Some thoughts about staging…

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about #1850charla as it evolved on .re/act and realised that, a few steps into the process, I found myself thinking of it almost as a form of improv theatre – a little more in the absurdist than the comic sense. None of the performers were primed in the other characters beforehand, there was no script, no order of play, no rehearsals and the timing of the interactions was enormously significant in terms of the direction the play moved in. For me, .re/act itself served as the stage or the performance platform and, as such, it provided a fairly avant-garde space for the staging;-) Unlike the sealed virtual ecologies of gaming environments, .re/act (as a stage) tolerated imports from anywhere and everywhere on the web and supported characters hmm… how shall I put it?…characters of very varied “dimensions”.
It’s funny because, posting this reflection here, I acknowledge that I’m no longer thinking of .re/act as the stage but am, again, using it in its forum capacity.
And yet, at the same time, nested within .re/act,  I think I’ve detected yet another form growing! A Song!!! I’m really enjoying the intimate exchange of tokens between Isabella and Ysidora – I love the tone of this swap – the reserve in the courtly “I send you”s, the excitement of waiting to “unwrap” the next offering. I hear echoes of “Hush Little Baby” when I read these postings: A mockingbird. A diamond ring. A looking glass. A goat. A dog named Rover…(though, in the lullaby, the gifting is one-sided and return on investment not necessarily guaranteed;-). But, as with Isabella and Ysidora, the relationship between the items in sequence is full of surprise!
On a completely unrelated note…read the other day that Steve McQueen feels inspired when he’s doing the vacuuming. Wonderful! Time to go channel my inner Steve McQueen…