave’s ballads and the pleasure we take in listening to them as an audience, the relationship becomes problematic – and fascinating. The issue of context arose; when are we licensed to laugh at death? When are we licensed to fantasise about death – about our own or those of others? We want to coax the audience into a space where the unexpected (leaving them in the dark for just too long, the incongruous and hilarious sitting side-by-side with the gruesome and horrific) is commonplace, where their imaginations work faster than their consciences, leading them darker and deeper into uncharted territories. We want to pose difficult questions. The actual plot of O’Malley’s Bar has become secondary to our response to it, which is what the attraction of the songs first held – how do we feel, physically and mentally, what happens to us when we respond?

An unexpected conversation with a friend led to discussion of albums and lyrics that scared us, that, once unpicked, held hidden surprises. She quoted from The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers, and we went on to talk about listening to music in general, the different planes upon which we engage. Ever found yourself writing the lyrics to a song when you’re meant to be writing a letter or an email? That the song invades your psyche without you giving it any permission? What if the actions held within the story of a song had the same effect? Or the emotional reaction held such permanence that you couldn’t escape it?

We are still discussing the placement of the toy car.